Security

10 out of 10 “Driverless” Fatalities Were Caused by Tesla

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A new report looked at 11 fatalities by driverless systems over a few months (May to September).

One wasn’t a Tesla, but it also turned out to be a car that didn’t have driverless.

Oops, miscategorization.

The remaining 10 people were killed by Tesla engineering. As I’ve warned since at least 2016, crash investigations bring us to the same place: Elon Musk should be held liable for intentionally and systematically reducing road safety.

I think there’s a pretty clear pattern of bad behavior on the part of Tesla when it comes to obeying the edicts of the (federal) safety act, and NHTSA is just sitting there,” he said. “How many more deaths do we need to see of motorcyclists?”

[Center for Auto Safety’s executive director] noted that the Tesla crashes are victimizing more people who are not in the Tesla vehicles.

“You’re seeing innocent people who had no choice in the matter being killed or injured,” he said.

When a person is killed in a crash caused by a defective car, that manufacturer is liable.

Right?

Hello Ford Pinto?

After my 2016 BSidesLV keynote presentation I faced many people who said they thought Tesla was in a perfect loophole that the U.S. government would leave open — future leaning claims about safety “innovations” that weren’t true yet wouldn’t be regulated because profits.

Tesla shared its profits with politicians, to put it mildly.

At this point it is beyond obvious Tesla regularly lied to rapidly push known defective products that killed people; misrepresented hardware and software even when it posed grave danger to human life.

Source: tesladeaths.com

Tesla really should be banned from public roads.

Raj Rajkumar, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies automated vehicles, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Tesla was found to have had a high number of crashes involving its driver-assist systems. Tesla…stopped using radar in its system and instead relies solely on cameras and computers — a system that Rajkumar calls “inherently unsafe.”

To be clear, making a car that an engineering professor calls “inherently unsafe” is something unique to Tesla.

It falls further and further behind other brands, which have been rising to their safest records in history.

Take for example Nissan has dominated all time EV sales in the highly competitive and demanding Norwegian market (many more cars for more miles than Tesla), facing challenging roads in bad weather. Widespread adoption of Nissan’s innovative “assist” technology has resulted in zero crashes.

Nissan, with over 560,000 vehicles on the road using its ”ProPilot Assist,” didn’t have to report any crashes, the company said.

There’s no more excuse.

If the CEO of FTX can be charged with loss of assets, why can’t the CEO of Tesla be charged with loss of lives?

Security

Rivian Announces “Snow Mode”

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As someone who has struggled to find an EV computer that understands how to drive through fluids (e.g. sand)… I got a chuckle from a new Rivian blog post.

…the new drive mode relaxes the accelerator pedal response for smoother, more gradual acceleration and deceleration in wintery on-road conditions. Snow mode also introduces a new low Regenerative Brake setting, which is exclusive to this mode. 

Ok, a sluggish pedal to prevent spin is basic stuff. Makes sense. They even added some nice detection logic.

The vehicle will automatically nudge you to switch to the new mode if you’re in Conserve and it detects wheel slip and an ambient outdoor temperature of 34 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. 

Cold outside and slippery, again makes sense. I was just beginning to yawn when…

The punch line:

Snow mode is meant solely for driving on roads and highways and is not meant for off-road scenarios. We recommend using the Off-Road All-Terrain drive mode for snowy off-road adventures. 

LOL. OK, OK, “snow” mode is for slippery cold roads, NOT for… driving through snow.

Perhaps at best they should have marketed it as a snow road mode?

Or slow mode?

Or let’s be honest and call it the old fashioned traction control.

Again, fluids seriously blow up the traction logic in a vehicle computer. Sand, snow, deep rivers… forget about it. That’s still human territory.

I was hoping someone has worked on an actual computer snow mode.

Alas, this is just reducing tire spin on a flat surface after detecting tire spin and cold.

Energy, Security

“Chevy Bolt, like a fine red wine, kept getting better with age.”

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Motor Trend in 2017 wisely called the Chevy Bolt their car of the year. They’re now positively gushing over their prediction, calling the electric car’s engineering refreshing; very modestly it just keeps getting better and better.

While most buyers largely ignored it, the Bolt, like a fine red wine, kept getting better with age. The Bolt EUV launched in 2021 with more interior space, a more modern look, and the option to equip it with the best hands-free highway driving system on sale today. Now, a massive price cut for 2023 is transforming what was already a good car at a reasonable price into a veritable bargain.

That’s very high praise from a very respected authority.

Chevy is described as delivering the best hands-free electric car in America for just $19K in 2023.

It’s everything right about America boxed up into a car, like wearing a classic inexpensive pair of sturdy well-built blue jeans.

Fun history tangent, the word “denim” in jeans comes from “serge de Nimes”. It was industrious Frenchmen in Nimes weaving wool-silk “serge” materials for hard working shepards, who had their product name shortened to de-Nim. Somewhere along the line (pun not intended) Americans switched cotton threads into denim, marketing this result as lower cost yet still highly durable jean.

Reliable, durable yet inexpensive.

Recently I was taking a stop in the sleepy beach-side town of Monterey, California when I noticed every car in a parking lot row was… the Chevy Bolt.

Every car a Bolt?

This bucolic small town, with its down-to-earth scene, reminded me of the buzz that only a cherry 1957 Chevy could generate, yet it was in 2023 and electric.

The 1957 Chevrolets were good cars mechanically. They took abuse fairly well, and when they did break, they were often cheaper to repair than their contemporaries. Thus, a higher percentage of them survived to become hobby/collector cars.

Something definitely was going on in the quiet back streets among those who could own anything. A sort of quiet, unassuming yet powerful statement that Chevy was THE electric vehicle to own.

This is going to sound a bit repetitive, but it needs to be said again: since we bought the 1957 Chevy, now named Project X, for $250 back in 1965, its sole reason for existing has been to act as a testbed for new hot rodding trends and technologies. …it’s clear that EV is here to stay and, just like always, Project X is on the leading edge to try out this new technology.

The quintessential hot rod for everyone, a Chevy initially costing $250, turned up in 2021 as a mouth watering EV.

Honestly, I have to admit I kind of expected engineering innovators like Kia or Fiat to be getting motorhead magazine accolades and maybe even Porsche, yet an honest and reliable Chevy looks like the real and clear winner year after year.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s half-baked jalopies have proven to be about as valuable as over priced ugly Russian designer pants that dissolve in the laundry. This blatantly anti-democratic racist predictably has dumped little more than hot snake oil directly on consumers (to undermine and delay protections from his fraud).

Worse and worse engineering problems hidden by intentionally misleading marketing have Tesla embroiled in class-action lawsuits, far too many funerals, and widespread investigations after reducing overall road safety for everyone.

Regulators looking at the remarkable success Chevy has achieved, given a huge market of improving electric car options reaching back to the 1940s, now more than ever should seriously consider a ban to remove the intentionally sub-par Tesla products from public roads.

The Chevy Bolt is hidden beneath this brilliant E10 concept that someday may be proven safe enough for the mass market.

Elon Musk has criticized other car companies for having concept cars they never launch. However, the wise and cautious approach taken by Chevy is FAR more ethical than Tesla’s greed-driven clown show, which callously treats humans like disposable crash test dummies.

Food, Security

Tesla FSD Caused Crash of 8 Cars on Interstate

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There’s yet again evidence of Tesla having expanding critical safety failures, by design.

If you read the already shocking number of complaints to the NHTSA by new Tesla owners, hundreds cite a terrifying sudden unexplained braking event.

Here’s typical language reported for years, as if causing crashes has just been Tesla’s way to learn the crimes they can get away with.

Twice today my model 3 came to a hault when using cruise control on the highway. The second time everything in my car was thrown into the front seat/windshield as i was going 80mph and I took over but was at 30mph by then as it happened so fast .. WTH is going on as I could have been killed and/or killed others.

Note the last sentence because Tesla’s official response has been that they aren’t listening.

In fact, “ghost brakes” have plagued Tesla for a long time. The NHTSA survey [based on reports of Tesla crashes and injuries] covers about 416,000 vehicles produced in 2021 and 2022. Tesla said there have been no reports of crashes or injuries resulting from the issue.

You might think what Tesla said in response sounds unbelievable. And you’d be right.

“No reports” is used as an intentional logical fallacy known as “no true Scotsman“. Even when you crash they might say but it wasn’t a really big crash. And if you have a big crash they might say but plaintiffs weren’t really harmed. And if someone dies they might say but really not many people were harmed.

How can this “plague” of life threatening engineering failures, potential for catastrophic widespread crashes, be ignored by Tesla for so long?!

Sadly the answer is simple, aside from the logical fallacy tactics.

The Tesla CEO is a science denier.

On March 19, 2020 the Tesla CEO used his Twitter account to announce America was headed toward “zero new cases” of COVID-19 by the end of April. At the end of April case counts spiked upwards of 20,000 proving him dangerously wrong. But did he accept science? No, he dug himself deeper into fantasy beliefs and mysticism.

The CEO used his bully pulpit to convince people to ignore warnings about COVID-19 and keep going to work, argued against vaccines and launched baseless attacks on public servants to diminish their ability to provide safety during the pandemic.

He pushed hard for disinformation to be allowed, denying harms while facilitating unnecessary suffering and death.

What a recently exposed report shows is that every Tesla on the road is indeed a result of intentional safety denial and thus a threat to anyone else around them.

A driver told authorities that their Tesla’s “full-self-driving” software braked unexpectedly and triggered an eight-car pileup in the San Francisco Bay Area last month that led to nine people being treated for minor injuries including one juvenile who was hospitalized, according to a California Highway Patrol traffic crash report. […] Tesla Model S was traveling at about 55 mph and shifted into the far left-hand lane, but then braked abruptly, slowing the car to about 20 mph. That led to a chain reaction that ultimately involved eight vehicles to crash, all of which had been traveling at typical highway speeds.

It takes a special kind of criminal to repeatedly raise prices for a product falsely marketed as a road safety feature, when year after year it makes everyone far less safe.

A video posted recently by a FSD user demonstrates the software as an embarrassingly less safe, more stressful ride.

Man, my heart rate is definitely higher during this drive than the average normal drive…

What should come to mind here is Tesla FSD has always been a “fraud” or “snake oil” and public roads should have been protected from it.

As the Center for Auto Safety puts it:

…what’s the threshold number of injuries and deaths and cars driving stupidly that we have to see before NHTSA finds that there’s some sort of defect in these cars?

Calling the bug riddled Tesla FSD a safety feature is like calling meal worm tacos a cure for COVID-19.

Given how bad Tesla engineering quality has been, if it was food… it would be mostly bugs.

Perhaps the regulators soon will be coming to the realization Tesla has always treated its customers like crash test dummies and investors like an ATM.