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Rashomon
Member
I looked at this roadway in a little more detail, and the interesting thing is the truck could have turned on a 150 foot radius because of all the extra asphalt that was probably placed at this intersection to allow road construction/lane closures/lane diversion. With that kind of relatively broad turn, the truck could have been traveling at 25 fps (16 mph or so) with a reasonable lateral acceleration for a tractor/trailer, and the time elapsed from the time the truck intruded into the number 1 lane until the Tesla struck the trailer could have only been 2 to 3 seconds -- not much time for braking even with an attentive driver. I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm just saying that is within the realm of the possible. A full accident reconstruction will eventually nail a lot of this down, but for right now, please withhold judgement. This could have been an unavoidable accident on the part of the Tesla driver and the AP hardware/software. Or the truck could have been traveling more slowly and the accident could have been avoided/ameliorated by a more attentive driver and/or better AP system.
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You cherry-picked my post there. At least reply to the whole thing. Everything failed in this scenario. Truck driver shouldn't have been there. AP absolutely failed in this scenario. And yes, most responsible party here is the driver unfortunately. To defend AP 100% here is absurd. It did NOT function properly.
hacer
Active Member
Unless there was a fire, I expect that they were not crushed beyond the recognition of an NHTSA investigation. It is routine during investigations of bombings for identification of small and large components of objects in the blast (even of the bomb itself) that are subject to much greater energies and forces than any part of this car was subject to.
The point is not that he was speeding at this time (autopilot makes that easy to avoid) but rather the fact that he was caught 7 times in 5 years before autopilot was released is an indication of the kind of attention he likely had as a driver. Add to this the other evidence in this thread regarding the previous near miss and the fact that he had been known to watch movies previously, and I don't think we're going out on a limb here. The info we have here isn't enough to seal the deal in a court of law, but it's the foundation for a pretty good case if it turns out to be even partially true. At that intersection a driver paying full attention might have momentarily missed a truck crossing the lanes because of the angle of the sun, but not to the point that they never swerved, never applied the brakes, even at the last minute.
The camera wouldn't overrule the radar. The Doppler shift from the laterally moving truck would equal the Doppler shift of the road surface. Additionally the high trailer body would reduce reflections form the bumper mounted radar. The bottom line is that there would be no radar target to overrule. Simple radar will miss this. You could put phased array radar on the car but then you are talking several tens of thousands of dollars at the least.
JeffK
Well-Known Member
The autopilot camera isn't going to have onboard storage and if he had a dashcam and it was smashed then the card could be anywhere from the road to the pole, in the weeds, etc. There's no reason to comb through all that because someone thinks there might be a memory card. Do you know how large a micro SDHC card is and how much of a search area? It's not nearly as important to get every single detail for a car accident as it is for a bombing or an airline crash.
Who knows, the logs on the Tesla itself might hold if the radar detected the truck, the distance, and location before choosing to ignore them. The logs might also have camera sensor data as well (but obviously not video).
NikeWings
Active Member
Hi Breezy, who are you referring to when you state the "message isn't getting across"? Surely not the driver, an acclaimed user and promoter of AP, TSLA and advanced technologies in general. I am a fairly new user of AP. I found the process of indoctrination, demo and usage to be quite thorough. The message was loud and clear further reiterated by the responsibility acceptance button on the screen I had to toggle. Respectably, YMMV of course.
How did the Police guess the speed without any investigation? Was there a record of his speed at the time of crash? Max, you seem to know more about this than others. What else did the police say? Video player? Harry Potter?
The deer maybe. The ladder and flying rubber I seriously doubt and I doubt any other emergency braking systems out there can handle those cases. However, rear end collisions are a big deal and cause a lot of expense to insurance companies. They are pushing the type of emergency braking Tesla has. Just because it doesn't catch all cases doesn't mean it isn't useful.
JeffK
Well-Known Member
It's from the article... and the police have already done the investigation. You might remember this happened over a month ago.
it'd probably be a microSD card and it could be anywhere along the path of wreckage... it's unlikely they'd find this and they'd only find it if purposely looking. If it was with the car then sure, they could find it.
AP did not fail, if anything failed it was the TACC. AP controls steering not the rate of speed or stopping for obstructions.
Except they got the date wrong. It happened May 7th, not yesterday.
Well my wife says I never listen to her so does that mean I don't listen to anyone or that I'm "unaware"? See how the logic fails if you take one circumstance and apply it to others? That why it's inadmissible in court. We will just have to agree to disagree on this point.
NikeWings
Active Member
Some interesting bits here....more conflicting details essentially. .DVD player found in Tesla car in Florida crash, authorities say
"There was a portable DVD player in the vehicle," said Sergeant Kim Montes of the FHP in a telephone interview. She said there was no camera found, mounted on the dash or of any kind, in the wreckage."
tinm
2020 Model S LR+ Owner
Reporter emailed, asked to fix that embarrassing goof (in the opening sentence of article, no less)
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