It’s hard to say whether the victim of a Tesla crash would have survived, given the force of his “veered” impact with a tree, but the German press drops an important hidden lede in their report.

Offensichtlich wird im Tesla kein automatischer Crash-Notruf ausgelöst, der die nächstgelegene Polizeidienststelle alarmiert.

In other words…

Apparently, no automatic crash emergency call is triggered in the Tesla to alert the nearest police station.

The driver lay dying in the car on a country road until other cars passed by and called in the accident (meaning there was sufficient cell coverage). By then, the report says, attempts to save the Tesla driver’s life were hopeless.

This would not not be the case with other cars in Europe, which is only implied by the reporter without being said. Porsche, for example, allegedly had its fatality rate drop to zero after it engineered an advanced automatic crash notification system.

Most new cars feature built-in technology that can automatically call for help in an emergency and give the precise location of the vehicle, even if drivers are unable to do so themselves. Called automatic crash notification, or ACN, it uses a car’s built-in cellular connection or a paired phone to immediately alert first responders of a crash. (If your vehicle has such a system, you’ll probably also see a red SOS button somewhere on the ceiling near the rearview mirror that lets you call for help manually.) The technology has been in widespread use in the U.S. since OnStar debuted in 1996, and it’s now mandatory in all new cars sold in most of Europe.

Mandatory in new cars sold in Europe?

And yet, Tesla either doesn’t have one or it wasn’t reliable enough for their typical crash into a tree.