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Man In Tesla Model S Fire Explains What Happened
An anonymous reader writes "The three recent Tesla fires have raised concerns with a lot of people. One person who isn't concerned, however, is Juris Shibayama, the man whose model S burned in Tennessee. He says: 'I would buy another one in a heartbeat.' From the article: 'Shibayama said that he struck a three-pronged trailer hitch in the middle lane of the interstate. He continued: "About 30-45 seconds later, there was a warning on the dashboard display saying, 'Car needs service. Car may not restart.' I continued to drive, hoping to get home. About one minute later, the message on the dashboard display read, 'Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.'" He said he had time to remove his possessions, even though, he said: "About 5-10 seconds after getting out of the car, smoke started to come from the front underbody of the car."'"
... to include "Car is about to burst into flame"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
At least it didn't bluescreen and lock him in the car.
At least the car was upbeat and friendly about its impending doom!
Or is he going to buy a third Tesla after his first two caught fire?
Translation - when you get in a WRECK your car does odd things. I am happy this person came forward and said "had a wreckand the car even warned me to RUN!"
Good design tesla.
> One person who isn't concertinaed
Of course he wasn't concertinaed -- he ran over a hitch, he didn't biff a bridge abutment.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Good job, lets of safety features worked as intended. I LOVE to see when these sort of active safety systems do their job.
Now move the fucking battery pack so this shit stops. 1/4" aluminum armor 'a good idea' and all, but only because you mounted the battery in a stupid fucking position. Treat it like the gas tank, since it too is the energy storage medium for the car and its most dangerous components. Gas tanks don't need 1/4" armor ... because they don't mount them where shit getting wedge under the car is going to penetrate them, neither should you.
Designing a new car from the ground up without all the old baggage of a 100 years of car building practices may seem like a great idea for efficiency, but its really not considering you're now going to RELEARN a BUNCH of shit that GM, Ford, Nissan, Mazda, Toyota and all the rest learned a long time ago.
Nothing Tesla is doing is new or groundbreaking, theres no reason for throwing the baby out in the bath water, which is what they've done.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
No, cops would get rather annoyed if everyone called them just to tell them they hit something on the road way. He wasn't in an accident that involved another car and at the time he wasn't aware of how much damage had been done to his car. There was no reason to call the cops ever, only the fire department.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Did he avoid having to listen to one?
^ If ever a missed opportunity for an error message....
Nobodies Prefect
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I certainly hope so. They're still in the early adopter phase, though. I don't even have a driver's license so maybe by the time I do get it their cars will have come down in price.
Mostly random stuff.
I can't believe they missed such a golden opportunity. The final warning should have been "Car will now Halt and Catch Fire".
Uh, that $80,000 I don't have will stop them...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
What exactly is a "three-pronged trailer hitch"? Google Images doesn't seem to have a clue, and it doesn't sound very functional. How does a trailer hitch with more than one "prong"/fulcrum do anything useful?
In some states, you can't get your car fixed if the damage is over some arbitrary dollar amount without a police report.
I guess I figured the trailer hitch in question was attached to a vehicle of some kind. I guess we should take it to mean debris?
THL phish sticks
A pet peeve with cars is the stupid engine light that gives no clue what the problem is. I have no idea if it's some lower-priority thing like a polution sensor slightly out of spec or something where I need to stop immediately to avoid engine damage. (I know you can buy the code readers, but I don't carry one around in my car typically.)
So the Tesla, with all its sophistication, says 'Car needs service. Car may not restart.' WTF? They might as well replace it with an engine light to save money.
I do agree that 'Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.' is a little better, but not much.
I've know two people had trucks catch fire in the last year or so.... A Chevy Silverado and a Ford F150. You know what stupid things they did to cause this? One was parked in the driveway outside his house the other was being driven down the interstate.... Where's the relentless news coverage on these incidents? Even better is the response from the companies, for letters stating it was not their fault.
Whereas here in Texas, they won't file a police report unless there's an injury or death, it seems like. If you want to make an insurance claim, the cops will give you a form you have to fill out and send to Austin.
Program Intellivision!
I guess I figured the trailer hitch in question was attached to a vehicle of some kind. I guess we should take it to mean debris?
Pretty much. While you might need to eventually get a police report, for a non-disabled car(remember it initially said it'd need repair, but worked) without any damage to anything of importance you can usually 'phone in' your police report. Heck, I remember one state you could do it on the web.
As for the hitch he hit, I can't help but picture it as a giant caltrop.
I don't read AC A human right
... in that order.
While a fire isn't desirable, this sounds like a good example of how to do it right.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes. Shit on the road.
All kinds of stuff happens and sometimes you don't have time or options to deal with it. So, it's a drive over and hope. Sucks, but there isn't too much we can do about the problem.
Here's a nice one:
It's a torrential rain kind of night. About 11:00 PM, on a rural highway, two lane, cars regularly passing in opposing lane. My brother in law was driving an old 70's Toyota Corolla. The engine in that thing was great, but the body was crapping out here and there. This was the mid 90's. Toyota has since beefed things up some, but their 70's era cars were awful thin in places. The Corolla was thin in the trunk.
This brother in law saw a few rust patches, but didn't think too much of it having driven some Chevy thing or other before. No worries. Well, he had a nice, big, heavy floor jack in the back of that Corolla because he lost the stock one. Besides, the floor jack could lift one end of the car in a pinch, which made tire rotation quicker. That, and a 4-way lug wrench, various cans of oil, etc... were all in this razor thin, rusted out trunk, just waiting to exit the car, which they did.
When it happened, he was moving about 60, nobody in front, headed to meet the rest of the family. Two or three vehicles were behind him, following close as people in my neck of the woods will often do. Out comes that jack. It probably weighed 25 pounds. He heard the clunk, and it actually wedged in a way that moved the rear of the car some, he saw sparks and then one of the lights behind him went out.
Now he's a dick, and just floored it. All he knows is that way too close tailgater got up close and very personal with that floor jack, and had to pull off the road. Some other cars in the other lane darted about and a few had pulled over that he could see in the rear mirror, while speeding away as quickly as he could.
When he arrived to tell the story, we opened the trunk, and he basically didn't have one anymore. All the stuff was gone, and the metal bits were bent this way and that along the edges. We think the trunk floor just dropped out and onto the road. The news featured the event and he worried about it for years. That jack took the first car right out! Bashed the drivers side light out, pierced the radiator, and ruined the drivers side tire before bouncing into traffic going the other direction where other fun 'n games proceeded to occur where it bounced into another one doing enough damage to the muffler and side panel to be ugly, and ended up pinned under a third where it ground to a stop.
Shit happens.
Probably that thing was not secured and just ended up on the road. So this guy is driving along, somebody changes lanes or something and there it is! He probably didn't have options. If he did, he would have not driven over it, unless it just dropped in such a way that left him no time.
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You are correct that Tesla needs to analyze why the batteries are being compromised from what should be survivable incidents, a car's batteries should be protected better to keep them from being damaged by even the most severe road debris.
Actually, the described scenario of striking a multi-headed trailer hitch is probably WORSE than all that you described. It must of acted like a huge caltrop. You can't design for 'everything' and keep the car light enough to be functional.
Concrete curb - Odds are at least one of the wheels are going to hit the curb as well, raising the vehicle and lowering the strike area, and standard ones probably don't stick up as high as the hitch did. Even if not, you likely have a deflecting implact, not a puncturing one.
Road sign - These are generally constructed of mild steel and aluminum, as the worst the post has to withstand is the weather on the sign. In an impact it's going to be forced down of course, but then the rest of the sign will act as a lifting/distributing force on the car.
Trailer hitch - Designed to be able to haul trailers weighing 5k pounds and up, the balls are solid hardened steel and the post is generally at least 1/2 inch thick, again of hardened steel. Given the described hitch was a multi-ball type, it's entirely possible/probable that the thing weighed more than the average stop sign/post(excepting concrete), much less a mile marker. It probably impacted the car in a armor-piercing fashion much like a pike against a calvary charge.
I don't read AC A human right
The driver has admitted to driving the car after an accident, ignoring all warnings until told that the car had a problem so big that it was going to stop ( on fire). I would be interested in seeing the insurance companies response this this...
-- Power windows
-- Power locks
-- Power seats
-- Air-conditioning
-- Automatic transmission
-- iPod dock
-- Quadrophonic smoke detectors
-- Asbestos seats
-- Sprinklers (interior/exterior)
-- Fire axe
Around here, if the vehicle still moves under its own power, it doesn't merit a police report.
Other criteria for reporting include drunk drivers, injuries, an out-of-province vehicle, or a driver fleeing the scene.
They used to use a "call it in if there's over $5000 damage" standard, but people can't estimate damage worth a damn, so they went to the "does it need a tow truck?" standard.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The man has some seriously low expectations of a car.
For better or worse, by the standards of 'devices with more than a thousand pounds of Li-ion batteries right underneath the operator', responding to a massive puncture wound with a series of error messages and a controlled shutdown is pretty damn polite...
This doesn't necessarily mean you want to be the lucky driver of one; but I'm impressed that the system held off the worst of the failure cascade long enough for him to make it out alive, rather than just burning him into a grease spot and some mixed oxides right then and there. (I had the pleasure of one of Sony's defective battery packs back in the day, and after having to toss it, and the attached computer, off my lap in a hurry, I've never taken the term 'laptop' quite as literally. Those things go pretty fast, once they start.)
He should have installed a firewall.
nosig today
Consumer cars usually have either a metal or a glass-fiber-reinforced PVC tank hidden away in the the frame of the car, just above or behind the rear axle. The GFR tanks have flame retarders in the plastic and are easily as thick as 1/4th inch.Even after Ralph Nadar did his famous "unsafe at any speed" these tanks do get punctured and car fires do occur. Especially when someone gets rear ended, fires way too often start from short circuit under the hood of the rear vehicle, setting the gasoline from the split open tank of the front vehicle on fire. Metal tanks are usually made of thin steel plate, not aluminum and only mounted on cheap consumer cars with bad general safety ratings, or older cars that are usually very unsafe compared to new modern cars anyway.
Gas tanks need armor too to protect them from puncturing. They are just usually not located in a position where the chance that road debris will puncture them directly, but there are plenty of other scenarios where they still get punctured. not only that, gas tanks have thin, vulnerable fuel lines running along the bottom of your car to the front, while Tesla has the power lines shielded way more efficiently. It may not directly set your car ablaze if you cut a fuel line, but it will 50% chance stop your car immediately, or otherwise you won't be able to drive for more than 15 minutes or so before you have dumped all the fuel on the road. If for some reason the leaking fuel were to ignite, you'd be in a whole lot more trouble with that than you'd be with a punctured cell in a Tesla. Imagine the whole bottom of your car sprayed with fuel and set on fire, directing the flames onto your fuel tank with you sitting in the car driving along; without getting a warning until it gets really hot or you see the smoke or flames in your rear view mirror. The moment you stop, flames will be up on all sides of the car making you have to go through fire to get out of the car.
Apart from the fuel tanks getting punctured in accidents, fuel lines often break from the fuel pressure alone during regular driving. These fuel line leaks start under hood fires that can't be put out by the time people notice and stop the car on the road. Most modern cars have no or nearly no rubber fuel lines anymore, but older models have plenty of rubber hoses that dry out and deteriorate with age. Adding ethanol to gasoline has not helped this problem, since it accelerates the aging of these hoses. Many cars spontaneously burn out because of this on a daily basis.
Fuel powered cars have plenty of electric fires as well. Everyone you ask knows several cases that didn't even make the news of cars spontaneously bursting into flames in the driveway or while driving because of a short circuit. Some make the news if it was a slow news day or traffic was impeded because of the fire, but most just go by without any media attention whatsoever. This is not counting the numerous times something like this happens because people added accessories themselves, or some dimwit tried to jump someone elses car and shorted something out with a big fat jumper cable.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
In general, a solidly-on check engine light is a non-urgent item, usually emissions related. The first thing to do when you get one is make sure your gas cap is tight.
A flashing check engine light indicates a more serious problem, and you may or may not need to stop driving. The thing that'll really mess you up is loss of oil, but there's a separate oil light for that - if it comes on, STOP THE ENGINE.
fencepost
just a little off
Good opportunity to get around legacy hardware designed under circumstances that are often no longer relevant.
What's the saying? 'Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it'? What legacy hardware are you afraid they'll bolt onto an EV that's 'no longer relevant'?
While breaking from the past is a good idea, especially considering that the optimizations for a BEV are certainly different than for a GFV, I'd argue that there's still an awful lot to learn from the history of GFVs for operability, safety, security, and such. Take everything with a grain of salt, of course, but have traditional experts in the process of you designing the vehicle to point out stuff that was solved generations ago. Or perhaps problems that they have trouble with even today that an EV might be able to solve.
I don't read AC A human right
Sure, you'll pull loads slightly off center with such a hitch if you use the balls to either side, but not enough to make a big difference, apparently.
I've read that farmers will do this deliberately sometimes to bias their trailer to one side or another - keeping clear of traffic, for example.
I don't read AC A human right
every. single. Toyota. fire?? Oh yeah - those aren't "new tech" disrupting cash-flush oil barons that would prefer to kill electric cars (again).
/. become reddit?
In this situation, your brother in law committed what was potentially multiple felonies and certainly was a negligent motor vehicle operator for failing to secure his cargo (which would include the floor jack and contents of the trunk). It could even be considered a hit and run accident in the way you've described.
Seriously, this sounds like one heartless bastard that really needs to rethink his personal ethics.
I do agree that some people who tailgate often get karmic justice in terms of shit happening to them simply because they are not thinking about potential problems with the vehicle ahead of them. When I'm driving I try to imagine from time to time that a sinkhole or at least a large pothole has opened up to swallow the vehicle in front of me and wonder if I have time to react and avoid that disaster myself? I've also seen a whole bunch of stuff on a highway that has fallen out of vehicles.
I've even taken the time to pull over and if there was a safe way to remove the debris (like on a rural interstate with a lull in the traffic) I try to pull it off to the side of the highway. Even if I can't take it off the highway safely, I have tried to report the problem by dialing 9-1-1 on my cell phone where dispatchers will take note of the milepost and get a highway patrol or state police vehicle to check it out. It is amazing how much trash and stuff they pull off of highways.
Any debris impact severe enough to pierce the quarter-inch armor plate on the underside of the battery pack is more than enough to pierce an oil pan, transmission, fuel tank or floorboard of any other vehicle. That is a debilitating debris strike in any vehicle, not a "little tap." In any other vehicle this guy could have ended up with that trailer hitch piercing his leg instead.
That said, this is the second debris strike in as many months... maybe Tesla owners just aren't paying attention to the road?
=Smidge=
I'd call the cops if there was debris lying on the road.
Last time there was part of a car door on the edge of the road. They said they'd already received reports of it, and had made sure a road maintenance and cleanup crew were on their way.
If you see/hit shit in the road, it's nice to get it removed, so other people don't hit it.
Only the fuel line is likely to start a fire.
Well that's just false. Oil, transmission fluid and even engine coolant are all flammable liquids, and the increased heat from poor lubrication makes a fire more likely even from non-liquids like wiring harnesses, plastic cowlings and rubber tubing.
=Smidge=
I said likely. Flammable yes but they are not volatile and where is the source of ignition? Take some motor oil and throw a lit match into it. As to the increased friction well that will be caused by the lack of the oil! AKA the oil will be separated from the source of heat. Fires started by motor oil are very rare. Those that do happen usually involve it somehow getting onto the exhaust manifold. I have never heard of a car catching fire from transmission fluid. Do you know of any documented cases? The key to both is that they have high flash points well above that you will see in a car engine. Oils used for home heating must be atomized to burn again something not likely to happen in a car accident.
You need learn what the the term likely means. It is not an absolute term of never but implies a low risk of the event happening.
So my statement is true. Your statement is in error because you failed to take into account the world likely.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
They used to use a "call it in if there's over $5000 damage" standard, but people can't estimate damage worth a damn, so they went to the "does it need a tow truck?" standard.
A much better standard I think. For one there's probably quite a few cars which it would otherwise be NEVER to call because their total value is under $5k.
I don't read AC A human right
In regards to the technology, what do they use under-the-hood in the battery ..
I have tried to report the problem by dialing 9-1-1 ..
Where is the Emergency? 9-1-1 is SUPPOSED to be used for Emergency call
9-1-1 You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think
I used to have a classic 60's Porsche 911. They put the carburetors directly above the coil and distributor...
We used to say, if the car wasn't on fire, you're probably out of gas...
Of course, that was still safer than the auxiliary heat -- which sprayed burning gas directly into the hot air flow into the cabin... ensuring when you died in a horrific conflagration, at least the carbon monoxide had already dulled the pain.
Three is not 'a number of.....' except in the most hyperbolic sense of the phrase. Yes, its a number. No it is not an accurate description of the number of Tesla fires relative to any other car fire. The car itself is designed around the possibility of a battery breach-what more do people want? They built the car, designed failsafes around known possible risks that they could not engineer out. Guy walks out of burning car, that had the courtesy to warn him first. What more do people want?
If it's not broken, let's fix it till it is.
How many people have you known that had Tesla cars?
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It made a horrible noise when squeezed.
Have gnu, will travel.
The truth is that the wiring will burn unassisted. Like house wiring, it's jacketed with PVC, which emits massive assclouds of dioxin when it burns. Unlike house wiring, this is not mandated by code, it's simply cheap. There are places for fires to begin which don't involve fuel. Underhood plastics are hard to get going, but once they get going, they go alright. From there it's a short trip to burning/melting hoses and getting some fuel going. A fuel line is far from the only combustion hazard in a vehicle. It, however, is the part that really makes it exciting.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In any other vehicle this guy could have ended up with that trailer hitch piercing his leg instead.
Stop saying that! Maybe pushing his foot out of the way, but piercing his leg? Only in a GT40, or some other car which basically sits on the pavement. We're talking about a hitch, not a hitch receiver.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think it's that the Tesla is a fairly low profile car. Higher profile cars and trucks are able to safely pass over road debris that would destroy any sports car.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Where is the emergency in dialing 911 for road debris? I suppose I could dial directory assistance and call the business line for the local police agency (assuming I even know what jurisdiction I am in) and try to resolve the issue that way, and I guess that would be the logical thing to do.
Then again, if there is a huge hunk of metal sitting on a highway that urgently needs to be removed, like say this particular 30 lb. or 50 lb. tow hitch mentioned in the OP or saying "dispatch, I just dropped my car's jack on the highway", that indeed would be an emergency to get a police officer to turn on his lights, throw up some orange cones, and spend the freaking 2-5 minutes that might just save somebody's life. Are you really sure that isn't considered an urgent emergency on a freeway? I'm sure most police officers wouldn't mind a little bit of prevention rather than spending the next couple of hours responding to somebody's severe injury or death.
Geez, what do you think?
I would hope expected at least a klaxon or two. Maybe Mahel Roddenberry calmly giving me a countdown to total car deactivation or something :)
I mean, when it's basically trying to tell you, "You done ran over a giant-ass piece of debris and it tore shit up," too much politeness minimizes the danger...
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As to the increased friction well that will be caused by the lack of the oil! AKA the oil will be separated from the source of heat.
"Separated from the source of heat" by being sprayed all over the engine?
I don't have any documentation of transmission oil fires, though I can give personal anecdote of a vehicle with a faulty transmission oil hose that sprayed the stuff up into the engine compartment. Quite a mess and, honestly, lucky it didn't cause a fire. It happened in a driveway and was caught almost immediately (fluid even got up onto the windshield)... if that happened on the highway with everything nice and hot there would've been a fire no doubt.
However, I DO have documentation of a coolant leak leading to a fire (PDF) Coolant line failed, sprayed coolant everywhere. Engine overheated, evaporating water from coolant allowing the ethylene glycol to ignite. Fire spread and destroyed the entire (fortunately empty) bus.
=Smidge=
That is why cars have fuse boxes but even then electrical fires do happen and Teslas are electric cars. Kind of makes the point that they meed more safety systems doesn't it? As to your other odd happening that was an old car that was not properly maintained. Again take the surface area of the battery and compare it to the surface area of the oil pan, fuel lines, transmission pan, and the wiring at the bottom of the car. It will still be a lot more surface area for the battery pack. That means a lot more is exposed to an impact when running over an object. I am leaving out the fuel tank because when running over an object I suspect that the front suspension, drive train, and rear axle will provide some protection for the fuel tank.
Thanks for proving my main point which is even the mildest suggestion of criticism of the Tesla will result in a people defending the Tesla on Slashdot. I even allowed for it to be a fluke. I even said that I would still like one but yet people feel the need to defend. Elon Musk is a darling of the Slashdot crowd and any criticism will be attacked.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I have no idea what your point is except that you do not any criticism of Teslas.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
failing to secure his cargo (which would include the floor jack and contents of the trunk)
So, obviously, in your car you bungee-cord the floor of the trunk to the lid on the off chance that the floor would decide to give way and drop out of the car? Did you even fucking read what you comment on?!
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The electrical system safety was a high priority for Tesla, testing batteries for all sorts of trauma before even designing the car.
Contrasted to standard vehicles, they likely don't hold a candle to it.
A "three-pronged trailer hitch", which I presume is the insert part; a length of 2x2 (or 1.5x1.5) inch square stock with attachment points for multiple sized ball hitches. It's easy to imagine some careless driver forgetting to secure the retaining pin and such an item sliding out onto the roadway. If so, then that thing is a good sized hunk of metal. Okay, maybe it won't "pierce" a leg being pretty blunt, but that's a broken ankle or fractured fibula easily.
As for ride height - one thought is if he was using the Model S' automatic ride height adjustment. If equipped and active, the car gets lower to the ground the faster it goes to improve handling and efficiency. Stock clearance is supposedly 6 inches from what I could gather, and the car will go lower than that at highway speeds. Not sure by how much, but if the max clearance is 7.5 inches then it's fair to guess it could got he same distance in the other direction: 4.5 inches. Pretty low!
=Smidge=
So I did a little math. I know, a bad habit, but I can't help myself.
In any case, I was curious as to the numbers behind the recent Tesla vehicle fires and how that compares to the rest of the vehicles on the road.
So last year 21,500* Tesla vehicles where sold. To date there have been 3 fires. That makes 21500/3 equals roughly 1 fire out of 7167 vehicles. That looks pretty bad, wow. Tesla vehicles must be terrible. Right?
For comparison, there were 194,000** vehicle fires between 2008 to 2010 or to oversimplify things 97,000 per year. And in 2008 there were roughly 256 million*** vehicles on the road.
256000000/97000 equals about 1 fire out every 2639 roadable automobiles. Doh!
It appears that it is almost three times as likely that any random vehicle on the road will catch fire than any random Tesla. That bears repeating. You are just about 3 times safer from dying by fire in a Tesla.
And yet another sensationalist story that the media is getting wrong.
* http://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahelliott/2013/11/05/tesla-up-9-as-production-hinders-growth/
** http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v13i11.pdf
***http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_11.html
cat sig >
You say you have only known two people who have had car fires, not that you've been tracking all car fires as reported by police and fire department radio statistics which are metrics exactly as accurate (not necessarily very accurate, but exactly as accurate) as car ownership metrics in the US.
A lot of people have brought up that car fires are ridiculously frequent; that the fuel tank in the rear of a car generally takes damage which frequently (not typically) causes fires in a rear-end collision (most collisions are rear-end collisions for one car) or side collision near that area; that the Tesla fires happen after severe damage like crashing through reenforced concrete and into a tree or having 30 pounds of metal rammed up into your car at ridiculously high speeds (70-100mph); and that car fires in gasoline cars are dangerous and tend to burn quickly and hot and cause death or severe burns, while car fires in a Tesla are contained by firewalls and per-cell thermally reactive fire suppression systems that contain and slow the spread of the fire to reduce its peak intensity and increase the opportunity time for a driver to escape the vehicle.
Of the above counterpoints, the very first was the only one that I was really keying on: you say you know two people who have had car fires; I know zero, but I know car fires happen frequently. I also don't have many friends, and I imagine the one friend I have who is a socialite and is directly socially connected to about a third of the local population has been in contact with many people who have actually had their cars catch fire. Similarly, I don't know anyone who's been shot or jailed or whatnot, but he has known several people who were murdered and who had shotguns discharged at them at close range (severe hospital ICU trip) during a robbery and who have been in jail and have been on crack and other crazy shit. I've never seen any of these things, but I know they happen.
I just don't like low-quality statistics. Your very first statement was hugely unqualified and had tons of potential sources of confounding. We simply don't know if there's a lot of bias here from you not living in an area with a lot of driving, or living in Alaska, or having very few friends, or living in a rich area where people maintain their cars better and drive better (fewer collision-induced fires), etc. We don't even know if these cars burned from a collision or from parking on leaves (the Tesla cannot cause a fire that way; on the other hand, I just vacuumed my driveway because my Mazda 3 nearly caused a yard fire).
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People have forgotten a source of heat that is pretty close to the fuel tank in modern gasoline cars.
The catalytic converter.
In some states there aren't even vehicle inspections. Here in Florida, you can drive your jalopy around until a cop pulls you over (and writes you a $5 ticket to fix whatever issue is blatantly unroadworthy enough for a cop to notice) or it bursts into flames. You're comparing an awful lot of old, poorly maintained vehicles to brand spankin' new Teslas. For a $70,000 car, it should be a whole lot less likely than the average beater to go up in smoke after hitting some debris in the road.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
So, obviously, in your car you bungee-cord the floor of the trunk to the lid on the off chance that the floor would decide to give way and drop out of the car? Did you even fucking read what you comment on?!
If the car is a falling apart rust-bucket where there might be a concern? You had better believe that you need to use a bungee cord, twine, or weld the damn thing shut. As a driver you are liable for anything that falls off your vehicle or becomes detached in any way. It doesn't matter if you are a private citizen or a commercial driver, although commercial drivers tend to get nailed more often for stuff like that.
Ideally you should do a "walk around" before you start to drive just to make sure you vehicle is safe for operation. Just don't get caught for automotive manslaughter if you are really being a prick.
navigation...
I've seen those signs as well. Still, having seen a number of them hit at least the ones in my area tend to not break off(wintertime, cars sliding into them is a semi-normal event), they still bend down, but the sign post can still be replaced with a wrench set, no need for working/replacing/repairing the concrete. Which is a couple OOMs easier, faster, and therefore cheaper.
I don't read AC A human right
do note that NOBODY has died in a fire in Tesla. At this time, it is impossible to compare dying by fire in a tesla vs. any other car.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wonder how much extra it would cost to get a Half Life HEV "User Death Imminent. Seek Medical Attention." message?
If I could program this thing, that is what I would do...
or possibly if it refuses to start after pulling over, "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that."
I've called to report probably half a dozen road safety situations over the years. Most of those times I've called 411 and asked to be connected to the non-emergency number for whatever jurisdiction I happen to be in. Every single time the non-emergency number has just been a straight forward to 911. My own local PD seems to do the same, it hasn't mattered what time of day or day of the week their non-emergency number goes straight to 911. So I don't bother finding that number anymore and just call 911.
http://www.examiner.com/article/mr-bean-crash-details-emerge-car-caught-fire
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Hint: if it can get someone killed, and it's in the road, it's an emergency.
Not. Rocket. Science.
Given the option, law enforcement personnel would MUCH rather handle it rather than handle body bags...
What more do people want?
I would want the 'Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.' part to happen *before* the fire.
As a driver you are liable for anything that falls off your vehicle or becomes detached in any way.
At least in the U.S., the case law disagrees with you.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
As a driver you are liable for anything that falls off your vehicle or becomes detached in any way.
At least in the U.S., the case law disagrees with you.
I would be curious about what law it is that says that? If your rear bumper falls off your car, you mean to tell me that you are not liable for any damage that bumper causes to my car that is falling behind?
A good example is how freight haulers of bulk materials like gravel used in construction are liable for any chipped windows caused by even small rocks that fall out of that truck. That often they "get away" with having stuff fall out of those kind of trucks, but if you can document when and where you were at when that rock hit your windshield, most construction companies will simply pay for the new window with almost no other questions asked. If you file a small claims action, most judges will put the presumption of guilt on the construction company where they will be required to show that they had no trucks on the road at the time and place being claimed in the lawsuit.
I highly doubt you can find either statutory nor case common law that would suggest a lack of liability on the part of the operator of that vehicle and indeed plenty of both that would claim otherwise. Of course it varies a bit from state to state, but most states do require you to perform routine safety checks of your vehicle before you start to operate that vehicle, and to additional maintain all loads and items within the vehicle.