Tesla reveals more details on fatal Texas crash, it's a locked-room murder mystery

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Tesla released some important new details on the Texas crash that everybody's talking about (but probably shouldn't be talking that much about.)

The new details are not enough, though. Information is now contradictory until we learn more. Was there somebody in the driver's seat or not? We've learned that cruise control did play a role, but are told it brought the car to a stop, which it clearly didn't.

Read more details in this piece at:

Tesla reveals more details on fatal Texas crash, it's a locked-room murder mystery

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Perhaps the only sentient analysis of this incident I found across the mainstream media. Well done.

Finally, a more factual and balanced report of this tragic accident in Texas. Although this tragedy occurred in a Tesla, we should not loose sight of the proven active and passive safety performance of Tesla vehicles. While no vehicle or machine may be perfect, these vehicles have consistently performed at the top of their class in safety. While autonomous systems may not have been activated in this instance, there also appears to be substantial evidence online (YouTube) which shows the safety benefits of these autonomous systems and they will only become safer as development continues. Thank you for a rare balanced report!

You have to re-read the transcript as that’s not what happened. They were testing a theory of what would happen if TACC (adaptive cruise control was engaged), but it could only reach 30mph which wasn’t sufficient speed for what happened with the accident. There really is no mystery to the accident. It’s just two guys seeing how fast the car is, and it crashed. After the crash one of them moved to try to get out of the vehicle.

Tesla did a post-accident study (i.e. simulation) with NTSB and Nhtsa and what they found out was-

1.) Autopilot would not engage on that road because of the lack of lane lines.
2.) TACC would engage above 5mph and would disengage if the drivers seatbelt were unbuckled
3.) If TACC was engaged it would have only accelerated to 30mph by the time the car reached the crash site. The car was going far in excess of 30mph, so there had to be some external input IF TACC was engaged.
4.) There was evidence (deformed steering wheel) that there was likely someone in the drivers seat at the time of the crash. (or maybe grasping the steering wheel form another seat??)

There is no evidence yet of what actually did take place. The SD card they are referring to may just be the Sentry/dash cam SD card in which case all we will be able to determine is what the external cameras saw.

So much misunderstanding and misinformation. Mostly in the name of clicks and personal agendas.

"In that vein, we did a study with them over the past week to understand what happened in that particular crash. And what we've learned from that effort was that Autosteer did not and could not engage on the road condition that -- as it was designed. Our adaptive cruise control only engage when a driver was buckled in about 5 miles per hour. And it only accelerated to 30 miles per hour with the distance before the car crashed."

Everything above is referencing the various test they did. Final conclusions is no autosteer was possible. Even *if* they put it in TACC (ACC) the max speed from the home to the crash site would have been 30 MPH, which is an insufficient speed for this accident. Conclusion, they press the accelerator hard and crashed the car. I can't wait to see all the "news" sites post their corrections in the coming weeks.

Many media outlets interpreted these statements to say that ACC was on. The reason for the ambiguity is the first sentence, "Autosteer did not and could not engage." That seems to clearly refer to the crash, and the sentence before it talks about a study to "understand what happened in that particular crash." So these first two sentences read fairly unambiguously as though they are talking about the crash.

Then the next few sentences read more like they are talking about an unmentioned test car. It's ambiguous at the start, about ACC being on, and more clear when it talks about how ACC slows the car to a stop.

What Tesla said in the call is highly ambiguous and created a lot of confusion. They don't respond to queries on clearing it up.

Author lacks reading comprehension. Tesla never said TACC was enabled on the crash. This is what they said (paraphrasing):

'along with NHTSA we did a study and testing at the same location, and we found out that Autopilot cannot be enabled in that street. TACC can be enabled with a buckled driver sitting on the drivers seat but even then it can only go up to 30mph before it reaches the crash site'.

It should be fairly obvious that the above statements are with a different car they tested with, and is not about the crashed car.

This author is a little low on IQ or purposefully misreporting... aka lying. Most likely the latter, as anyone with high school degree can comprehend what was said in the earning call.

I'm really not sure why this is national news, other than the desire of some to make Tesla look bad.

There are countless possibilities for what happened, and there's no indication that any of them have widespread implications.

Maybe further investigation will change that, but for now this appears to be just one deadly car crash of millions.

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