Slashdot Mirror
Father of Driver In Violent Tesla Crash Blames Sedan's 'Rocket-Ship' Acceleration (autoweek.com)
"A Tesla crash that resulted in the deaths of the driver and a passenger in Indianapolis last November is drawing new controversy after the father of one of the victims made comments regarding the role of the Model S in the incident," Autoweek reports. "The crash occurred in downtown Indianapolis on Nov. 3, 2016, with the Model S driven by 27-year-old Casey Speckman striking a tree and catching fire. Speckman was pronounced dead at the scene while her passenger, 44-year-old Kevin McCarthy, succumbed to his injuries after being taken to the hospital." From the report: A report released last week by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department disclosed that Speckman had a blood-alcohol level of 0.21, almost three times the legal limit in the state of Indiana, The Indianapolis Star reports. Another new detail has emerged since the violent crash was first reported: The Tesla could have been been trying to maneuver around a vehicle traveling on the wrong side of the street, suggested by closed-circuit footage obtained by the attorney of the driver's father, Jon Speckman. The coroner's report cited blunt-force injuries caused by the crash as the causes of death for both victims, noting the vehicle's fire as a contributing factor, according to The Indianapolis Star. Jon Speckman recently made comments to the newspaper blaming the acceleration of the Tesla Model S. "Had she been in another vehicle, she would have been alive for me to yell at her for driving after drinking," Speckman told The Indianapolis Star in an interview at his attorney's office. "This is a vehicle that travels from 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds," Speckman also said during the interview. "She's clearly having to swerve to miss a vehicle going the wrong way on a one-way street. If her foot should happen to hit the accelerator, it's like a rocket ship. I don't know why they have to make a car that does that."
I haven't clocked a SpaceX Falcon9 or similar, but I can't imagine the 0-60 being all that fast.
A better comparison would be a motorcycle.
She was 3 times over the limit and the fuckwit father is blaming the car? Why is this even on SlashDot
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
To be fair, although she was drunk as shit and should have never been behind a wheel, it appears from camera footage that she was swerving to avoid ANOTHER car that was traveling the wrong way on the street.
She was 27, which is hardly a child. And if you're implying that her father bought her the car, you're wrong. It belonged to her boss, and the crash occurred after "a company event."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
In Germany the limit is 0.05; she was 4x this level.
Seriously 0.2 is nothing and if that's thrice the limit, then the limit is ridiculously low.
Love from Germany, where the limit is 0.5.
You must measure things differently there. .27 is the point where they admit you to the hospital to watch your for alcohol poisoning. .5 is WELLLLL beyond the content where they'll pump your stomach.
Speckman swerved to avoid another car going the wrong way down a one way street. I would not be so quick to put all the blame on her for driving drunk.
It doesn't work that way. In the eyes of the law and insurance companies, if you're in an automobile accident while driving impaired, you're at fault no matter the circumstances. This is why we don't drink and drive.
In this instance we have an inexperienced woman driver, high performance sports car and the driver's BAL was three times the limit. Perfect trifecta. I feel for the guy who got in the car with her.
Seriously 0.2 is nothing and if that's thrice the limit, then the limit is ridiculously low.
Love from Germany, where the limit is 0.5.
According to this site, the blood alcohol limit in Germany is 0.05%, not 0.5%. That's a factor of ten difference. The limit in the US, according to the same site, is 0.08%, which is even higher than Germany.
The driver described in this article had a BAC four times the legal limit in Germany.
There is a severe misunderstanding of numbers here. In the US (and many other places) the blood alcohol concentration is given in parts per one hundred (percent). In Germany, it usually is given in parts per 1000 (permille). So, the articles 0.21 percent BAC end up being 2.1 permille, slighly more than four times (2.1/0.5) the legal limit.
Why would you give a child a super car?
Good question, and one asked by lots of commenters. Of course, no one asking this question read TFA, because if they had they would have learned that the Tesla was owned by the passenger (who was her boss), and he was nearly as drunk as the girl. So you have an extremely high-performance car being driven by someone who is very drunk, and also unfamiliar with the car. What could go wrong?
We don't measure BAC in percents around here but rather in permilles. That might have been the confusion.
Ezekiel 23:20
The 0.21 is percent. In Denmark, and I'm guessing Germany as well, we count it in promille, which is 1/1000. So yeah, 0.5 promille is 0.05 percent. I actually had to stop and think about this for a second because the numbers instinctively felt wrong for this very reason.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Not only did the guy buy the Tesla knowing full well what its capabilities were, he let his kiddo borrow it.
He didn't buy the car, and neither did his daughter. The Tesla belonged to the passenger, who was also drunk. This is in TFA (why do I bother?). Not hard to visualize what probably happened: "I'm drunk; why don't you drive?" "Oh, wow, I've never driven one of these before; this will be fun!"
With a blood alcohol level of .21 you're not "drunk".
In what imaginary world? At this level you may not be able to stand or walk straight, let alone drive a car. .08%.
There's a reason it's illegal to drive with a blood alcohol level of
It's because that's where impairment generally begins.
The Carrera was a race car that was made street legal. Even on Top Gear Jeremy Clarkson admitted it wasn't fun to drive because it was so touchy. There are plenty of other high horsepower cars that handle much better from companies like McLaren or Koenigsegg. Hell Koenigsegg even has a video showing how you can swerve the wheel at speed and not spin out.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
While it would be likely in this Tesla crash, in Walker's crash there was another aggravating factor: aged tires. Nine-year-old tires on a high-performance car are a recipe for disaster.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
The father had nothing to do with the vehicle. It was owned by the passenger (the driver's boss).
No, this is just poor journalism. Fake news is where the entire story is nonsense.
0.5 promille = 0.05%
Its a linguistic confusion.
The point he is making is that the vastly most common outcome of most bad decisions is.... nothing at all. It doesn't make it a good thing. But it does explain why it is so common.
Drive drunk? Probably nothing will happen.
Don't buy insurance? Your house probably won't burn down.
Eat uncooked meat? You probably won't get sick.
Norway has had 0.02 as the legal limit for _many_ years now, this basically means that you cannot drive after a single half liter of beer, glass of wine or a shot of whisky.
I.e. all driving after drinking is drunk driving. BTW, when Norway introduced a legal driving limit in 1936, it was the first country in the world to do so:
http://www.promille.no/promill...
This web site (in Norwegian) shows the current rules: 0.02 to 0.05% leads to a fine of 1.5 months worth of your gross salary (or average income if you're a stock broker or similar), which means that it can get very expensive indeed when if the driver is a rich idiot. (Those fines are for when you are stopped without any accident, in a crash they will go up and your insurance won't cover anything.)
At 0.12%, i.e. 50% over the US limit, you are looking at at least 21 days in prison on top of that huge fine.
We have a lot more Teslas per capita here than in any other country but I haven't heard of a single drunk driving incident so far.
"Fast cars don't kill people, bad drivers kill people."
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"