Elon Musk's epic bacon adventures

Snowjoe

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What would be easier is if everyone with office jobs just worked from home then we wouldn’t have to travel at all.
 

George Owen

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Holy shit, that's fecked up. Aren't these cars fully equipped with sensors and shit to prevent this to happen?

My money on the toddler trying to kill his Mom and little bro though. (Or maybe he was curious and started playing with the car?)

(when i was a kid, i was inside a car with another 4 kids, waiting for one their parents to drive us back home from some birthday party. I'm a curious guy so i started playing with the gear stick, it was an automatic (first ever automatic car i rode, so i was more curious than normal), and suddenly we started moving backwards downhill... :lol: We get to some good speed when luckily we crashed another car that was parked on our way)
 

Halftrack

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Holy shit, that's fecked up. Aren't these cars fully equipped with sensors and shit to prevent this to happen?
The vast majority of cars with keyless ignitions have some sort of feature in place to prevent it, usually sensors to ensure the key is inside the vehicle before allowing it to start. I think it's also fairly standard to require the brake pedal to be fully depressed as well.
 

George Owen

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The vast majority of cars with keyless ignitions have some sort of feature in place to prevent it, usually sensors to ensure the key is inside the vehicle before allowing it to start. I think it's also fairly standard to require the brake pedal to be fully depressed as well.
I mean the sensors the car uses to drive itself and avoid obstacles. (all the tesla cars have the ability for autonomous driving)

If the kid pressed the fuel or set the gear stick to D, as soon as the car started moving, it should have stopped before hitting the mother. (at least that's my understanding of how it works)

Maybe it doesn't work in manual mode (only giving an alert instead of braking the car right away)?

Anyway, here is the TESLA response:

March 11, 2019
Alison S. Gokal
Gokal Law Group, Inc.
26080 Towne Center Drive
Foothill Ranch, CA 92610

RE: Your Client Mallory Harcourt
Tesla Model X (VIN: 5YJXCBE29JF143687)

Dear Ms. Gokal:

This responds to your February 21, 2019 letter regarding an incident involving your client on December 27, 2018. We are sorry to learn of this incident and your client’s injuries, and we hope she, her son and her baby are all doing okay. Safety is of paramount importance to Tesla. We design our vehicles with particular attention to safety, which is why our vehicles are among the safest ever put on the road. We diligently investigate all complaints of vehicle malfunction and we thank you for giving us the opportunity to investigate and address your client’s concerns.

As you may know, Tesla vehicles record operational and diagnostic data continuously and, at regular intervals, transmit that data over-the-air to our servers. That data enables our engineers and service teams to assess vehicle health remotely and diagnose and potentially resolve customer concerns. In this case, our engineering team reviewed the diagnostic log data from the time of the incident and determined that the vehicle was operating as designed and responded appropriately to the inputs supplied – albeit, in this case, some of those inputs were reportedly coming from your client’s young son.

Specifically, in this case, the driver parked the vehicle, unbuckled and opened the driver’s door to exit. The driver’s door was then closed and the left side falcon wing door (i.e., the left rear door) was opened. Moments later, someone pressed the driver’s door handle triggering the driver’s door to open. The vehicle remained in Park at this time and the left falcon door remained open. About 9 seconds later, the brake pedal was pressed, which prompted the driver’s door to automatically close. About 3 seconds later, the gear selector lever was manually used to shift the vehicle into Drive gear, triggering an operator alert advising that various doors were open with the vehicle in gear.

Over the next 6 seconds, the vehicle continued to be in Drive gear with the brake pedal pressed until the accelerator pedal was pressed and the brake pedal was released. Over the next second, the vehicle speed increased in response to the pressure being applied to the accelerator pedal. Over the next 2 seconds, as the accelerator pedal continued to be pressed ranging from 44% to 98%, the brake pedal was briefly pressed, prompting the vehicle to issue a user message advising that both pedals were being pressed; at this time, pressing the brake overrode the accelerator pedal such that the motor torque being commanded by the accelerator pedal input was appropriately suppressed.

In the next 4 seconds, while varying manual pressure continued to be applied to the accelerator pedal, the vehicle speed increase was consistent with the pressure applied to the accelerator pedal, and then multiple alerts were triggered indicative of an impact to the left side falcon door. Then, the brake pedal was pressed including activation of the Anti-Lock Braking System, the accelerator pedal was released, and the vehicle came to a stop.

Our vehicles are designed with a logic that automatically shifts the vehicle into Park when certain criteria are met – namely, (1) neither pedal is pressed for a few seconds, and (2) 2 of the 3 following conditions are met: driver is not detected, driver’s seat belt is unbuckled, or driver’s door is open. In this instance, the pedals were being pressed so the conditions necessary to shift into Park were not met until after the incident when the pedals were released and then the vehicle automatically shifted to Park.

The above demonstrates that the vehicle responded to the operator’s inputs, as designed. We regret that this incident happened, however, we have not found any other instance of this sequence of events occurring—an unsupervised child manages to successfully shift the vehicle into gear and then apply the accelerator pedal—and we do not believe it is reasonably foreseeable. We trust you will consider the above before taking any further action in this matter.

Finally, with respect to your request for insurance information, this will confirm that Tesla does not have insurance applicable to a claim of this nature (i.e., a claim of defect in a customer-owned vehicle).

Please direct any future correspondence to my attention, though our registered agent for service of formal process is CT Corporation.

Sincerely,


Ryan A. McCarthy

Managing Counsel


ps. Never ever leave kids alone inside a car that looks like a fecking spaceship.
 

VeevaVee

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That is a pretty daft reply.
He must want to absolutely throttle some of people who reply to him though.
 

Eboue

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The thing is that even if you take all if his ridiculous claims at face value, there's still the question of why not have bigger cars that can move more people instead of tiny private pods. And the answer is that he is a creepy rich weirdo who hates being around other people.
 

KirkDuyt

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The thing is that even if you take all if his ridiculous claims at face value, there's still the question of why not have bigger cars that can move more people instead of tiny private pods. And the answer is that he is a creepy rich weirdo who hates being around other people.
Also, how can you have these things run with only 1 second intervals. The getting on and of those things must be frantic as feck.
 

Pogue Mahone

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The thing is that even if you take all if his ridiculous claims at face value, there's still the question of why not have bigger cars that can move more people instead of tiny private pods. And the answer is that he is a creepy rich weirdo who hates being around other people.
That seat 16 people...

It is a weird capacity though. With 16 seats to fill you'll end up sitting with strangers regardless, only in a much smaller space than your average bus or train.
 

KirkDuyt

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Presumably people will be able to embark/disembark from multiple pods simultaneously.
But then you still have to somehow cram 57000 people per hour through a system of tunnels and gates when they disembark? It seems like a nightmare.

He can come back when he invents the beam me up scotty machine from Star Trek.
 

That'sHernandez

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Are the tunnels compatible with his submersible? Just in case they flood and people need to be rescued.
 

crappycraperson

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Presumably people will be able to embark/disembark from multiple pods simultaneously.
Any comparison with subway is dishonest and Musk definitely is being the same in his assertion. For starters these kind of tunnels are unlikely to have multiple stops separated by a relatively small distance. Second it is unlikely that they will have a very high number of these 'pods' operating at a higher frequency to compensate for reduction in number of people who can board the same. I am not even going to touch the fact that as it stands the pods are just normal cars.

Even if this takes off this is clearly going to be an initiative aimed at wealthy people who want to save time on some popular routes. Road transportation equivalent of private planes.
 

Abizzz

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But Tesla does make a sound when you go full throttle :confused: A hilarious one too (at least the Model S I drove).

Also the appstore is limewire on crack? This song makes no sense.
 

Mr Pigeon

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49870154

It's things like this that make me dream, because they seem so close to reality. I hope that in my lifetime we will see an acceleration of the space program, much like we did when those brave men endeavoured to go to the moon, and we find ourselves moving closer to encountering alien life. And have sex with it.
 

Prometheus

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People have bastardised the word "genius". This label has gotten into his head.
 

4bars

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People have bastardised the word "genius". This label has gotten into his head.
Being a genius and being an asshole are not excluding. Actually usually go pretty much hand on hand because the superiority complex
 

Prometheus

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Being a genius and being an asshole are not excluding. Actually usually go pretty much hand on hand because the superiority complex
To me a genius is Scholze, Witten, Tao etc. It's hard for me to call a businessman a genius for doing some shrewd business, if that makes sense? I mean maybe some of the engineers that work for him are indeed geniuses, I don't know.
 

VeevaVee

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Yeah he’s more of a visionary with knowledge, experience and resources than a genius.

He somehow manages to be an eccentric billionaire while still being a very boring person underneath it all.