HOUSTON – Two men are dead after a Tesla traveling in Spring crashed into a tree and no one was driving the vehicle, officials say.
The crash happened at 11:25 p.m. in the Carlton Woods subdivision near the Woodlands. The car burst into flames after hitting a tree near 18 Hammock Dunes Place.
Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told KPRC 2 that the investigation showed “no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla when the accident happened. There was a person in the passenger seat of the front of the car and in the rear passenger seat of the car.
Harris County Constable Precinct 4 deputies said the vehicle was traveling at a high speed when it failed to negotiate a cul-de-sac turn, ran off the road and hit the tree.
Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water over four hours to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.
Authorities will perform autopsies on both men.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2021/04/18/2-men-dead-after-fiery-tesla-crash-in-spring-officials-say/?outputType=amp&__twitter_impression=true
Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water over four hours to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting.
Can't wait until one of these ignites in the Vegas death tube.
You would think that firefighters would have training on this sort of thing, or at least know that water won't put out lithium fires
Probably a matter of "hey a car's on fire, get the water"
"Da fuck is going on, MORE WATER"
"MORE WATEEEEEER"
"It's out! Oh... it was a Tesla... fucken shit"
It's also concerning that none of them thought to take out a phone and just google.
Elon Musk is going to create a real life version of the Taggart Tunnel incident from Atlas Shrugged, and when a bunch of people die in a fire in the tunnel, Musk and his followers will blame socialism somehow.
Well, from point of view of tesla, tree was coming at it with brandished branches at 70 mph. It’s called treelativity principle.
Technically the car has spinning tires so relative to its contact patch the tire was completely unmoving, that's why the car got confused
Another good point ☝️ Musk haters destroyed with physics and equations once again 😤
If you need an example of how Marketing kills, directly in this case.
Just keep calling it AutoPilot, I'm sure more people won't try to actually use the system as advertised
32k gallons to extinguish the fire
WHAT THE FUCK
That's 121k liters.
121 cubic meters
A fucking cube of 5 m x 5 m x 5 m
A big fucking thing of water just to extinguish one fucking car.
this ceremony should be performed on the salt flats of Bolivia atop a huge pyre
I'm not sure about water, but the standard ABC extinguishers in houses don't work, you need class D. Lithium fires are a fucking nightmare.
No, but maybe a lot of firefighter departments aren't equipped with the necessary thing
I'm guessing this is the official line among silicon valley sycophants. Remember that video of some tech reporter riding on autopilot with his kids in the car extolling the virtues of the Tesla martyr who got killed in exactly the same place by the autopilot?
Yeah, there's definitely this delusional brainrot from the tech sector that attempts to absolve all of these harmful companies in the name of "progress".
Well, it easily fucks people over too, but people have enough sense to use sunglasses and clean the windshield.
it doesn't necessarily require a good camera, it's just that tesla decided to use cameras instead of lidar (like every other self driving car) for some reason
This is pretty distressing, no one I know drives one but we really sharing the road with these things?
So cool they called this technology "AUTOPILOT" instead of "lane assist" so that people would believe it drives itself, and then put in the fine print that "AUTO" "PILOT" does not "AUTOMATICALLY" "PILOT" the vehicle and that the driver needs to MANUALLY PILOT the vehicle at all times when using "AUTOPILOT"
yeah but autopilot sounds more bitchin and on brand for the "Lord Regent" of tesla or whatever the meme king calls himself now.
They're not any more dangerous than people, they're just not any less dangerous either.
Sorry, that's not entirely true. The batteries are potentially more dangerous than regular cars. Although even without the self-driving feature, that would still be the case.
Live in California, if the fires start no I mean when they start it's gonna be hell here. :ohnoes:
I'm curious as to how they managed to get the car to drive without someone in the driver's seat. One of Tesla's big defenses against their shitty AI is that the car requires an active driver to function. Being able to bypass that security measure would be a huge flaw in their system.
Gonna be funny when the investigation concludes that the driver seat was in fact occupied by several sacks of potatoes approximating the weight of a human, and a photograph of a person's face taped to the headrest
In a coincidence - Sack of Potatoes in the Driver's Seat with a Photograph of a Person’s Face Taped to the Headrest - "Sacko" for short - is my favorite indie band.
The Tesla determines if the driver is paying attention by asking them to torque the wheel slightly every minute or so. Theoretically one could defeat it by hanging a small weight from the steering wheel and then moving to another seat. However unclipping the seat belt will immediately prompt you to take control of the steering wheel and once you are out the seat the car will automatically decelerate to a stop.
Figuring out how to defeat all that would be rather elaborate and dumb. I think the more likely scenario here (Occams razor) is that the police are just wrong, as they've done zero investigation on it since the accident was so recent. It may have been human error and maybe the driver trying to escape the car, couldn't open the door and ended up in the passenger seat when he died? Maybe there was a drunk driver who booked? Who knows and its kinda of silly that they are making just generous speculations so early on. Good for clickbait though.
I think the more likely scenario here (Occams razor) is that the police are just wrong...
I agree.
Also - if the driver survived the crash and he could move - he probably tried to move away from the fire. I guess that's not covered in police training.
IF these things are as cheaply built as some of the stories I read, like some riding lawmowers have analog pressure switches under the seat that work as the "dead man switch". Would we be surprised to find that the only thing somebody did was clip the switch and twist the wires together as a bypass?
#1776™
I want to leave this obvious joke of a computer simulation
They'll blame the people in the car because Tesla's FULL SELF DRIVING isn't actually full self driving, it says so in the small letter clause
"Update: One of the deceased has been identified as Tesla founder Elon Musk"
It's okay, everybody - there's nothing to see here. There have been zero people hurt or injured on Mars.
This is impossible because Henry Kissinger is 97 and doesn't know how to use the official Loop app.
Just confirming that Tesla and their products are trash. Automated cars can work but not by throwing caution to the wind and cutting corners (see how CN companies rolling it out for a more responsible approach).
All major car manufacturers don't brand it self driving either. Even the highly capable(better than Tesla's autopilot) Supercruiser system from GM isn't branded as self driving.
