Parents were injured in a Tesla crash. She ended up having to pay Tesla damages
28 comments
·February 12, 2025bigtones
Timshel
In France there is a detailled report of a Tesla in a similar accident, it end up speeding over 100km/h and killed a cyclist.
What's interesting is that after a red light acceleration was initially inhibited (don't remember exactly why), driver pressed on the accelerator more and more up to almost 100% but the car was not speeding up much.
Then when inhibition was lifted the car basically started a quarter mile and the driver was overwhelmed and just steered the car without lifting the accelerator until it crashed :(.
Edit: In this accident too, the driver thought he tried to stop but with no effect. AEBS was triggered, but the driver missed the notification and just accelerated more when the car started slowing down. A residual pressure in the breaking system meant that acceleration was initially limited.
The full report: https://www.bea-tt.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/bea...
hn1378
Different crash. Article crash had people injured. Your link is a fatal crash.
OP's article is about a Model 3 crash, yours is about a Model Y.
amscanne
It seems the facts of the story are similar though. In the Zhang case, they were driving 50 mph over the speed limit. Brakes were depressed, but not hard or early enough. Automatic braking kicked in, which caused the brake pedal to be depressed much harder, but not enough to avoid the crash (and possibly led to driver believing that there was a brake failure?).
At least, this is what I found [1] while trying to understand the story a bit better. Who knows what's true?
[1] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-3-braking-fail...
kelnos
> In the Zhang case, they were driving 50 mph over the speed limit. Brakes were depressed, but not hard or early enough.
... according to Tesla themselves. Why would we automatically believe their version of events? They could easily have fabricated that data.
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bigtones
Thanks, amended post.
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schiffern
>Dozens of Tesla owners had been publicly complaining about alleged brake failures, battery fires, unintended acceleration and other defects
Their one piece of 'data' is literally worthless, but I guess terrible journalism is fine as long as it's anti-Tesla.
mquander
If there's an actual problem with Chinese courts corruptly defending Tesla, why is this article presenting a case where Tesla seems to be in the right, rather than one in which the court made a clearly corrupt decision?
kelnos
> why is this article presenting a case where Tesla seems to be in the right
The only evidence that the crash was caused by the driver was provided by Tesla themselves. Of course they would provide data to support their case, fabricated or otherwise.
It's weird that the woman in the article asked for Tesla to provide the pre-crash data, but they refused until much later, after the legal proceedings were going on. Why not provide that data immediately?
wruza
The whole article is unrelated to the headline, it’s just a classic journalist turn. The authors already know who’s wrong without any hearings.
simondotau
> rather than one in which the court made a clearly corrupt decision?
Are you aware of any clearly corrupt decisions?
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renewiltord
Unusual that car black box data is not available to the car owner. I would expect it to be. With some effort, perhaps we can get it to be this way in California, though I suppose the fear is that the manufacturer will simply remove car telemetry in California if almost every car has something that could be twisted to be liability.
speedgoose
They eventually did in this story.
Tesla had finally given Zhang what she’d been asking for, but they’d published the data publicly and included her vehicle identification number. She said she and her family started getting threatened and doxed online. Besides, she wondered, how could she be sure Tesla hadn’t modified or redacted the data from her car? It was less than the victory she’d hoped for. Feeling besieged, she sued Tesla a second time, in March 2022, for invading her privacy.
Zhang lost both cases she brought against Tesla.packtreefly
The problem isn't that the owner didn't get the data. The problem is that the method for getting the data is that you must beg Tesla for it, rather than just slurping it out of a USB port inside the car.
If Tesla is going to go to the trouble of uploading all this shit to the cloud anyway, the least they can do is give customers a no-questions-asked download button.
kelnos
Not only do you have to beg Tesla for it, but you have to trust that Tesla hasn't doctored the data to corroborate the narrative that Tesla wants.
simondotau
I agree with the sentiment, but in practice this is a horrific idea. Make it easy and it’ll be snaffled up by law enforcement, whether covertly, with intimidation, or with routine warrants.
thatguy0900
I believe massachitses has such a law on the books but is currently being sued by aitomalers so can't enforce it
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/11/business/automotive-r...
ThePowerOfFuet
>massachitses
>aitomalers
Are you feeling OK?
shkkmo
The framing of this whole article is weird. Zhang is put forward as some kind of example of the favourable treatment Tesla is getting in the courts and how Tesla is silencing critics. Yet she was wrong about the cause of the accident and didn't just criticize, but actively protested at industry events and Tesla still didn't open their defamation suit until after she started hers.
I'm sympathetic to the idea behind this article, but it doesn't seem to actually do any of the work to justify it's conclusions.
I do think that owners should be given full access to all telemetry data from their vehicles and the fact that Tesla doesn't do this is very disappointing.
kelnos
> Yet she was wrong about the cause of the accident
I don't think we can take that at face value. Tesla refused to release the pre-crash data for... weeks? Months? And only did so after perhaps it seemed like they might lose the case. Why not release the data immediately?
Sure, it's possible that the driver screwed up, and even if he really did cry out "the brakes aren't working!" as the woman claims, he was just confused and doing the wrong thing. But I wouldn't put it past Tesla to release fake vehicle telemetry that supports their case, either.
rich_sasha
It's terrible handling of the early stages from Tesla. Or they know their car is faulty and took their time to doctor the data.
But assuming not, they could have just released the data and called it quits. It's not inconceivable that the driver was "pressing the pedal wrong" - wasn't that the ultimate problem with the Toyotas in the US? But they managed to peeve off a customer so much that they went berserk and frankly too far. But it's easy to understand the anger.
marcusverus
Journalism is a masterclass in how to deceive without lying.
samyar
Hacker news or traffic news?
chvid
"It is not common practice for automakers — in China or elsewhere — to sue their customers. But Tesla has pioneered an aggressive legal strategy and leveraged the patronage of powerful leaders in China’s ruling Communist Party to silence critics, reap financial rewards and limit its accountability."
Edited: Very similar to another Tesla crash in China with a social media protest. In that crash the brake lights did not come on at all. In fact the acccelerator was pressed down 100% for a full five seconds before the crash which was entirely the drivers fault.
The defendant knew this and Tesla gave the family the car telemetry data, but continued to falsely protest that the brakes were depressed during a lengthy social media campaign, and as a result determined by a Chinese court Telsa was awarded damages and the family was asked to publicly apologize.
https://carnewschina.com/2023/03/02/tesla-model-y-crash-inve...