Featured Tesla Catches on Fire After Collision (Speed possibly a factor)

Now dead.

Bob Wilson

 

Speeding corroborated by police;
2 Florida teens die, 1 injured in Tesla Model S crash - Autoblog
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same things happen in econoboxes.

 

If these parents, or any others have kids that are knowingly Reckless, they ought to spend a few bucks to send them to a class like this:
http://www.chevrolet.com/teen-driver-technology
It really could have increased the chances of having no tragedy. Had this not been a Tesla, it would have never made national news.
Instead, the parents chose to have Tesla limit the max speed 50mph, down to 85mph.
Tesla in fatal crash was altered to limit its top speed, victim’s aunt says - Sun Sentinel
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Econoboxes don't do 112. Tesla does it easily, and it probably feels about like most cars at 70.

 

I've heard the same quote about OSHA regs.

In any case; the point that needs clarification is the mechanical release on various Tesla vehicles. The Model 3 (the recently released "affordable" one) has mechanical door releases for the front doors only (which is what Sandy Munro noted in his evaluation, apart from criticizing it as being built like a 90s Kia). The Model S (older sedan, first released 2012) has mechanical door releases on all 4 doors - the electronic release engages when the handle is tilted out a little, the mechanical engages when tilting out the door release handle almost fully (at least that is how it operates in our Model S, they may have revised it since). I haven't read the details about either crash so I really don't know what cars were involved.

I'm smirking a little because I'm just waiting for the personal attacks to pile in about that 90s Kia bit.

Man, you seem really really emotionally invested in this.

 

an econobox into a bridge abutment has the same effect, with likely less protection.

 

i think there new terms affluenza. at least they didn't take any innocents with them, as many do.

 

Nothin wrong with countering disinformation. When all of the brouhaha started with the GenII Prius - & its alleged unintended acceleration, I made the same stink.

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new one today, 'tesla crashes into rear of stopped fire department pick up truck at 60 mph'.
you'd think there weren't any other car crashes in the country.

 

The rest might be “fake news”.

 

I feel like a large part of this is due to all the (super-smug) hype that they had surrounding Autopiliot and their ability to operate autonomously. I mean; I can't be the only one who repeatedly heard phrases like "safest car ever tested". It's a bit of a reply (to put it bluntly): "yeah, your car drives itself, and look where it got you. (dead)".

 

From my local news: Tesla with Autopilot slams into truck stopped at red light | KOMO

Crash was in South Jordan, Utah, Friday night. Tesla driver got a broken ankle, fire truck driver didn't need treatment. Unknown if Autopilot was engaged, a lot of detail will remain unknown until Monday.

 

Just drove by the 101/85 left exit. Shiny new barrier. Ready for the next Tesla

 

I've heard 'safest car ever' as a reference to its crash test results, not as a reference to Autopilot.

The Tesla driver (possibly on Autopilot, details not yet released) that rear-end a stopped firetruck in Utah last night appears to have received only a broken ankle. Not bad for a 60 mph crash into a much heavier stationary target.

 

The insurance Institute keeps/logs death stats - multi & solo car fatalities
Driver death rates
but their matrix excludes Tesla apparently. They log cars by years on the road, rather than by billion(s) miles.
That website surprisingly had Hyundai as high on the list for fatalities.
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Many thanks for linking to this data source.

A note of caution on using this to pick out a 'safer' car: the tables give "Overall death rate (with confidence limits)" [emphasis addded]. Among the safest apparent models listed here for the 2014 update, absolutely nothing has confidence limits narrow enough to definitively claim to be safer than average. I.e., all the safer looking cars still have confidence intervals (similar to 'margin of error' in opinion polls) that overlap Average. This is not true of the most dangerous models, plenty have confidences entirely worse than Average, no overlap.

Backing up to previous update, 2011, four models are solidly safer than average -- Crown Vic, Accord, TSX, and VW CC. The Prius is right at the hairy edge, with its upper confidence limit exactly at Average. A single tick better would have put it into this Safer group.

Also looking back at past updates, 2014 marks the only one of the five updates this century where the industry's Average death rate did not improve over the previous edition. It actually got slightly worse, though still with an overlapping confidence limit. But this matches up with separate observations that overall motor vehicle deaths have been climbing over the past few years. I didn't dig into the previous century updates due to their different presentation.

 

you can't account for driver behavior, so i prefer crash testing and safety tech.

 

Yes, but my point is that there's a ton of (kind of unsubstantiated) hype out there, and that kind of thing proverbially catches up with you.

An interesting piece I read a few days ago noted that the pedestrian death rate has absolutely skyrocketed (the number 43% for some reason sticks in my mind), and there reason to believe that this is driven by widespread consumer adoption of SUVs.

 

It was predicable when Congress passed "Bell The Hybrid Act."

"While all passenger vehicle types (cars, sport utility vehicles, pickups, and vans) are involved in backover fatalities and injuries, the data indicate that backover fatality numbers show pickup trucks (72 of 288) and utility vehicles (68 of 228) to be overrepresented when compared to all non-backing traffic injury crashes and to their proportion to the passenger vehicle fleet." (pp. 6)
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Bob Wilson