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."

Comments

Uber?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the Tesla forced her to drive.

Re:Uber?

[Big Hairy Ian]

She was 3 times over the limit and the fuckwit father is blaming the car? Why is this even on SlashDot

Re:Uber?

[guruevi]

Driving a high performance sports car, severely drunk, the wrong way on a one way street into oncoming traffic is the cause for their deaths. And I'm glad they only managed to take themselves out of the gene pool and not someone else.

Re: Uber?

[Gription]

Exactly. Why would you give a child a super car? Exactly what thought process could have been going on there? And why spread blame anywhere else?

"With great power comes great responsibility." But responsibility is learned and while you are figuring out if a child has learned it you do not give them something quicker then a Ford Pinto.

Re:Uber?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Uber?

[Sporkinum]

Really? A Pinto? Boom!

Re:Uber?

[TimeOut42]

And someone probably forced her to buy a sports car. Sorry, sympathy for losing his daughter, but there really is only one person to blame and we all know who it is.

Re: Uber?

[msauve]

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."

Re:Uber?

[Anonymous Coward]

George W. Bush

Re:Uber?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Uber?

[heypete]

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.

Re: Uber?

[Muros]

Exactly. Why would you give a child a super car?

The article said she was 27, which doesn't count as a child. But I suppose, given the fact that her father said he would have yelled at her for drunk driving, there definitely could have been some degree of infantilization here.

Re:Uber?

[WheezyJoe]

There's a point where cars become too powerful. When Paul Walker died , it was discussed that the Porsche Carrera GT he was in (as a passenger) has three times the horsepower of the average car [and is] notoriously difficult to handle, even for professional drivers. Porsche was exonerated from blame in the crash, but when you put a car on the road that can blast to 80 at the slip of a shoe, then there's an accident waiting to happen.

In the instant case, if the driver had been in a base Ford Escort or Chevy Cruz, they'd probably be alive today.

I'm all for high-performance cars, and I love the pickup in my street-legal ride, but on the street there's a limit to what's practical and safe. Think real hard how you got your license... not that hard, right? All sorts of people you wonder whether they can tie their own shoes walking out with brand new licenses, thinking "great! now I can legally get alcohol!"

Now consider how tech is going to continue to advance until Tesla and those electric motors puts the power of a Veyron into the hands of anyone who can sign for a car loan but doesn't know that that kind of speed belongs only on the track. A 1979 Toyota Tercel has no business with a modern 5.2 L Flat Plane Crank V8 bolted onto it, particularly because the suspension and steering can't handle the power and the driver of such an abomination is probably a goddam fool, likely to pound down a few six-packs before heading out for Zombie night at Applebees. The only razor-thin silver-lining in the article reported by the OP is they didn't mow down a sidewalk-full of bystanders before the smeared themselves.

If tech advances until torque and horsepower become trivial, we will have to have governors built-in to cars because the road has to be shared and driving like an idiot will become not a matter of a broken leg but something a lot more permanent. On the track or the salt flats, do what you want. On the streets there's a point where basic transportation becomes a suicide machine, and I don't want to share those streets with overpowered idiots.

Re: Uber?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the fuck is a 27 year old a child? Never, that's when. People need to own their stupid.

Re:Uber?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Uber?

[tsqr]

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?

Re:Uber?

[Scragglykat]

You do realize, that at .2 BAC, people will start to experience blackouts right? Maybe you are thinking about 0.02 which is a light buzz.

Re:Uber?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

We don't measure BAC in percents around here but rather in permilles. That might have been the confusion.

Re:Uber?

[Calydor]

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.

Re:Uber?

[nedlohs]

You are only off by an order of magnitude, congrats!

At 0.5 you are more likely to be in a coma than driving anyway.

Re: Uber?

[Gription]

Yeah. I didn't guess that from the graduation photo in the article. They really pumped up the "daughter" relationship and then buried the "she is quite past the age of adulthood" detail way down in the article.
In this case there is really no reason for them to portray the incident in this light other than it is a more spectacular news-bite laid out this way.

Really this should have been reported as an irresponsible adult through their own stupid actions killing themselves and another person.

(A little secret I've learned is no matter how much power a car has it will still only accelerate as hard as you push down on the gas pedal!!!)

Re:Uber?

[NatasRevol]

It's a 7/11 conspiracy!

Re: Uber?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla S is not a super car, it's a nice sedan with the low end acceleration of a super car. Take it to a track and it will not keep up with a 25-40k sports car much less a super car, not to mention running out of juice after a couple laps.

Re:Uber?

[chihowa]

1.0% doesn't mean that your blood is pure alcohol. Perhaps you need to go back to school...

This does reinforce my serious irritation with people not writing the fucking units when they write numbers, though.

Re: Uber?

[ChrisMaple]

When the fuck is a 27 year old a child?

When she registers Democrat.

Re:Uber?

[Maury Markowitz]

> Ford Escort or Chevy Cruz, they'd probably be alive today

Driving when that drunk can be fatal in any car. ANY car.

Re:Uber?

[Golden_Rider]

It's a misunderstanding of the units used. In Germany, we measure blood alcohol in "per mille": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So it is normal here to hear something like "he had 0.5 blood alcohol" and everybody knows that this means a slight buzz, because it is "per mille", so the 0.21 (without units) mentioned in the article - to a German - sounds like "she had one beer", when instead it is equivalent to a German 2.1 per mille, which is more like "it's a wonder she was even conscious".

Re:Uber?

[TWX]

Now consider how tech is going to continue to advance until Tesla and those electric motors puts the power of a Veyron into the hands of anyone who can sign for a car loan but doesn't know that that kind of speed belongs only on the track. A 1979 Toyota Tercel has no business with a modern 5.2 L Flat Plane Crank V8 bolted onto it, particularly because the suspension and steering can't handle the power and the driver of such an abomination is probably a goddam fool, likely to pound down a few six-packs before heading out for Zombie night at Applebees. The only razor-thin silver-lining in the article reported by the OP is they didn't mow down a sidewalk-full of bystanders before the smeared themselves.

If tech advances until torque and horsepower become trivial, we will have to have governors built-in to cars because the road has to be shared and driving like an idiot will become not a matter of a broken leg but something a lot more permanent. On the track or the salt flats, do what you want. On the streets there's a point where basic transportation becomes a suicide machine, and I don't want to share those streets with overpowered idiots.

You really don't have any idea how automotive history played out. The late seventies to the early nineties are an abberation where there were relatively few powerful production cars. From the thirties onward, the push was for ever increasing amounts of power. In the late sixties we hit the peak with American car manufacturers cramming well over 400hp into cars that had absolutely atrocious handling and road-grip. Take a Plymouth with a 426 Hemi, you had almost 70% of the mass over the front non-drive axle, you had skinny bias-ply tires, you had firm torsion bars because of the mass of the engine. For weight savings on cars like the Roadrunner and GTX you often had antiswaybar-delete, such that the cars really suffered body roll in turns.

Fuel availability problems from the manufactured oil crisis of the mid seventies, coupled with a slow ratcheting of environmental requirements and fuel economy requirements, forced horsepower down. This is certainly partially responsible for the American attempts with turbocharging in the eighties and early nineties and attempting to add power to the small FWD chassis despite initial development as economy cars, and it was only when automakers finally fully embraced symmetrical multiport fuel injection with computer control, multiple stages of catalytic conversion, and high-gear-count transmissions that power, fuel economy, and emissions were all achievable, albeit with cars that are significantly more complex and expensive.

Re:Uber?

[Anonymous Coward]

He even keeps repeating the same "0 - 60 in 3.1 seconds" over and over. If anyone bothers to Google it, that is only possible in Ludacris or Insane mode which isn't even available on all cars. You need to purchase it, install it, and enable it to get that close. Otherwise, it is no different than any other high end sports car.

It is sad, but drunk people die in car crashes. Don't drink and die. Its not more complicated than that.

Re: Uber?

[Archangel Michael]

You want "fake news" ? This is a great example of framing the story in such a way to cause distortion of emotion to elicit a particular result. Using words like "daughter / child" in combination is designed to make the person seem younger than 27 age that she was. Its like when we want to treat an 18 year old as an adult "Man/Woman" or as a child "Boy/Girl/Teenager". Man accused of murder .. one emotion, boy/teen accused of murder is quite a different one.

It is all about creating the correct sensationalism and it is all part of the "fake news" that people are complaining about.

Re: Uber?

[Archangel Michael]

And she was 27, and while she was the "child" of the man, she wasn't a "child" in society. This article was written in such a way to make it seem like "Tesla Bad" and "little girl playing with toys died", when the facts were almost exactly the opposite.

Re:Uber?

[hey!]

Of course he is. It's a thing that humans have called "grief".

Re:Uber?

[drinkypoo]

If tech advances until torque and horsepower become trivial, we will have to have governors built-in to cars because the road has to be shared and driving like an idiot will become not a matter of a broken leg but something a lot more permanent.

Where is personal responsibility in this? Here's an alternate proposal which helps preserve it: graduated driver's licenses. I have long held the attitude that certain roads should require a higher class of license than the average. My primary example is Highway 175 between Hopland and Lakeport, AKA "The Hopland Grade". This is a twisty little ribbon of asphalt with steep dropoffs as hazardous as those you'll see on Pikes Peak, and numerous off-camber curves. In a couple of places the roadway is narrow enough to where two wide vehicles coming in opposite directions are at serious risk of mirror removal. This road is regularly festooned with parades of idiots crossing the double yellow line on blind corners, which should be considered assault with a deadly weapon. Most of those people who aren't driving all over the road are driving agonizingly slow in fear for their lives, while the speed limit is 55. The last time I went over the hill by myself (my lady doesn't enjoy spirited driving as I do) I got stuck behind a Viper R/T convertible... in my 1982 Mercedes-Benz 300SD with its little bitty tires and its 120 horsepower. That guy not only should not have been allowed on that road, but he shouldn't have been allowed to own a Viper, either.

So, let's institute a graduated system of licensing where in order to get access to more powerful cars and more dangerous roads, you have to have a better license. Just driving around a majorly congested city would also require a higher class of license than the basic. The people who can't drive for shit are the ones that make driving in e.g. San Francisco agony. Probably you'd only need the higher class of license to get into the most congested parts of the city.

Higher classes of license would come with mandatory class time, though no requirement of hours of training. If you can pass the test, you can have the license. The mandatory class time is so that you don't have any excuses for not knowing the basic things you need to know for that level of driving.

The allowable BAC should be lower for higher classes of vehicle. If you're driving your micro econobox, you can have a .08. If you're driving a 5,000 pound sports luxury car that can do 0-60 in just a few seconds, you're going to need a stricter limit, like say a .05. Such a number still has plenty of wiggle room for people with intestinal flora which manufacture alcohol, or for people to have a (1) beer with lunch.

Finally, the higher classes of license should be easier to lose, and get busted back down to a lower class. A DUI ought to do it mandatorily, whatever else happens.

Re:Uber?

[Dread_ed]

In many people 0.02 is not an active dosage, neither impairing nor affecting the imbiber's skill at driving or even lubricating their social inhibitions. But yes, x10 that amount is totally fucked up.

Re:Uber?

[WheezyJoe]

The Tesla already accelerates faster than the Veyron.

Imagine the carnage if they build a ludicrous mode into the "consumer-level" Model 3... damned thing should be hooked to a breathalyzer device - and an IQ test.

Re:Uber?

[Dread_ed]

You added a percent sign to the number the AC posted. Its like you invented some new kind of mathematical straw man!

Its people like you that crashed the mars lander...

Re:Uber?

[drinkypoo]

Fuel availability problems from the manufactured oil crisis of the mid seventies, coupled with a slow ratcheting of environmental requirements and fuel economy requirements, forced horsepower down. This is certainly partially responsible for the American attempts with turbocharging in the eighties and early nineties

It wasn't just the Americans. Everyone tried to go turbo at that time, with smaller engines (or not increasing engine size.) All of the Japanese except Honda, who went VTEC. All of the Germans, albeit first on diesels...

Re:Uber?

[AthanasiusKircher]

This is a very interesting and well thought-out post. Thank you.

Most posts here miss the point that almost every event has multiple contributing factors. Obviously the driver was drunk. That's probably the most major contributing factor. But could a car with unusual acceleration characteristics also be a contributing factor? Possibly. Heck, the car ran into a tree. Maybe somebody planted that tree there 40 years ago. Did that person contribute something to this accident? Yes, obviously... maybe if that tree hadn't been there, everything would be okay.

The issue isn't whether or not there were hundreds of contributing factors to an event, or whether any one of them could have prevented it ("Darn that tree planting guy!"), but rather which contributing factors may have displayed negligence and created a "hazard" -- either legally or morally.

I haven't driven a Tesla, so I don't know how it handles. Clearly there are a lot of Tesla drivers who like how they drive and don't see a problem with them. But the parent here has a valid point that at some point we may get to a place where accelerating power and handling in some cars become more hazardous for the average driver.

And that's about the only part of this story that's worthy of debate.

Should this story be on Slashdot? NO. NO. NO. Clearly, it is an attempt by the editors to play off of the libertarian sympathies of many people here who are still pissed at how Tesla has had to do battle with car dealership laws, etc., and whose ire has already been inflamed by ridiculous charges about how the media seems to be attacking Tesla whenever it can... and now here comes a grieving father who is lashing out at something that really COULD have contributed something to this crash (in addition to the alcohol, etc.).

Let's all just take a deep breath, acknowledge that we all would not want to be in a place where we are grieving for a child and if we were, we'd likely want to find "someone to blame" too. And then let's move on from the the TROLL NAMED BeauHD WHO POSTED THIS STORY HERE TO GET EVERYONE YELLING.

Re: Uber?

[drinkypoo]

(A little secret I've learned is no matter how much power a car has it will still only accelerate as hard as you push down on the gas pedal!!!)

Unless it is a Toyota, and they ignore all the industry-standard safety requirements when you are building a PCM, and there are numerous code bugs which can cause unintended acceleration.

Re: Uber?

[PPH]

Tesla was owned by the passenger (who was her boss)

I hope her dad is going to sue the bosses estate. Because this whole thing is wrong on several levels. Two drunks, neither capable of operating any car, let alone a high performance model. So put the inexperienced driver behind the wheel. And what's the boss doing getting his employees drunk in the first place? That company is another deep pocket.

Re: Uber?

[dave420]

No, this is just poor journalism. Fake news is where the entire story is nonsense.

Re: Uber?

[Khyber]

I can tell you failed your basic reading comprehension and critical thinking tests in middle and high school.

Because nowhere, NOWHERE did I condone shit, especially since I'VE GOT A FUCKING TITANIUM LEG IMPLANT THANKS TO A DRUNK DRIVER.

You self-assured assumptive fuckwit waste of condensed energy.

Re:Uber?

[stealth_finger]

We don't measure BAC in percents around here but rather in permilles. That might have been the confusion.

I think the confusion is US measures permiles and Germany does perkilometer

Re: Uber?

[Archangel Michael]

The entire story here is nonsense. It is a "non-story". Should have been relegated to a single short paragraph

A 27 year old woman and her passenger died today in a single vehicle accident. The driver's BAC was .21, or nearly three times the legal limit

Everything else is sensationalism and "fake news". Dad, Tesla, speeds, everything else is irrelevant or subjective. Opinion dressed up like news. And why Journalism is dead.

Re:Uber?

[WheezyJoe]

So, let's institute a graduated system of licensing where in order to get access to more powerful cars.

I basically agree. But it's gonna be hell to enforce apart from fleets of cops in speed-traps, because you start putting shit-loads of electronic EZ-Pass type shit (breathalyzers?) at the entrances and exits of all twisty roads, we can expect all the "I should be free to do whatever I want, so long as I think it's cool" nut-people foaming about gubmint interference, 'cause if Big Brother is gonna come after my self-built replica of Dominic's car in the Fast the and Furious movies, just because the steering it a little tricky (okay, so I went with a sketchy front-end and some used tires to save a buck), surely they'll start demanding I have a license for my hella collection of guns!

Slippery slope, man. Just sayin'.

Re: Uber?

[freeze128]

"Hey boss, I'm really drunk. Can I drive your expensive super-car home?"

I think we should be blaming the boss, not the car.

Re: Uber?

[msauve]

The boss was the passenger, who was also drunk, and also died.

Re: Uber?

[lewistown]

I like your persistence, but unless the author or sources are making up details it's not fake. Sensationalist reporting on the opinions of an arguably bad father, sure, but framing != fake. This doesn't mean we shouldn't mock bad journalism, but "fake mocking" makes you come out as just another ignoramus latching onto and misusing the latest "craze phrase".

Re:Uber?

[thegarbz]

0.5 promille = 0.05%

Its a linguistic confusion.

Re:Uber?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

"Speckman had a blood-alcohol level of 0.21"

hmm.. I don't think it was the acceleration that did it.

Re:Uber?

[MrKrillls]

I have a really different idea. How about people learn to drive? And if they are going to drive a car with (just for example) 400 hp, get real training in the basics - like how and when NOT to mash the pedal to the floor. More power, more training... Want to use 65mph roads? Get appropriate training - including watching dash cam videos of how bad things can get. Pretty bad.

I know, it sounds vaguely socialist or authoritarian or something. But I put on up to 60,000 miles a year and I have to suspect there's some way to get people to learn to be more serious and more skilled about driving than they are. Frankly the average driver is unskilled.

Re:Uber?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Or at least have the complexity of flying a Viper from 1978 Battlestar Galactica to switch into ludicrous mode.

Re:Uber?

[TechyImmigrant]

You are only off by an order of magnitude, congrats!

When did people stop saying "You are off by a factor of X" and start saying "off by an order of magnitude"?

What magnitude? It's hardly specific. A quick Googling reveals that it's not always 10 depending on who you ask. I don't remember encountering "order of magnitude" until I came to the States.

Re:Uber?

[argStyopa]

"There's a point where cars become too powerful. "

Nothing personal, but fuck your nanny-state ethics.

Either people are self-governing adults, capable of making their own decisions and living with the consequences, or they're not. The only people who aren't - ie the mentally disabled, and children - have their rights and privileges strongly circumscribed.

If they're not, and you're actually asserting that people AREN'T entitled to make their own decisions, then you've taken a giant step onto a mighty slippery slope. Don't get me wrong, there are elites (some genuinely benevolent, others merely camouflaging themselves as such) all over the world that insist they know better how people should live their lives than the stupid masses. We can't let people smoke, it's dangerous. We need to disincentivize people from eating fast food or drinking sugary drinks because they get fat.

I don't think you'd have to look far today to find people who believe democracy itself is fundamentally dangerous, and should be curtailed to some degree (people of BOTH parties, curiously).

I do *not* subscribe to your 'we need to wrap everything in a giant safety net' philosophy, as to me its obvious that it's not far until certain essential liberties start disappearing "for our own good".

Re:Uber?

[TechyImmigrant]

0.5? You might want to wiki the scale of blood-alcohol content measure. I realize Germans were told they were superhuman at one point, but I thought we'd moved past that.

It's compensating for the absence of petrochemicals in the rest of the Tesla.

Re:Uber?

[TechyImmigrant]

There's a point where cars become too powerful. When Paul Walker died , it was discussed that the Porsche Carrera GT he was in (as a passenger) has three times the horsepower of the average car [and is] notoriously difficult to handle, even for professional drivers. Porsche was exonerated from blame in the crash, but when you put a car on the road that can blast to 80 at the slip of a shoe, then there's an accident waiting to happen.

My car will lose traction if I put my foot to the floor. So I don't do that, I do other things that are less dangerous, like pushing the accelerator pedal a little bit. It's called driving.

Re:Uber?

[StikyPad]

Too powerful for what? Nobody shoved a Tesla or a Porsche down anyone's throat. This was a deliberate choice on the part of the buyer and/or driver. And the driver was 27, not a 21 year-old excited to have access to alcohol.

The problem here was a series of poor choices on the part of the owners and drivers of the vehicles in question. Companies should not be liable for those poor decisions, nor should the government restrict access to anything that can be dangerous when used irresponsibly, because the list of things that *can't* kill us is 0 items long. Sure, driving tests should be much, much more stringent, but competence is no substitute for using good judgment either, and tooling around at 0.21 BAC is well outside the realm of good judgment.

Re:Uber?

[mschuyler]

No, it isn't Germany is .05: That's POINT OH FIVE. In the US it is generally .08. that's POINT OH EIGHT. The woman in this Tesla had a level of .21. That's POINT TWO ONE, almost THREE TIMES the legal level. Do you get it now?

Re:Uber?

[Joce640k]

And... don't you have to select a special "ludicrous" mode to get the car to accelerate that fast?

This guy is just after money. I hope the judge throws him out and makes him pay for wasted time.

Re:Uber?

[ranton]

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.

Driving drunk is not much of a problem if nothing unexpected happens on your way home. Even though someone has a 2500% greater chance of having an accident with a .20 BAC, that only increases the chances of an accident on a 10 mile trip from 0.002% to about 0.04625% (or 1 in 2000 10 mile drunk driving trips). Nearly 100% of people who drive drunk don't get into an accident.

Driving drunk is mostly just a problem because something unexpected might happen, like another car driving the wrong way on a street. When drunk you don't have the necessary reaction time to adjust and an accident becomes very likely.

Re:Uber?

[lgw]

Strange things are afoot at the 7-11!

Re: Uber?

[Rockoon]

27 is only 1 year older than what Obamacare defines as dependent.

Re: Uber?

[gnick]

(A little secret I've learned is no matter how much power a car has it will still only accelerate as hard as you push down on the gas pedal!!!)

That's true, but applying the same pressure to the gas pedal can produce radically different results depending on the car. There is a learning curve involved with driving a supercar.

Re: Uber?

[plague911]

Someone doesn't understand the difference between a factually verifiable falsehood and heavy-framing lol. Both are bad but a verifiable falsehood is a much darker shade of black.

Re: Uber?

[plague911]

The op seems like the kind of person who just labeled everything terrorism that they did not like. He needs to get a hit on nuance. Not every piece of bad journalism is fake news, just like not every act of violence is terrorism. Understanding subcategories FTW

Re:Uber?

[ndogg]

Thanks Obama...

Re: Uber?

[drinkypoo]

You can turbo/super charge independent of the valve control. For instance, you can have a turbocharged VTEC or a naturally aspirated one. It's just that Honda doesn't some stock with any turbochargers (that I know of).

Only since 2016 does Honda have a Civic with a turbo. They formerly had a City Turbo, but that's a Kei car and afaik not VTEC, though I would look that up if I wanted to be sure.

These days, everybody seems to be putting in CV valve control (it only makes sense, now that the tech is essentially perfected) and there are no shortages of turbochargers and superchargers available.

Yes. Back in the eighties it was basically Garrett AiResearch, Mitsubishi (built a turbocharged Zero prototype), Rajay (Made aviation turbos, and sold some for automotive use in pairs for Corvettes), and KK[&]K (Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch, which I imagine Slashdot will mangle slightly, let's find out! They sold out to The Borg-Warner.) Did I leave anyone important out?

Re:Uber?

[HornWumpus]

High performance cars are just waiting for you to fuckup, so they can kill you. It's what makes them so great and awesome.

Granting a Tesla is more 'muscle' than 'sports', it will still bite you hard.

Don't drive drunk, but particularly don't drive fast cars you are unfamiliar with while very drunk. 'Something unexpected' is going to happen, you have 3 strikes before you even start.

Re:Uber?

[HornWumpus]

Because he was fucking her and she asked. Power of the pussy.

Re: Uber?

[Archangel Michael]

And "Nazi" and "Homophobic" and "Islamophobic" and "hate" and ... because they don't like it.

It seems to me that you're under the impression that only one side has this problem, which indicates the extent of the problem.

Re: Uber?

[HornWumpus]

In Germany it's graduated as well. 0.05 (very slightly buzzed) is 'DUI', big shit, license gone for 6 months. But 0.15 (actually drunk, the same as the pre mad mothers hysteria, American DUI level) is, 'see a shrink for a year and demonstrate a year of complete alcohol abstinence' (in a country that has an beer garden attached to every courthouse, police station and air traffic control center) before you get your license back, no slips. Blood tests for Alcohol use required.

Re: Uber?

[Archangel Michael]

Heavy Framing is fake news. This was an Op Ed piece at best.

Re:Uber?

[torkus]

You're correct. That mode is also for launching from a standstill, not tooling down the street and suddenly going to warp speed.

With that said, even just nailing the 'gas' pedal in a high performance car is going to get you moving...and fast.

There's exactly nothing different between this and any other vehicle being in an accident with the given circumstances (DUI, head-on, etc.) because basically ANY car is capable of going fast enough to kill you if you hit a tree.

So either the claim is total BS or it would apply to any car. Ever.

Sorry your kid is dead, but how about blaming the ALCOHOL or the DRIVER of the other car that she swerved to avoid?

Re:Uber?

[HornWumpus]

I believe the record is about 0.8, but that was an (eastern European/Wisconee) where is expressed as 'insufficient blood in their alcohol system'.

Re:Uber?

[HornWumpus]

From 0-60, after that it's all Veyron. The Tesla is quick, not particularly fast.

Re:Uber?

[chuckugly]

It's just too easy to get a drivers license in the USA.

Re:Uber?

[HornWumpus]

Kids have been putting 'big sticks' into affordable, entry level cars for decades. It's expensive but you can make better than Veyron power with an LS V8. It won't last long though and you're going to have a bunch of additional work beefing up the whole drivetrain, especially the tires.

Bonus, you homebuild won't have any pussy traction control, except your foot.

Re:Uber?

[thegarbz]

Porsche was exonerated [usatoday.com] from blame in the crash, but when you put a car on the road that can blast to 80 at the slip of a shoe, then there's an accident waiting to happen.

It's almost like we need a system where by people are checked to see if they are competent before they get access to such a vehicle. We could introduce a license of sorts.

In the instant case, if the driver had been in a base Ford Escort or Chevy Cruz, they'd probably be alive today.

So if the driver had been in a Ford Escort instead of one of the cars with the most advanced safety features on the road today and widely regarded as one of the most safe cars for a passenger to be in during a crash, ... and that Ford Escort hit a tree because the driver was drunk, they would likely survive? Did you drink and post on Slashdot?

I'm all for high-performance cars, and I love the pickup in my street-legal ride, but on the street there's a limit to what's practical and safe. Think real hard how you got your license... not that hard, right? All sorts of people you wonder whether they can tie their own shoes walking out with brand new licenses, thinking "great! now I can legally get alcohol!"

Yes car manufacturers are to blame because people can get a license. It sort of sounds like you're arguing with yourself, saying that roads are unsafe because of fast cars which is all the fault of people who shouldn't have a license, who then decide they break the law by drink driving.

Now consider how tech is going to continue to advance until Tesla and those electric motors puts the power of a Veyron [wikipedia.org] into the hands of anyone who can sign for a car loan but doesn't know that that kind of speed belongs only on the track.

And yet I've seen a Veyron drive every day through a school zone at a perfect 40km/h. The guy even manages to go slow enough to parallel park. It's almost like speed is something in direct control of the driver.

A 1979 Toyota Tercel has no business with a modern 5.2 L Flat Plane Crank V8 bolted onto it

And so now a car that wouldn't be street legal shouldn't have any business on the road? I'm beginning to lose track of your 8 different trains of thought.

If tech advances until torque and horsepower become trivial, we will have to have governors built-in to cars because the road has to be shared and driving like an idiot will become not a matter of a broken leg but something a lot more permanent. On the track or the salt flats, do what you want. On the streets there's a point where basic transportation becomes a suicide machine [google.com], and I don't want to share those streets with overpowered idiots.

Ding ding ding. Here is the money quote. After a triad of very poor out incoherent messages blaming a myriad of things the solution to the problem is taking away someone's ability to own something despite the fact that their use of that something is already heavily regulated and governed by some very specific rules. Now you may have had a point (somewhere related to something you managed to get out above) if you were talking about restricting ownership to specific at risk groups using the existing licensing system, or reducing the at risk groups through more careful administration of the licensing system, but no, gotta ban them all. Much like we're quite happy handing our children machine guns but not Kinder surprise eggs, or magnetic toys, or lawn darts. We can't educate, we can't regulate, we have to ban.

Other countries actually make it difficult to get a license.
Other countries actually train people after they get their license by limiting the power weight ratio of the vehicles they can drive for many years.
Other countries actually have multiple classes of licenses for different vehicles with different competency requirements.

But no. In the good'ol USof

Re:Uber?

[Cederic]

Or maybe some people like being able to accelerate and it helps them drive safely.

Joining a motorway at 40? Fucking insanely dangerous. Accelerating up to 70 and joining at the speed of the traffic? Far safer.

Overtaking someone? Spend three minutes on the wrong side of the road or accelerate swiftly to pass them.

Want to get home before you die of old age? Accelerate away from the junction.

Stuck in stop-start traffic on a busy road? Stick on some music and enjoy the luxury. Shit, just because the car can accelerate doesn't mean you have to drive with your foot permanently flat to the floor.

there's a limit to what's practical and safe

Yes, there is. I personally recommend avoiding twin jet engines on a motorbike, but bluntly if it's road legal and you're willing to take the risk, go for it.

Re: Uber?

[HornWumpus]

Sexist.

I know a woman who claims to be an awesome driver...because she once worked as a taxi driver I was discussing weight transfer and its implications for driving on the edge and she claimed it didn't happen. Quote: 'What are you talking about, a car's front does not drop when you step on the brakes.' WTF??? I dropped the subject.

On the other hand, what is the name of the girl on German 'Top Gear' that lapped an Astro Van around Nurburgring as fast as Clarkson lapped a Jag?

Re:Uber?

[HornWumpus]

Maybe 'muscle' car, definitely not 'sports'. Too heavy, to say nothing of too many doors and seats for the classic definition.

Re: Uber?

[Cederic]

I hope her dad is going to sue the bosses estate

On what grounds?

Since being drunk means you lack the judgement to agree to a pleasureable act even when you initiate it then I think it's reasonable to suggest that being drunk also means you lack the judgement to assess whether someone else is sober enough to drive or not.

Her dad may as well sue her estate, as after all she's the fuckwit that got into a car and drove it while drunk. In fact, her boss' estate should sue her estate as it was her illegal act that got him killed. I'm sure the father would welcome that.

Re:Uber?

[Immerman]

Well, it's different in one way - it neither looks nor costs like a high-end sportscar. So it's putting that kind of acceleration in the hands of a lot more people - people who are arguably less in tune with the implications of that power than your average high-end sportscar buyer.

That said - tough. High starting torque is part of the basic nature of electric motors, and is a reality with a whole lot of upsides, so we're just gong to have to get used to it.

My sympathies go to their families, but the fault lies squarely on the person who decided to operate a powerful vehicle when drunk.

Re:Uber?

[TWX]

This may be one of those things behind that "sudden acceleration" we've been hearing the past decade, especially among people not quite tip top shape or fit at the moment (especially from tiredness, drink, other impairment).

If I am remembering correctly what I read, for those Toyotas in particular there was a problem in the powertrain module's programming that would not allow the vehicle to be shut off or taken out of gear while the computer sensed acceleration. Coupled with a physical problem with the drive-by-wire sensor that the gas pedal actually is in those vehicles, the pedal would malfunction and cause the car to accelerate and no other input from the driver could override this.

The problem with drive-by-wire is that if something goes wrong it can be very difficult to figure out. Was it code? Was it the pedal? Was it something interfering with the pedal? Was it some kind of communications cross-talk in the wiring? Was some other input being detected like the cruise control? Was that some other thing malfunctioning? Why didn't the signal from the brakes override?

Re:Uber?

[halltk1983]

How many *more* people are willing and able to spend six figures on a car that wouldn't have spent that money on another similar vehicle with similar performance?

Re:Uber?

[ranton]

0.04625% (or 1 in 2000 10 mile drunk driving trips)

If you drive drunk once a week, that makes an accident a near certainty over an adult life.

If you drive 10 miles while very drunk (0.2 BAC) once a week, it becomes very likely you will have an accident because of your drunkenness over an adult life.

For reference, for a 150 pound individual they would need to drink about 7-8 drinks over a couple hours to reach 0.2 BAC. That is pretty drunk.

Re:Uber?

[gnick]

And someone probably forced her to buy a sports car.

No, nobody forced her and she didn't. Her passenger (her boss) bought the sports car and let her drive it (because he was too drunk?) Since they wrecked avoiding a wrong-way vehicle, it's impossible to know how things would have turned out if she'd been sober.

Re:Uber?

[TechyImmigrant]

six *of* one half dozen of the other

But point taken.

Re:Uber?

[fisted]

Yes, Captn Capslock, I finally do. I wasn't sure I got it after the first dozen people pointing out that US measures BAC in percent as opposed to per mille, but your angry - albeit late - rant convinced me that I must be finally getting it. Thank you so much! I hope you didn't wet yourself over it because it sure sounds like you did.

Re:Uber?

[kirkb]

In the instant case, if the driver had been in a base Ford Escort or Chevy Cruz, they'd probably be alive today.

They'd have been alive long enough to eventually hit another car (head-on, wrong way down a one-way street) and kill innocent people. They did society a great favor by killing only themselves.

Re:Uber?

[chihowa]

Without units, the number that the AC posted is completely meaningless. This entire thread is based around confusion caused by the lack of units: the article is referring to percent and the German guy was referring to permille.

"1.0", without any units or descriptor, doesn't mean that your blood is only alcohol because it doesn't mean anything. My 1.0% was just as meaningless as his 1.0, which was the point!

Re:Uber?

[querist]

Most likely it's on Slashdot because the technology (the uber-cool electric car) is being blamed. The father is grieving the loss of his daughter, so cut him a little slack for his momentary lapse of critical thinking skills. If she was that much over the limit then the Tesla's insane acceleration (see below) was most likely not a factor.

Note: I have had the pleasure of driving my company's Tesla. (there was a drawing to get it for a day). The acceleration is impressive to say the least. I had the sense to try it out on a very long, straight, and empty country road. The girl should not have been driving ANY motor vehicle while drunk, but flooring the pedal on a Tesla in that condition is essentially a suicide attempt.

Re:Uber?

[querist]

Works for me. In Boston most bars would give the designated driver free sodas back in the 80s. Since I don't drink anyway, I'd go and enjoy the free sodas and then make sure my friends made it home safely.

Re:Uber?

[qeveren]

If you're too drunk to see the One Way sign, you probably shouldn't be driving.

Re:Uber?

[nedlohs]

What base is the number being referenced written in? There's your answer.

Of course computer science idiots will like to use base 2 in areas that it doesn't make sense, but they can safely be ignored.

Re: Uber?

[newcastlejon]

Sabine Schmidtz is the lady you're referring to. I'm sure I've mangled the spelling.

As memory serves she did the aforementioned lap in a Ford Transit.

Re: Uber?

[PPH]

Since being drunk means you lack the judgement

Umm, no. They tried this in Washington State* and the whole 'too drunk to make proper judgements' defense was thrown out. If you drink, you'd better figure out how you are getting home before the first one.

*Oddly enough, it was actually a state supreme court justice that got caught driving drunk and tried the defense.

Re: Uber?

[Cederic]

Well, aside from the obvious hypocrisy around being too drunk to consent but still being responsible for your actions, the passenger has clearly taken responsibility for his actions leaving just one person acting irresponsibly.

Fatally so.

Re:Uber?

[Razed By TV]

I thought those numbers sounded like bullshit, but apparently the info is from the NHTSA. (At least the 2500%).
Page 6: https://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfi...

Still, I think I'll wait a bit after that 6 pack of craft beer.

Re:Uber?

[AaronW]

While I don't have the new P90D or P100D I can attest that my Tesla P85 does accelerate quite nicely, even at highway speeds and it reacts nearly instantaneously. It's not the car's fault that the drunk driver lost control. When you have a performance car, you have to respect it. As far as performance cars go, my model S seems to be quite forgiving with it easy to maintain control even under hard acceleration. I can't comment on the newer all-wheel drive P models, but from what I've heard they're even better.

I've read about a number of very bad accidents with the model S where people walked away unharmed such as this accident where a 40 ton big-rig rear-ended a 5000-pound model S at 40MPH. Here's another one. The most interesting part is where he says, “I was pushed off road a good 100 ft. Initially, I was thinking I wouldn’t be able to get the car out But with some assistance from the tow truck driver & firemen I was able to drive it back on the road and eventually home.”

Re:Uber?

[AaronW]

Even as far as muscle cars go the Tesla is pretty forgiving. I drive a P85. It's harder than one might think to fuck up and the all-wheel drive improves the handling quite a bit. Of course you have to respect the acceleration but its ability to maintain control under acceleration is quite good. The traction control is far more responsive than what is possible with an ICE vehicle.

Re:Uber?

[luis_a_espinal]

So, it is a big problem.

Re:Uber?

[gweihir]

This is in the US. You know, the country were you can do extremely stupid things and still can successfully sue if you find a jury of the right kind of morons. That is what the father is trying to set up here. And of course, it is always somebody else that is at fault.

Re:Uber?

[TechyImmigrant]

What base is the number being referenced written in? There's your answer.

Of course computer science idiots will like to use base 2 in areas that it doesn't make sense, but they can safely be ignored.

2, 4, 8, 16, who do we appreciatine?

Re:Uber?

[AaronW]

One difference is that the Tesla generally handles quite well under hard acceleration. The car was not in ludicrous mode since that requires prep and a standing start. The traction and stability control in the Tesla is quite good. My P85 is quite forgiving and from everything I've heard the all wheel drive models are quite a bit better yet. A lot of this is probably due to the fact that the electric motor reacts virtually instantaneously and the traction control has millisecond accuracy.

It still makes sense to respect a vehicle with a lot of horsepower and know how your vehicle will respond.

Re:Uber?

[Dread_ed]

If you hang out with physicists, cosmologists, or astrophysicists and/or read what they write you can easily pick up this terminology. Also, and more likely, if you read lots of hard science fiction novels (not that god dammed space opera shit!) you will pick up this reference.

I have never encountered any other usage of "order of magnitude" besides a power of 10 (an order of magnitude larger/smaller; you're off by 2 orders of mag) or a label of a power of 10 (23rd order of magnitude = 10x23.) Maybe that is because I am a total science nerd. I am curious where it would be used differently. Thank you for the reference to other usage not as referenced above. I now need to look this up to find out where I could be misinterpreted if I use this term.

Re:Uber?

[Dread_ed]

Agreed. Was just twiddling your Twinkies, homie.

Re:Uber?

[wagnerrp]

The problem with drive-by-wire is that people are afraid of it. There was never any verified evidence of fault within the Toyota electronic throttle, and all cases of unintended acceleration were attributed to either operator error, or physical fault in the pedal itself.

Re:Uber?

[AaronW]

It depends on the car. I drove a Dodge Challenger which had a very touchy accelerator. It was difficult to maintain a constant speed in that car. My model S P85, by comparison, has a fairly gradual acceleration curve, though if I mash it there's no hesitation. In general, my Model S is very forgiving considering the massive torque and high horsepower. The traction and stability control work very well, though if you're not used to it, the acceleration is basically instantaneous without hesitation.

Re:Uber?

[Cramer]

Not so impossible at all... Any sane, sober person driving their boss's 90k$ (or more) super car would be driving like they're taking a driving test. There would be no stomping of any pedals. There would be no swerving into a tree. And she'd be paying attention to every f'ing spec of dirt. If there was a collision, it would be from the oncoming car hitting them at a dead stop.

Re:Uber?

[Black.Shuck]

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.

Driving drunk is not much of a problem if nothing unexpected happens on your way home. Even though someone has a 2500% greater chance of having an accident with a .20 BAC, that only increases the chances of an accident on a 10 mile trip from 0.002% to about 0.04625% (or 1 in 2000 10 mile drunk driving trips). Nearly 100% of people who drive drunk don't get into an accident.

Driving drunk is mostly just a problem because something unexpected might happen, like another car driving the wrong way on a street. When drunk you don't have the necessary reaction time to adjust and an accident becomes very likely.

So what you're saying is for drunks, we should assess risk the same way as if they were travelling by airplane?

Still a massively low chance of an accident, but a massively higher chance of killing everyone if something bad happens.

Re:Uber?

[Aighearach]

It is called the "stages of grief," fuckwit.

I mean seriously, read a book now and then.

Re: Uber?

[Aighearach]

So that makes your response some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, is that what you're saying? We should give you a pass on not understanding the role of alcohol in turning traffic mistakes into deaths, because you're still psychologically damaged from your own experience with a drunk driver?

Is that your point, or are you just claiming that being an accident victim makes you King of Drunk Driving Morality? In one case, I feel some sympathy, in the other, not even a little. In both cases your comments are stupid and dangerous, though.

Re: Uber?

[Aighearach]

If .05 is "very slightly buzzed" or "drunk" is very subjective; people who regularly drink more than one serving of alcohol will call that "very slightly buzzed" whereas somebody who never drinks large amounts and rarely drinks more than one drink would already know that they're impaired, and in fact would probably use the word "drunk."

Words like "tipsy" are mostly used by alcoholics to describe a certain range of drunkenness. Whoever, that doesn't mean that it is anything but a level of drunkenness; it certainly isn't a state of being sober. ;)

Re:Uber?

[Aighearach]

One thing worse than not writing units; morons who still try to pedantically correct people, even when there was no unit on which to base their accusation of incorrectness!

Fucking morons think they're so damn smart! But not smart enough to identify a typo, false assumption, or other routine mistake. So even without all the right answers that they "correct" into wrong answers, they've also got all those unidentified-but-obvious mistakes in their datasets!

Re:Uber?

[R3d M3rcury]

Thanks, Obama!

Re:Uber?

[TWX]

The real "problem" with drive-by-wire is that we've come to expect our electronics technology to be unreliable, because by and large it is unreliable. Why should we expect the powertrain control module in our car to be any different?

Re: Uber?

[HornWumpus]

Below 0.15 alcohol slows your reaction time, like being older.

At about 0.15 your judgement goes to hell. It was the number the AMA gave when asked. (of course they have been, re-asked in the decades since).

We (America) should let kids 'learn to drink' before letting them drive. The current system puts them on two dangerous learning curves at the same time. Europe has the better system on this.

0.05 is being one drink ahead of their liver, for most people. MADD mothers are insane prohibitionist at this point.

Re: Uber?

[Khyber]

"We should give you a pass on not understanding the role of alcohol in turning traffic mistakes into deaths, because you're still psychologically damaged from your own experience with a drunk driver?"

That you reach for such an astoundingly stupid conclusion belies your very low mental functioning.

Having actually watched the crash video, I got some real bad news for your sorry ass. If anything, the reality is the dumbass going the WRONG FUCKING WAY DOWN A ONE WAY STREET is the one truly at fault for not OBEYING TRAFFIC LAWS. You can point the finger at the drunk driver all you want and that's fair, but you fucktards are ignoring the other half of the story, which just makes you a disingenuous fuckwit.

Re: Uber?

[lewistown]

I think your mixing me up with a loud, annoying, ignorant minority. Nazis are a very specific group of people who operated under Hitler until '45, and neo-Nazis are are another very specific group that helpfully self-identify as such. I'm not really sure what "Islamophobia" is or even if the idea behind it makes any logical sense. I'm against hate insofar as I believe some boundaries must be set if were to live in a multicultural society. I only mean to say that language matters, otherwise how are others meant to know what it is your taking about?

Re:Uber?

[gnick]

Hitting a tree is to be avoided, but sometimes swerving off the road is a better course of action than just coming to a "dead stop" - If you can avoid a collision altogether, that's the right decision. In a situation like that, it can be hard even after the fact to determine what the "right" course of action would have been - Plus when you're panicked you make hasty decisions. I'm not arguing that the alcohol didn't contribute to making a bad decision, I'm saying that there may have been a bad decision made anyway and we have no way to know. I don't know this woman or her driving ability, so how could I predict how she'd react to a wrong-way driver sober or not?

Some people fail driving tests stone cold sober and doing their absolute best to do things right.

Re: Uber?

[jxander]

Because the situation posits a question about human responsibility regarding ever evolving technology. Simply: is it possible for a piece of equipment (a car for example) to be "too awesome" for someone? If so, who makes that call and who enforces it?

Pushing the boundaries of tech is fine and dandy. Hell, it's necessary. But what limits should be placed on the dissemination of cutting edge tech, if any?

If tesla continues along its current trajectory, how much longer before the twitch of an errant sneeze can accelerate you to dangerous speeds? What about when other car makers catch up, and every Ford Focus or Geo Metro is capable of current tesla speeds and acceleration?

While this particular incident might be fairly open and shut (drunk driver) what happens when the driver is just ... bad? There are millions of mediocre drivers out there who simply can't safely handle top-echelon vehicles, drunk or not. Does the engineering company (in this instance, tesla, but certainly not limited to them) bear any responsibility in ensuring that idiots don't kill people with tech beyond their capabilities?

Re:Uber?

[Tough Love]

The only real issue is, the story should be tagged as Darwin.

Re: Uber?

[aaronb1138]

Keep in mind a lot of BAC tests have falsified data from the labs. The driver could have been stone sober.

Re: Uber?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Then sue her boss and the company. That seems extremely simple.

Re: Uber?

[plague911]

No it is not. Words have meaning.

Re:Uber?

[Immerman]

Six figures? We're talking the Model S here - starts at under $70k, and only the most expensive model and options will push you over $100k. I'll admit I'm a bit out of touch, but my impression is that you're not going to get a whole lot of sportscar for that kind of money. Maybe similar peak engine power, maybe, but electric drive lacks the radical loss of power at low engine speed that characterizes gasoline engines, giving you a radically wider power band.

Re:Uber?

[Immerman]

We already have several different classes of license, seems like most states have at least four classes - normal, heavy, heavy trailer, and motorcycle, and we manage to enforce them pretty well overall.

NOT by having license checkpoints, but by stopping obviously hazardous/reckless drivers and asking for their license, with penalties for being caught driving a vehicle you're not licensed for. No reason we couldn't do the same for crowded cities or winding black-diamond mountain passes - generally speaking the more demanding the road, the easier it is to spot the people who don't know what they're doing. And anyone who can fake it well enough to not get spotted - well they're not really the problem, are they?

Heck, maybe we could add an incentive to get people on board - for every level you're licensed beyond the current road and vehicle, your legal alcohol limit is increased. If you're qualified to handle a high-end sportscar on death-defying roads, then you are allowed a few extra drinks while operating your little 4-cylinder commuter along quiet back roads. Of course we could also cut the base limit as well - if you're only licensed for that little commuter on quiet roads, then you'd better be stone sober while driving. Think of it as added incentive to keep up on the training and qualification for a higher tier of license than you really need.

Re:Uber?

[Immerman]

A tiered license does have a certain appeal.

We could also start with requiring actual real training and competency tests to get any license at all, instead of the sad "I can score at least 70% on a paper exam of the basic laws and physics, and avoided killing anyone during my driving exam" that currently passes for such in the US.

Re:Uber?

[Immerman]

>I don't think you'd have to look far today to find people who believe democracy itself is fundamentally dangerous

Not surprising, pretty much every democratic government on the planet was built from the time of it's creation with various safeguards against the dangers of democracy. The fear of mob rule is hardly a new - it's long been well understood that large groups of people are far more irrational and easy to manipulate than individuals.

Re: Uber?

[pslytely psycho]

"The current system puts them on two dangerous learning curves at the same time. "

Here in WA.
a. Instruction Permit: 15 years old if enrolled in driver's education.
b. Instruction Permit: 15 1/2 years old without enrollment driver's education.
c. Intermediate Driver's License: 16 years old.
c. Unrestricted Driver's License: 18 years old.

The drinking age is 21, so there should be a minimum of 3 years driving with an adult license before being legally able to drink.

Hardly the same time. And better they learn to drive first. They can learn irresponsibility at any time. It's hardly age dependent, unless you're advocating lowering the drinking age to 10.....

Re:Uber?

[lsatenstein]

She was 3 times over the limit and the fuckwit father is blaming the car? Why is this even on SlashDot

The car is a contributing factor. What is a normal acceleration. Is it 0-60 in 10 seconds? I think that the Tesla was probably a keyless entry, and the father could not stop the driver, no matter what. With slower acceleration, the driver would have more time to react, perhaps braking, before hitting the other vehicle.

Was the Tesla on a one way street, the wrong way? Nothing mentioned in the post.

Re:Uber?

[HornWumpus]

Your liver metabolizes a drink/hour.

So 1/hour plus an hour break before driving and you have _no alcohol_ in your blood.

Obviously doesn't work if you've cooked your liver, but if you're healthy.

Re: Uber?

[HornWumpus]

I advocate lowering the drinking age to 14. 10 with the parents supervision.

Raise the driving age to 18.

Re:Uber?

[HornWumpus]

Sense the independent review of Toyota ECUs code, they have been _settling all cases_. So no.

No protected memory, no stack overflow protection, heap at the same end of memory as stack so stack overflows into 'Kernel' memory space. It's like it was built by someone from the MacOS 7 team.

I, for one, will not be buying a throttle by wire (much less a brake by wire) car until they are required to build their ECUs to aviation standards.

Re: Uber?

[Archangel Michael]

How old is a "child"? 27 year old woman isn't a child. So, yes, words have meaning, and ... Fake News

Re: Uber?

[Archangel Michael]

1) a young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of majority.
synonyms: youngster, little one, boy, girl; More
2) a son or daughter of any age.
3) an immature or irresponsible person. "she's such a child!"

#1 is the primary definition, and #3 is a reflection of #1. Technically everyone is a "child" according to Definition 2, and therefore that term is meaningless.

Fake News because the framing of it was intentionally misleading "alternative facts"

Re:Uber?

[rpstrong]

Well put.

Re:Uber?

[drinkypoo]

While I can appreciate your premise, I don't think you've thought through any of the practical ramifications.

Actually, I have thought through at least most of them. Some of your objections have been addressed by others in other posts below my prior comment, so please read through those if I don't take them up here.

What happens when you have to borrow a friend's truck for the weekend (e.g., so you can haul some stuff from the local hardware store)?

Either you should have thought of that and got your license upgraded ahead of time, or you should pay the local hardware store to make a delivery. Most of them offer such a service.

What happens if you have to take another route that you are not licensed for (i.e., accident on the interstate causes you to have to take some back roads)?

Detours introduce controlled traffic, and would be accessible to drivers with lesser licenses even when the route was otherwise restricted. Speed limits might well be modified in such a situation, and they often are already.

Are you then liable to get a ticket for driving somewhere you aren't licensed to drive? Is your GPS to blame then, or are you simply screwed?

Whether your GPS manufacturer covers you for sending you down a route you're not licenses to use is between you and your GPS manufacturer, just as whether your radar detector manufacturer covers you for a ticket is between you.

I think a far better idea is to have more rigorous federal standards for driver's license requirements, much like Germany.

I don't think you can reasonably be disqualifying masses of people from driving at all in a nation in which you are so dependent upon an automobile. As I am fond of pointing out, public transportation in the USA is a bad joke. It works okay in a handful of cities, and even works kind of okay in some metro areas, but there's nowhere it's really up to a reasonable standard. New York might be the closest, but everyone and their mother talks about the urine smell. I, for one, cannot handle that overmuch, and I do not enjoy vomiting. The piss around SF is bad enough.

I'm all for improving public transportation, like bringing back rail and implementing PRT in packed cities, but I don't expect anything to improve materially along those lines any time soon.

Re:Uber?

[rtb61]

On a planet with limited resources, really, the easiest solution is the best. Simply put limits on power to weight ratios for domestic use vehicles and limit the weight just in case. Serves no purpose and it will not make people's genitals any larger, so simply ban the excess. Can a vehicle be declared unfit for purpose when it is unsafe to drive, yes.

Re:Uber?

[Phoghat]

I don't think the Tesla forced her to drive.

or drink

Re: Uber?

[Coren22]

But Hillary lost the election.

Dont Buy It

[Anonymous Coward]

If you dont want a car that accelerates quickly dont buy a car that accelerates quickly.

Re: Dont Buy It

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. He's had an extreme emotional experience and is now irrational, at least where this topic is concerned. It's too much to expect a parent to say "my daughter got blind drunk and crashed her car. She is solely responsible for her and her passenger's deaths."

So we should stop publicising his grief stricken grasping at justification.

Re:Dont Buy It

[Desler]

Sure, he is now trying to find blame in others rather accept his daughter is entirely to blame for driving drunk and killing someone else.

Re: Dont Buy It

[mellon]

The Prius is actually pretty zippy, because you get an electric motor _plus_ a gas motor when you punch it.

Re:Dont Buy It

[tsqr]

I'm sure daddy was creaming his pants and bragging to his buddies over the acceleration before this happened.

Probably.

Then his daughter died. His perspective likely changed at that point.

Its okay, you can't even imagine how a father would feel until you are one. Even as one, its pretty hard to imagine what it must be like to lose a daughter.

I imagine he hs a lot different today than he was before the Tesla.

Read TFA (yeah, I know). The Tesla belonged to the passenger. Daddy didn't know anything about it.

Re:Dont Buy It

[tsqr]

Sure, he is now trying to find blame in others rather accept his daughter is entirely to blame for driving drunk and killing someone else.

Well, since the car belonged to the passenger and not the driver, I think it might be appropriate to say that the "someone else" in this case may have actually killed himself and the girl by saying, "I'm too drunk; why don't you drive?".

Re: Dont Buy It

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh FFS read the article before you comment, you fucking troglodyte. It wasn't even her car, it was her bosses car, he was the passenger, this was after a company event, and she was 27.

Jesus you people are fucking stupid.

Re:Dont Buy It

[drinkypoo]

Well, since the car belonged to the passenger and not the driver, I think it might be appropriate to say that the "someone else" in this case may have actually killed himself and the girl by saying, "I'm too drunk; why don't you drive?".

Absolutely not. It was her responsibility to say "no". This isn't a fucking rape, this is something she chose to do. No one is at fault except the person who takes the action, or anyone who forces them into it. No, threatening their job is not forcing them; loss of job is less serious than loss of life. If you have become too intoxicated to make that call, then you have become too intoxicated and should not drink that much ever again. And she never will.

Re: Dont Buy It

[beelsebob]

The reason the engine revs constantly is because the Prius has a clever mechanism using two electric motors and a differential that keeps the gasoline engine reving at exactly its optimal RPM.

That said, yes, the Prius is slow as shit.

Re:Dont Buy It

[david_thornley]

There is no absolute definition of "force" that can be used. If someone puts a gun to my head and makes a demand, I can always refuse and accept the alternative of having my brains splattered everywhere. If an authority figure gives an order, and someone complies, the authority figure is partly responsible.

We also don't know why she was that drunk. It might be a case of her pouring herself drinks until she couldn't hold the bottle any more. It might be that someone spiked whatever she was drinking (someone once did that to a friend who was counting his drinks and being responsible - fortunately, no permanent damage). She may have been pushed into drinking too much. She might have figured that she'd sober up before she had to drive anywhere, believing she had a ride home.

Once she was that drunk,expecting responsibility is foolish. You mentioned rape: with this much alcohol in her blood she was probably not able to legally consent to sex. Had the boss proposed sex, and gone ahead when she agreed, he could have been committing a felony (rape or criminal sexual conduct or whatever it's called in that jurisdiction).

Also, consider the situation: she lost control while trying to avoid a car going the wrong way.

I'm not saying that it isn't her fault. I'm saying that the accident was probably not entirely her fault..

Re:Dont Buy It

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure daddy was creaming his pants and bragging to his buddies over the acceleration before this happened.

I'm sure you are wrong. The car belonged to a coworker at the office. The father probably never saw the car.

there's a whole article you can read about it linked from the story.

Re:Dont Buy It

[drinkypoo]

If an authority figure gives an order, and someone complies, the authority figure is partly responsible.

I would say that they are equally responsible, not partly responsible. There is no way to adequately share the burden, because you cannot undo what has been done.

Also, consider the situation: she lost control while trying to avoid a car going the wrong way.

Yes, that sort of thing happens. But it tends to go a lot more badly while drunk.

I'm not saying that it isn't her fault. I'm saying that the accident was probably not entirely her fault..

If toxicology reveals that she was suffering from a spiked drink, then I'll show some sympathy. That's fair, and you're right, I didn't take the possibility into account in my comments.

Re: Dont Buy It

[catchblue22]

The reason the engine revs constantly is because the Prius has a clever mechanism using two electric motors and a differential that keeps the gasoline engine reving at exactly its optimal RPM.

That said, yes, the Prius is slow as shit.

My 2010 Prius

does 0 to 60 in 9.7 seconds. Now that isn't massively fast, but I'm not sure I'd call it "slow as shit". I think I'd call the acceleration "average". It is certainly enough to safely merge on the freeway, and when I accelerate with passengers, they are usually surprised how fast it goes.

Re: Dont Buy It

[HornWumpus]

It's 'average' for a 'slow as shit' car.

Re:Dont Buy It

[robinsc]

I blame the boss in the passenger seat... He probably was trying to seduce his employee by letting her have a turn at the wheel of his tesla...

Father of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternative headline: father explains parenting strategy for raising irresponsible children.

"The key is to blame others," he said.

Re:Father of the year

[shakah]

Alternative headline: father explains parenting strategy for raising irresponsible children.

"The key is to blame others," he said.

Another alternative:"father begins laying the foundation for wrongful death suit defense" (for when Mr. McCarthy's estate sues).

Reverse logic

[mwvdlee]

"Had she been in another vehicle, she would have been alive for me to yell at her for driving after drinking"

LMFTFY

"Had she been drinking under the legal limit, she would have been alive AND still had her vehicle"

Count your blessings your daughter only murdered one passenger, and not more innocent bystanders.

Re:Reverse logic

[jimbolauski]

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.

Re:Reverse logic

[Jason Levine]

This doesn't remove the "driving drunk" as a blame factor, it just adds "car driving the wrong way down a one way street" to the list. Her being drunk likely contributed to poor reactions that led to the accident. However, this doesn't add "the car accelerates like a rocket ship" to the list of causes to the accident, despite what the father says.

As a father, I get the impulse to not want to blame your child. Not to mention that he just lost his daughter. That's not a time in a person's life when they are 100% rational. Still, the hard truth is that his daughter was at least half to blame (with the other half going to the driver going the wrong way). The car's acceleration wasn't the cause of his daughter's death.

Re:Reverse logic

[OzPeter]

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.

Let me restate your logic for you.

If Speckman hadn't swerved when she was carrying an open container of gasoline in one hand, then she wouldn' have dropped the lighted match she had in her other hand into said container (and thus wouldn't have blown herself and her companion to shit)

The car coming the other way may have been the trigger, but the root cause of the crash was that she was drunk and playing with fire.

Re:Reverse logic

[squiggleslash]

Moderate Drink driving is probably fairly safe in circumstances where nothing happens that would require you take action. Sure, if you're blind drunk to the point you can't even stay in your lane then an accident is inevitable, but if you're merely at the stage that your judgment is severely impaired, then the accidents will happen only if you actually have to use your judgment.

Which is probably why so many people drive drunk - they've driven drunk before, nothing happened, because nothing unexpected happened, so giving them a false sense of security.

Re:Reverse logic

[dcollins117]

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.

Re:Reverse logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect.

Whether or not a totally sober person may have had exactly the same result can in no way COMPLETELY remove "driving drunk" as a blame factor.

She shouldn't have been driving drunk period. She drove when she she shouldn't have been, it's a factor in the deaths.

Re: Reverse logic

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame God! Why has God created such trees, that decelerate a car so quickly? If the tree would only have decelerated the car more slowly, she'd still be alive.

Re:Reverse logic

[ChrisMaple]

A completely sober driver would probably have stopped. If the sober driver had tried instead to avoid the wrong-way car, the sober driver might not have hit the tree, or not hit it at full throttle. Drunkenness plays havoc with reaction times and judgement. A drunk is also more likely to miss the brake pedal and hit the accelerator, or not recognize that mistake.

Re:Reverse logic

[drinkypoo]

It could COMPLETELY remove it as a blame factor - a totally sober person may have had exactly the same result.

A person can fall of a ladder while sober, but they're vastly more likely to fall off while drunk, and if they fall off a ladder while drunk you don't say "well, that could have happened while you were sober", you say "what is wrong with you, you stupid drunk arse, sit down before you break your fucking neck." Unless, of course, they've already broken their fucking neck.

Or, you know, got into a car and killed themselves and another person.

Re:Reverse logic

[Anonymous Coward]

that and a "-1 Didn't RTFA" for most of this thread

Re:Reverse logic

[nitehawk214]

"probably fairly safe"

No, fuck you, no.

"nothing happens that would require you take action"

Again, fuck you. You are driving a god damned car, something is happening that is requiring you to take action right there.

Justify driving drunk any way you want, I hope you are the only one that dies when you wreck.

Re:Reverse logic

[nitehawk214]

Well don't feel too bad for the passenger. It was his car and he was drunk too.

Re:Reverse logic

[Khashishi]

I don't have sympathy for the passenger for giving his keys to a drunk woman and getting in the car.

Re:Reverse logic

[Gilgaron]

So... you didn't finish reading his post?

Re:Reverse logic

[OzPeter]

I don't have sympathy for the passenger for giving his keys to a drunk woman and getting in the car.

The owner was shit faced. So how can he tell that the driver was just as shit faced? His Judgement was already impaired.

Re:Reverse logic

[T.E.D.]

Well don't feel too bad for the passenger. It was his car and he was drunk too.

....AND he was her boss, out getting drunk alone with a much younger female subordinate. There are so many levels of inappropriate here that its tough to list them all.

Re:Reverse logic

[grnbrg]

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.

Re:Reverse logic

[RivenAleem]

Her menstrual cycle really shouldn't be brought into this conversation. It wasn't mentioned in the summary or the article, so why add it in now?

Re:Reverse logic

[david_thornley]

We hold people responsible for what they do when drunk. She ran the car into a tree and killed two people. He gave his keys to a thoroughly intoxicated driver. Both are bad, and neither are excusable because of alcohol.

Re:Reverse logic

[plague911]

I like how you just randomly decide where the limits of a butterfly effect stop. Tools with inappropriately weak safety features can be considered to blame for bad results.

Re:Reverse logic

[gidzero]

Was he (the passenger, and vehicle owner) keeping his hands to himself or were there also other distractions contributing to an already dangerous situation? Doesn't "insane" mode on the Tesla have to be specifically enabled? Was it enabled? Can they pull the black box and even find out if insane mode had engaged during the fatal trip?

Re:Reverse logic

[HornWumpus]

What? Not understanding the tools you use are to blame for bad results. It's your job to be safe, _many_ tools are dangerous by their nature. Cars are at the top of that list, based on death and injury statistics.

Do you blame the electric drill when some moron 'terrapins' their skull.

Re:Reverse logic

[HornWumpus]

Boss _and_ engaged.

She had likely been bugging him to drive the Tesla for a while, alcohol and pussy affected his judgement and he let her.

Re:Reverse logic

[dfghjk]

"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."

No, we don't drink and drive because it's unsafe, not because of punitive definitions.

"...and the driver's BAL was three times the limit."

This lie is working as intended. The BAL was not "three times the limit".

Re:Reverse logic

[Ogive17]

I've actually seen instances where other factors did come into play. There was a football player, maybe 5 years ago, that hit and killed a pedestrian that was trying to cross an interstate. The football player's BAC was slightly above the legal limit.

If I remember correctly, he did spend some time in jail and had a settlement with the family of the man who was killed, however the courts also put a portion of the blame on the guy who was trying to cross the interstate on foot. If he had been completely sober, the football player would have had no liability at all.

Now that doesn't give a good indication how this might turn out but I do think there's a possibility the driver that was going the wrong way does end up sharing a small portion of the blame (if there's a civil suit). Criminally that person will get a traffic ticket.

Re:Reverse logic

[jimbolauski]

Unless you can prove that the accident would not have happened had she been sober your statement is false.

Alcohol

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, the cause was a drunk driver not how fast the car accelerated. Could of done the same thing in any car.

Re: Alcohol

[Anonymous Coward]

Could of, should of, would of. This truly is a story of the ofs and the of nots.

Re:Alcohol

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
There's a reason it's illegal to drive with a blood alcohol level of .08%.
It's because that's where impairment generally begins.

Re:Alcohol

[nedlohs]

> With a blood alcohol level of .21 you're not "drunk".

At 0.21 you are in the BAC range where the physiological effects are typically: confusion, dizziness, exaggerated emotions (anger, fear, grief) impaired visual perception, decreased pain sensation, impaired balance, staggering gait, slurred speech, moderate muscular incoordination. Which I think most people would classify as "drunk".

Re:Alcohol

[fisted]

It happened so fast we almost missed it.

No, it's just that you were the only one not realizing that both mistakes were intentional. Protip: It's obvious when you realize that no one in their right mind would accidentally type 'have' when meaning to type 'of'.

Re:Alcohol

[nitehawk214]

The grammar mistakes are because he is at .21, but not drunk.

Re:Alcohol

[fisted]

First you call it a lie, then you realize what happened. Is your point that even 0.02 % BAC is "very drunk"?

Re: Alcohol

[freeze128]

It's not fixed enough. Fix it more.

Idiot

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

"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."

Because some people WANT a car that does that. There's no reason you had to buy it though. Entirely your fault. Blame yourself. Every single day of the rest of your life blame yourself.

Re:Idiot

[jeremyp]

Maybe her foot wouldn't have hit the accelerator if she wasn't drunk.

Re:Idiot

[hipp5]

Blame yourself. Every single day of the rest of your life blame yourself.

Or blame your daughter for drunk driving. Or even better, don't bother (she's dead). Just grieve, accept that shit happens, and accept that throwing blame around doesn't really fix anything in this case.

Re:Idiot

[esposed]

Woah. I felt like this was way passed the line. Blaming a grieving father for words that come from a place we can only hope we will never understand is pretty lame. There's few things in life you get a pass on, but the death of a child is certainly one of those things. Relax.

Re:Idiot

[phayes]

No. A "grieving father" doesn't get a free pass to blame others for his daughter's (and his own) responsibilities in the accident.
- Drinking 3 times over the limit and then _driving_.
- Purchasing a vehicle that is beyond your capacity to handle (at least while drunk).

Who exactly was it that _didn't_ sufficiently ingrain into his daughter that drinking and driving is lethal?

Re:Idiot

[mysticgoat]

Building a case for a lawsuit against Tesla is not appropriate for a grieving father, either. But he already has his legal dog sniffing around, and one of the things they are looking at is whether they could present a case that Tesla failed to nannify their car sufficiently. Remember, in this kind of high visibility case, you don't need to have a winning argument in order to exact a fat settlement. You only need to be able to threaten that you can make enough noise to damage Tesla's reputation.

I don't own a Tesla and if I was given one I'd sell it or give it away: it doesn't fit my lifestyle. But I've been following Tesla's development. Their engineering is sound and their approach to vehicle safety is very good. But barring nannystate features like an obligatory breathalyzer before the car will start, there is no more Tesla can do to protect against the drunk driver.

Re:Idiot

[dwillden]

Agreed, and is he suing the bar that served the drinks? Or perhaps the drink manufacturers themselves. After all if they hadn't made and sold the booze, she wouldn't have drank so much that she couldn't react safely to the wrong-way driver.

Re:Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel bad for his loss, but his argument is ridiculous.

When she swerved, clearly she turned too far. Why would anyone make a car that steers so fast? Why?! Why?!?

As for acceleration, what if it had been the other way around? If only she could have accelerated faster, she could have gotten out of the way. Why would anyone make a car that accelerates so sluggishly? Why?

Also, it doesn't seem clear who was going the wrong way down the one way street? Her? Or the other car?

Re:Idiot

[mellon]

The thing about this is that I've driven a Tesla, and it's true that if you really put the pedal to the medal, it accelerates like fuck, but it would be really hard to do it accidentally—if you just put your foot on it normally, it doesn't take off on you. Bottom line, this is why we need self-driving cars. It's an absolute tragedy that we rely on human reflexes to avoid accidents.

Re:Idiot

[nedlohs]

Since he didn't buy it. And he wasn't the one who was drunk. And he wasn't driving. How exactly is this entirely his fault?

Re:Idiot

[drinkypoo]

Because some people WANT a car that does that. There's no reason you had to buy it though. Entirely your fault. Blame yourself. Every single day of the rest of your life blame yourself.

She didn't buy it. It was her boss' car. She had no business driving it while drunk, probably for the first time. Her boss possibly said "I'm too drunk to drive" and she said "I'm not" but she was — indeed, her BAC was higher than his.

Let's see what else I can leave in this comment while I'm here... the debris field is large enough to show that the car was moving quite quickly, if not very quickly. Autopilot is not meant to be used in these conditions, so if it was turned on, then that's just more evidence that the driver is at fault. But it doesn't accelerate like a mad bastard, because why would it, so it's probably not the culprit. The father did a crappy job of raising his daughter and now she's dead and we're arguing about it, the end.

Re:Idiot

[Jeremi]

No. A "grieving father" doesn't get a free pass to blame others for his daughter's (and his own) responsibilities in the accident.

Certainly not on Slashdot, anyway, because we're all heartless dicks with no empathy for anyone and a 100% commitment to pursue our mindless blinkered pedantry in each and every situation, no matter how crass or inappropriate it may be. I know, let's all send him hate mail now! That'll teach him not to be illogical when he's grieving!

Re:Idiot

[drinkypoo]

Certainly not on Slashdot, anyway, because we're all heartless dicks with no empathy for anyone and a 100% commitment to pursue our mindless blinkered pedantry in each and every situation,

The notion that people should simply open their mouths and let shit spew out is a defective one. Remember when people said "no comments because we're grieving"? Pepperidge Farms remembers. He took this opportunity to make a statement, and like all statements, it's fair game for criticism. His grief doesn't eliminate his responsibility. If he can't make intelligent things come out of his face, he should close it.

Re:Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

The father had nothing to do with the vehicle. It was owned by the passenger (the driver's boss).

Re:Idiot

[phorm]

from a place we can only hope we will never understand

What, his ass? Because that's the only place this could come from.

What next? "He was a really nice guy and he wouldn't have shot all those people and himself if not for that high-powered rifle"

Re:Idiot

[RivenAleem]

Exactly, who needs drinks that can take you from 0 to 0.21 BAL? Some of those drinks are like rocket fuel!

Re:Idiot

[david_thornley]

Actually, depending on the circumstances, it might be worthwhile to find out why she was that drunk. It won't do his daughter any good, but it might prevent later deaths. Getting blood alcohol to .21% at a company function is not something that should happen, and her boss was also far more drunk than he should have gotten.

Re:Idiot

[david_thornley]

I don't know if they still exist, but there have been "dram shop" laws that hold bartenders liable for giving drinks to people who are already drunk. If there was a bartender at the company function, said bartender may be in legal trouble.

Re:Idiot

[HornWumpus]

Needs, no.

Want's, raises hand. Pretty much any booze can get you to 0.21% Maybe not 3.2% beer.

Re:Idiot

[HornWumpus]

Pussyfoot. Stomp that throttle.

Re:Idiot

[phayes]

No argument that /. has lost much over the years but painting everyone here as heartless dicks is hyperbole and speaks more to a depression you seem to be undergoing than to the supposed lack of empathy we (those /.ers that aren't you) have.

We have moved beyond declaring vendettas, feuds and vigilantes for the loss of loved ones (letting the justice system assume the burden). Why should we continue to humour someone when they lash out and shirk the blame onto innocents? One can grieve without lashing out & the father should have done so.

Re: Idiot

[DoofusOfDeath]

I think you misunderstood the point. I don't think anyone is saying that the father gets a permanent pass on that kind of logic.

Rather, we're saying to ignore what he's saying for now, because the poor guy is out of his mind with a level of grief we'd wish on almost nobody.

Re: Idiot

[phayes]

That I and others do not agree with "Oooh he's grieving we need to allow him to grieve by blaming innocents" != missing the intended point.

Should a grieving father be able to blame an innocent man? Go back 70 years... When a posse of like minded men hunt down and hang that innocent black man, the father's blind lashing out shares in the responsibility of that abomination.

Grief is no different than Hate, Fear, Love or any other emotion in that it does not justify blaming innocents.

Bad comparison with a 'rocketship'.

[DirkDaring]

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.

Re:Bad comparison with a 'rocketship'.

[religionofpeas]

I believe the Falcon 9 accelerates slower. I've estimates of 2 m/s^2. If that's correct, it would only be going 14 mph when the Tesla was already going 60.

Really?

[Higaran]

I get the guy is grieving because he lost his kids, but that is some of the dumbest things I've ever heard. For the price of that tesla, he could be driving a porsche, or any other sports, or luxury car which would have a similar speed. It might not be 0-60 in 3.1, but when your drunk it doesn't really matter if its 3.1 or even 5 seconds because at .21 BAC the driver was wasted. I can't say that I haven't done the same thing when I was in that state, but it really is like playing russian roulette.

DUI is DUI

[jef41305739]

Damn roads were also paved, making it possible for the speeds over 10 MPH. The city should of put in more speed bumps to prevent this from happening. DUI is DUI, people still kill themselves with "slow" cars.

Clearly

[tomhath]

"She's clearly having to swerve to miss a vehicle going the wrong way on a one-way street.

She's clearly drunk and driving out of control when she's hitting the tree and scattering the car over a 150 yard long debris field. It remains to be seen if there was another car on the street at the time.

Sigh

[ledow]

They're over the limit?

Sorry, whatever the ultimate cause of the accident, they were unfit to drive, thus pontificating over what they "would have" done in another is absolutely pointless. This driver got into a car and drove off when there was even a RISK of being near or over the limit and never questioned it.

They are, therefore, a BAD DRIVER. The cause of their death - whether that's a guy on the wrong side of the road, unintended acceleration, a fire, etc. is incidental to their decision to drive. That's why we make brakes and steering wheels and train people to pass a test to ensure they're fit to drive, so you can avoid obstacles, stop the car, press the right pedal and not lose control if you're being a driver of even satisfactory driving skill.

Yeah, it's sad. Yeah that kind of acceleration is unnecessary. Yeah, maybe there was a guy on your side of the road - it happens, there are idiots everywhere and people use the other side for overtaking, manoeuvres, etc. all the time. But the driver drove a car without knowing its capabilities, or feeling discomfort at it themselves enough to NOT drive it, or without taking "due care" (a phrase that will come up a lot) to ensure they didn't accelerate unintentionally no matter the situation. And they chose to do so while their judgement was impaired beyond legal limits.

Contributing factors are the least of your problems, compared to telling your OTHER sons and daughters, and their friends and family to NEVER DRIVE DRUNK if they don't want to kill themselves and others.

That you have to state that to an adult is really a sad state of affairs.

If it had been on a Harley (there are electric Harley's now too!), and they'd done the same, would you be calling for motorbikes to be outlawed where you weren't saying that before? The device is not the problem - someone pressing the throttle when they mean the brake is never going to end well, even for a fraction of a second. The problem is that you have allowed yourself to bring up your children to think that drink-driving is fine and acceptable, even if you know it's illegal, and then blame others when your KILLER of a child takes someone else out too by driving drunk.

Fuck, I don't even let work colleagues do that. I have literally removed people's keys and they've started fights with me over doing so. If your own child did it, fix that problem before you look at ANYTHING else.

Sorry

[argStyopa]

...as much as I'd like to strongly disagree with him, I'm simply not going to go after something a parent says after losing a child. No matter how dumb or self-destructive the child was, etc.

That person is grasping at whatever straws they can to maintain their sanity. They're out of bounds.

Now, I would take to task the editor(s) of the Indianapolis Star for printing that shit. At a certain point, morally, one would have to say "You know, maybe that doesn't need to be in our article."

Re:Sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope this retard is not out of bounds. His daughter was an irresponsible asshole who murdered another person and almost murdered people in another car. It's a shame the daughter isn't still alive to have to live with murdering someone else for the rest of her life.

Re:Sorry

[haruchai]

...as much as I'd like to strongly disagree with him, I'm simply not going to go after something a parent says after losing a child. No matter how dumb or self-destructive the child was, etc.

That person is grasping at whatever straws they can to maintain their sanity. They're out of bounds.

Now, I would take to task the editor(s) of the Indianapolis Star for printing that shit. At a certain point, morally, one would have to say "You know, maybe that doesn't need to be in our article."

While I wouldn't cut him any slack for such a stupid statement, I don't hold it again anyone who would.
But if he files a lawsuit against Tesla because of this, then both he & his lawyer are a$$holes$

Re:Sorry

[stephanruby]

Now, I would take to task the editor(s) of the Indianapolis Star for printing that shit. At a certain point, morally, one would have to say "You know, maybe that doesn't need to be in our article."

Clearly, that's not how click-baiting works.

Revenue is king. An editor who says stuff like that would just get himself fired.

Re:Sorry

[Desler]

Now, I would take to task the editor(s) of the Indianapolis Star for printing that shit. At a certain point, morally, one would have to say "You know, maybe that doesn't need to be in our article."

Yeah, how dare they print statements he made voluntarily for the explicit purpose of being in an article.

Re:Sorry

[Kjella]

...as much as I'd like to strongly disagree with him, I'm simply not going to go after something a parent says after losing a child. No matter how dumb or self-destructive the child was, etc. That person is grasping at whatever straws they can to maintain their sanity. They're out of bounds. Now, I would take to task the editor(s) of the Indianapolis Star for printing that shit. At a certain point, morally, one would have to say "You know, maybe that doesn't need to be in our article."

It's the clickbait that got it to the front page of /. so I'm sure the editors think it was a job well done. If it was some crazy lawsuit I'd rake him over the coals but this seems just a grieving dad that can't cope. Like every other "good kid hanging with a bad crowd" story, really.

Re:Sorry

[mysticgoat]

If in fact this was a father's grieving rant, then I agree with your sentiment. Give him space.

Unfortunately there are features in this story that suggest that this might be the beginning of a wrongful death suit against Tesla. The mention of a lawyer being involved, and therefore presumably advising the "distraught" father about what to say in public. How big a settlement might be squeezed from Tesla? If you are going for a fat settlement, then you don't need a winning case, you don't have to be able to prove anything. You just need to demonstrate that you can be a massive pain in the butt until you are paid off. Will we next be hearing comparisons between Tesla's acceleration pedal and the Ford Pinto's gas tank?

People who are truly grieving usually don't make such a public spectacle of it.

Re:Sorry

[drinkypoo]

...as much as I'd like to strongly disagree with him, I'm simply not going to go after something a parent says after losing a child.

You mean, after raising a child that drove drunk and could have killed a whole bunch of people because of her shitty upbringing? You'd rather give him a free pass so that he goes out and does more shit things? If he doesn't want to be told that he killed his daughter by raising her wrong, he should shut the fuck up. Right now, the rest of us are just glad we weren't in the way when she floored the accelerator pedal.

That person is grasping at whatever straws they can to maintain their sanity. They're out of bounds.

They're a piece of shit, and they weren't sane to begin with. That's why they can blame their failures on others.

Re:Sorry

[nitehawk214]

Your .sig is appropriate.

Re:Sorry

[Strudelkugel]

What's truly disgusting about this tragic situation is the the attorney. A good attorney would let the client know that given the circumstances, odds of winning in court are minimal and the pain of going through the pretrial procedures will be painful. Tesla might settle to make the case go away, but the client will still have to go through discovery and depositions. A settlement wont bring the people back, and it won't be that The defense will be all over the daughter's "lifestyle choices", the relationship with her boss, etc. The family of her boss will be forced to endure the same interrogation. The client's attorney doesn't care - He just sees easy money, no matter how much pain it causes everyone including his client. This is the kind of case that gives attorneys a very bad reputation.

Blame the tree

[hlavac]

Blame the guy that planted the tree! It is indisputable that had he not put that tree there she would be alive! And beer! Beer companies have a lot of money too! Sue beer company for killing her! Idiot.

Transference of Blame

[dav1dc]

It's really easy to shift blame away from your loved ones, and onto a faceless corporation while throwing your arms up in the air and shouting:

"Please, won't someone think of the children!"

The fact of the matter is: his daughter chose to drive drunk, and she crashed the [fast] car. Not only did she endanger herself, but her passenger as well.
The bottom line is: his daughter would still be alive had she driven sober [and this is a true fact if the car she was driving is fast or slow]

Re:Transference of Blame

[david_thornley]

The bottom line is: his daughter would still be alive had she driven sober

Probably. Without knowing what happened, that's speculation.

Bargaining...

[msauve]

"Had she been in another vehicle, she would have been alive for me to yell at her for driving after drinking,"

This happened last November, and he's at the 3rd stage of grief. He's going to get depressed when people point out he's being an idiot in public.

I take it he's campaigning for

[Chrisq]

I take it he's campaigning for the reinstatement of the red flag law. Seriously how fast does he think cars should be allowed to travel of accelerate? If all were limited to 20mph then almost all accidents would be survivable (though daresay you'd get some drunk idiots driving into rivers or off cliffs even at that speed).

Re:I take it he's campaigning for

[HornWumpus]

I drove a Honda 600N for a while. It could do 55, down a steep hill with a strong wind at it's back.

Improved my driving immeasurably.

Captain Obvious police report.

[geekmux]

"...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 "

As a parent, I cannot imagine the grief this father is dealing with right now, but I certainly I hope this lapse of common sense in a desperate attempt to blame the car is temporary, given this report released by Captain Obvious.

Unfortunately, the cars performance is not the main factor that caused a loss of life. One must not only be sober, but capable of handling a car that can deliver Fast and Furious performance. While I don't agree with this stupid and pointless race to ludicrous speed in the EV market right now, if you can't handle a car, then don't drive the fucking thing, no matter what technology is powering it.

Re:Captain Obvious police report.

[markdavis]

>"As a parent, I cannot imagine the grief this father is dealing with right now, but I certainly I hope this lapse of common sense in a desperate attempt to blame the car is temporary, given this report released by Captain Obvious."

Yet we see it ALL THE TIME. Child shot- it is the gun's fault, guns should be banned. Lung cancer- it is the cigarette's fault, cigarettes should be banned. Child killed in a fast car- it is the car's fault, fast cars should be banned. It isn't much of a leap. I call it the "save the children" mentality. It is when all logic and reason gets thrown out the window for a totally emotional response. Doesn't have to be about children either, it is just a general emotional response to control things and others. This is why we now live in a country where everyone is a terrorist suspect and our privacy and constitutional rights have eroded away.

* I don't want to live in a world that is perfectly safe.
* People need to take responsibility for their own decisions.
* You can't really be free and safe at the same time.
* Sometimes bad things just happen.
* Just because something isn't right for you, doesn't mean it isn't right for everyone.

Ability to limit performance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with everyone that the car is not to blame but maybe Tesla should think about allowing owners to limit acceleration when desired. I could see that being beneficial for new drivers, people new to driving performance cars, people you lend the car to, valets, etc. I think they have a valet mode already that does this?

Re:Ability to limit performance?

[Duhavid]

From my reading, the car will not do it's ultimate performance unless it is placed into either "Ludicrous" or "Insane" mode.
Sounds like they have already thought on this.

Can anyone say personal responsibilty?

[kallen3]

No one made her drink that much, no one made her get in the car and mash down on the accelerator. In fact no one made her buy a car like that. Perhaps he should have yelled at her before she got into the habit of drinking so much. Either way it is not Tesla's fault, but her own fault.

Re:Can anyone say personal responsibilty?

[Chrisq]

Can anyone say personal responsibilty?

Personon ...
Pewsonal responsanailili...
No - not after the amount I've had to drink!

Re:Can anyone say personal responsibilty?

[david_thornley]

No one made her drink that much,

Do you know how she got that drunk? If not, you're speculating. Her drinks might have been spiked. Heck, there's nothing actually wrong with drinking that much, aside from the health risks, and she may have been promised a ride home.

It was, in fact, her boss's car, and he was in the passenger seat. There may be a story behind that that would tell us more.

One thing I'm completely confident of: it wasn't Tesla's fault.

The driver was drunk

[sjbe]

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

And it is the car at fault? Yeah I'm not buying it either. Methinks the drinking had a lot more do do with this crash than any other factor. I understand it is hard for some parents to believe that their precious snowflake might have made a bad choice and earned a Darwin Award.

Re:What's the emoticon for mouth hanging open?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we should not expect distraught parents to STFU after a child dies. We should expect reporters to leave them alone and not take statements at such a trying time when they aren't thinking clearly. In this case, he gets swarmed because there was a Tesla involved. Had it been any other vehicle, he would have been left alone to say whatever irrational things might come out of any distraught parent's mouth after death of a child.

The reporters should STFU and leave the guy alone.

It's always someone elses fault

[nehumanuscrede]

Not only did the guy buy the Tesla knowing full well what its capabilities were, he let his kiddo borrow it. To be honest, it could have been any car. Lots of people die every damn day from alcohol related crashes. The fact that this one involved a Tesla is now merely a statistic somewhere.

Why is it that no one these days bothers to take responsibility for their actions. It's always the fault of someone or something else.

It can't be his daughters fault that she was drunk, it's the folks who sold it to her !
Or the folks who manufactured it. . . .
Or the folks who shipped it. . . .
Etc. Etc.

It's a tragic loss. It always is.

However the facts are simple: His daughter CHOSE to drive while drunk.
( Welcome to being one of ~90k people killed every year from it )

THAT'S what killed her.

Not the car.

Re:It's always someone elses fault

[i.r.id10t]

Yup. There is a reason that I wasn't allowed to drive Dad's 911 while a teenager and unsupervised. And yes, the first time I drove it I discovered scary fast acceleration - gave a little gas to get over a speed bump at "almost not moving" speed and let the clutch up, a moment later I'm at 35 and could have still been accelerating.

And that was in a car that is considered fairly sedate

Re:It's always someone elses fault

[tsqr]

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!"

Re:It's always someone elses fault

[gweihir]

As a related fact, Wikipedia lists the expected symptoms as "Severe motor impairment, Loss of consciousness, Memory blackout". This is not some mild intoxication. This is stone drunk and barely able to walk. Anybody driving in that condition is asking for death, and not just their own.

Guess what, Dad

[MachineShedFred]

Many people drive performance vehicles that accelerate as fast, or almost as fast every day without plowing into trees. You know why? They don't do it sloshed.

When you are sober, you actually have the fine motor control and reaction time necessary to capably control a machine like that. When you're a drunk fucking retard, you are far more likely to mash the accelerator, oversteer, and react to situations late, losing control. It might be why there are laws against driving while intoxicated.

Have your fucking lawyer look into that one.

Re:Guess what, Dad

[drinkypoo]

When you are sober, you actually have the fine motor control and reaction time necessary to capably control a machine like that.

His young daughter probably did not have the experience necessary to capably control a machine like that even when sober. If all your driving experiences have been with gutless wonders with old school slush boxes then mashing the accelerator pedal to avoid an accident might seem reasonable. Also, most people do not use the proper seating position nor arrange their seatbelt correctly, and in that condition simply mashing the accelerator pedal can cause you to lose your seating position completely and thus have trouble maintaining your relationship to the pedals. This is more common with braking, but it's not impossible with acceleration. If you're leaning forward, then get shoved back in your seat, the whole world seems to move around you — especially if you are sloshed-off-your-arse drunk, which is what the woman's BAC tells us.

Re:Guess what, Dad

[gweihir]

His young daughter probably did not have the experience necessary to capably control a machine like that even when sober.

Well, maybe. But 27 is not "young" anymore. And in a sober state, she would probably have hit the brakes and stopped driving. You know one thing that alcohol makes you? It makes you _reckless_. There is no excuse for drunk drivers killing people.

the humanity!

[ooloorie]

"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"

It is of course totally evil how Tesla forces wealthy 27-year-olds to buy massively overpowered cars for $100000, then forces them to get completely drunk, and then forces them to get behind the wheel and endanger other drivers! The humanity! There ought to be a law to protect the people from such evil corporations! /sarc

No free pass to hurt other people

[sjbe]

...as much as I'd like to strongly disagree with him, I'm simply not going to go after something a parent says after losing a child. No matter how dumb or self-destructive the child was, etc.

Fair enough. I will do it. His daughter was driving drunk and by doing so endangered the lives and property of others. It's tragic that anyone lost their life but the reality is that his daughter was apparently 100% at fault here. Tesla did not cause her to crash or to operate a vehicle in an irresponsible fashion. I don't care how distraught he is, that doesn't give him a free pass to put the blame where it doesn't belong. He's lashing out and hurting still more people who had nothing to do with his daughter's foolish behavior and I'm not fine with that.

That person is grasping at whatever straws they can to maintain their sanity. They're out of bounds.

His sanity is of no concern to me when he starts trying to hurt other people to sooth his grief.

Now, I would take to task the editor(s) of the Indianapolis Star for printing that shit. At a certain point, morally, one would have to say "You know, maybe that doesn't need to be in our article."

If he said it then it's not the newspaper's fault for reporting that. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Re:No free pass to hurt other people

[hackwrench]

He is free to blame whoever he wants. That doesn't mean he is free to win money from Tesla at trial though.

Re:No free pass to hurt other people

[Custard Horse]

Even if the daughter isn't to blame, the owner of the car - her boss - who was also killed, gave her the keys (or whatever you use to operate the Tesla). The daughter might be an adult but still relatively young whreas the boss was 44, old enough to have obtained a Tesla as a personal/company vehicle, yet he stupid enough to get drunk and allow another drunk to drive him home/wherever.

To allow any lawsuit to gain any traction would be the thin end of the wedge. People shoot themselves all the time when under the influence of alcohol, drugs, etc. but owners aren't required to have guns with built-in breathalysers are they? Why should cars be any different?

It was an unfortunate tragedy and undoubtedly caused by excess speed which was caused by excess alcohol. If there is a company that could address this issue, IMHO, it is Tesla - but don't penalise the company for the idiocy of others.

Setting up for a shakedown

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Standard operating procedure for the ambulance chasers. Sling as much mud as possible, watch to see what sticks, and then pile on to use that kind of mud in the trial. I am sure they are trying to find what would make Tesla settle out of court. Then the avalanche will start.

The way the courts work, if there are N causes for an accident, all N causes are liable for full 100% of the damages. This is a necessary consequence of allowing limited liability corporations. If we assign liability proportionally, immediately all corporations will spawn child corporations that will all act as one way valve. Profits flow upstream and liability stops with them. So they will not have the assets to pay for the damages they cause. It is already happening to some extent, in taxes, income stream management, and a few other areas.

But the way the system is gamed, no one seems to benefit, other than the trial lawyers.

Re:Setting up for a shakedown

[Videospike]

Standard operating procedure for the ambulance chasers. - - - But the way the system is gamed, no one seems to benefit, other than the trial lawyers.

That's what's going on here. Driver? Drunk, almost automatically at fault, but has no money. Other driver, definitely in the wrong, but also not a payout. Tesla? Well-funded company that is constantly under scrutiny. Instead of saying, "I don't know why they have to make a car that does that", he should be saying, "I don't know who else we could sue that would make my lawyer drool and rub his hands together as much."

But then, if I lost a child, I'd probably try to fill that hole with everything I could get my hands on too.

Re:Setting up for a shakedown

[gweihir]

But the way the system is gamed, no one seems to benefit, other than the trial lawyers.

That seems to be the primary design consideration for most of the US legal system and laws.

Bargaining is part of the grieving process

[scourfish]

I empathize with the father. Grief gives most people irrational thinking that only clears with time and acceptance. Bargaining is part of that thinking. "If only Tesla hadn't made the vehicle so damn fast..."

So let's limit freedom

[Bender Unit 22]

Because people can't handle freedom and responsibility.

0.21 what?

[Zorpheus]

Some unit would be nice. Here in Europe we use per mille for this, which is a tenth of a percent. 0.21 would be nothing then.
Some googling show me that the legal limit in Indiana is 0.8 percent, so I guess she had a blood alcohol level of 0.21 percent or 2.1 per mille.

Re:0.21 what?

[cdrudge]

In the US, blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is almost never expressed with units, especially in news reports. In this context, her BAC of .21 means she had .21 grams of alcohol (specifically I believe it's based on ethanol) per deciliter of blood.

Re:0.21 what?

[cdrudge]

Some googling show me that the legal limit in Indiana is 0.8 percent, so I guess she had a blood alcohol level of 0.21 percent or 2.1 per mille.

You're right on her conversion but not on Indiana's legal limit. The law states it's .08% or .08 grams per deciliter (.8 milligrams per milliliter).

It's not uncommon for it to be misstated as .8, so whatever source you found might have had it wrong.

Re:0.21 what?

[fnj]

Some googling show me that the legal limit in Indiana is 0.8 percent,

Get your eyes or your brain examined. The legal limit in Indiana (and in most places) is 0.08%, not 0.8%. At 0.8% most people would be unable to sit upright with their eyes open, let alone safely operate a motor vehicle.

Even 0.04% results in impairment, by the way.

Re:0.21 what?

[fnj]

You're making it needlessly complicated. It IS unitless because it is a ratio. Blood alcohol content means exactly what it says: the mass concentration of alcohol in your blood. If it is 0.21%, it means 0.21% of the mass of your blood is alcohol. For example, an average human has right around 5 liters of blood in his body, which is about 5 kg of blood. If his BAC is 0.21%, his blood contains 5 * 0.21 / 100 = 0.0105 kg, or 10.5 grams, of alcohol.

Re:0.21 what?

[Zorpheus]

Oops that was a typo sorry

Re:0.21 what?

[Kaenneth]

Is it by weight not volume?

Re:0.21 what?

[cdrudge]

It depends on where you're located. Some places use some mass per some volume, other places use some mass per some mass. While BAC is a percentage, expressing it still with some indication of units would make sense when you're on a global forum.

Re:0.21 what?

[gweihir]

It seems to be 2.1 per mille. In other words barely able to walk and at a real risk of passing out.

Re:0.21 what?

[gweihir]

While it is unit-less, it is not scaling-factor-less. SI says it would be 0.0021 and also accept 0.21 percent or 2.1 per mille. A naked "0.21" is decidedly wrong.

Re:0.21 what?

[gweihir]

Actually at 0.5%, you get "High possibility of death" according to Wikipedia and you have "Coma" at 0.4%, so you are wayyyyy off what people could do at 0.8%.

Even the safest cars will kill you

[Bluefirebird]

The Tesla Model S is one of the safest cars on the road.

However, it has the performance of a Ferrari. People are aware of this since it is one the key selling points.

Maybe the car could have a spare key for limited performance settings, if you are going to loan the car to someone else or to a valet parking attendant.

In any case, drinking and driving is inexcusable.

Re:Even the safest cars will kill you

[JustNiz]

> The Tesla Model S is one of the safest cars on the road.

citation please.

Re:Even the safest cars will kill you

[drinkypoo]

Maybe the car could have a spare key for limited performance settings, if you are going to loan the car to someone else or to a valet parking attendant.

It actually completely boggles my mind that the car doesn't already have a Valet mode and a Child mode. That would be beyond trivial.

Re:Even the safest cars will kill you

[Kaenneth]

http://www.teslarati.com/depth...

Re:Even the safest cars will kill you

[drinkypoo]

It actually completely boggles my mind that the car doesn't already have a Valet mode and a Child mode. That would be beyond trivial.

http://www.teslarati.com/depth...

It's good they have a valet mode. It's inadequate, though. It should be user-configurable. It's better than nothing, however, and it certainly should have been engaged for this occasion.

Even if...

[Gooba42]

Even if the car's performance characteristics contributed in this very specific way to this very specific crash his argument amounts to "This car wasn't designed to be driven while drunk."

In her impaired state there's no reason to assume she wouldn't have just been in a different accident had she been in a different car.

When a driver makes a decision, even a bad one, the car is obligated to follow their lead because that's what it means to be "driving".

Get real

[Anonymous Coward]

He's likely still very emotional and shouldn't be making statements to the news. No one forced him or his daughter to purchase that vehicle. Having an extremely fast car is very dangerous and increases the potential for accidents and death. It's an unfortunate situation but the only person to blame is the driver of the vehicle for being drunk. Had she not been drunk then all the blame would reside on the other driver going the wrong way. Because she was drunk it completely invalidates all blame from anyone else or preceding events. If he wants to reason how this tragic event could have been avoided it's simple, don't drink and drive. 3 times over the legal limit and he wants to blame someone else, anyone else, other than his daughter. Get real.

Re:Get real

[david_thornley]

In fact, neither he nor his daughter bought the car. Her boss did. It's possible that he wanted to set her up with lots to drink and a fast car for nefarious purposes, and engineered the situation. I don't know. (I do know it isn't Tesla's fault.)

Re:No

[hackwrench]

That's not what was said. I didn't read that the police report said that was what happened. What I read was that the father claimed she probably swerved to avoid a vehicle going the wrong way. I didn't even read that the police report said that acceleration one way or the other was even a factor.

Re:What's the emoticon for mouth hanging open?

[omnichad]

What, are you wanting ethics in journalism now? We haven't had that for a long while.

YMMV

[transami]

I've been in a couple situations where acceleration saved me from a crash.

What's sadly ironic here though is Tesla will be one of the first cars with fully autonomous driving.

There's a lesson here

[Opportunist]

Don't drive rocket ships when you're drunk.

Sorry, buddy, but your little precious is to blame here. I know that isn't what you want to hear after she eliminated herself from the gene pool by her own stupidity, and if it makes you feel better, blame the world, the powers that are, the car and whatever else you could come up with, but in the end, what we have here is someone who was drunk and lost control over the vehicle. Even whether she had to avoid collision with another car isn't really established as a fact by now. So what's left is that your daughter's drunk driving killed herself and murdered her passenger.

All I can say is that at least she didn't take any innocent bystanders with her. With her passenger you can at least say "well, stupid enough to get into the car of a drunk driver", something you could not claim if she had killed someone by driving over them.

Neither the parent NOR the car should be blamed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the above post that the parent should be left in peace; however, given that the ambulance-chasers have seen fit to cast blame on Tesla, it is appropriate to point out that the driver was intoxicated and the design of the vehicle is not at fault. Neither the parent nor the automaker should be made into a villain here.

Re:Apparently you don't math

[hackwrench]

Or maybe your issue is with English. The acceleration of the rocket as I would have interpreted it isn't the thrust of the rocket engine but 2m/s^2 net acceleration above the 9.8

On the other hand...

[hackwrench]

maybe physics isn't your strong suit. Net acceleration is still within its frame of reference.

Re: On the other hand...

[hackwrench]

There are several frames of reference that could be referred to as the rocket's frame of reference. Inertial and noninertial spring immediately to mind. In one of them, the rocket is at rest and not being accelerated.

Re:What is this 'level' of which you speak?

[hackwrench]

This isn't some role-playing game. Being drunk isn't the issue. I don't think most people put being drunk enough to get yourself into a situation where you are catching a ride with a person too drunk to drive thus putting yourself at risk anywhere near as bad a decision as being a person driving while being too drunk to drive and thus putting anyone you encounter while driving at risk.

No, 1000 times no

[mpercy]

I feel bad for the father, but blaming the car his daughter was driving at 0.21 BAC is a non-starter. I don't care if it was a Pinto and she was going 80MPH in reverse when she hit the tree causing it to burst into flames.

It's not even clear that she'd be alive in a different car leaving him to "yell at her". Thankfully, the only person she murdered was someone stupid enough to get in the car with her.

If this progresses to a lawsuit against Tesla (which is not a company I have a lot of positive feelings for), it'll be another example of why we can't have anything nice. Stupid people seem intent on making the rest of society pay for their stupidity and we keep letting them, instead of letting them suffer the sometimes fatal consequences on their own.

Re:No, 1000 times no

[krray]

> I don't care if it was a Pinto and she was going 80MPH in reverse when she hit the tree causing it to burst into flames.

I would pay to watch that.

The funny thing about decimals

[Smerta]

In Germany the limit is 0.05; she was 4x this level.

Re:The funny thing about decimals

[gweihir]

At this level, she has to have been a habitual drunk, because most people will have trouble even unlocking a car with this much alcohol in their blood.

Re:The funny thing about decimals

[gweihir]

It is usually measured in "promille", i.e. parts per 1000. Percent is far too high.

Wikipedia lists "Severe motor impairment, Loss of consciousness, Memory blackout" for 0.2 percent and "High possibility of death" above 0.5 percent. This lady had to be one serious drunk to even get the car moving in this state.

Re:What's the emoticon for mouth hanging open?

[tflf]

Appears Mr. Speckman had a lawyer lined up before he talked to the press. The news article (an exclusive) reads more like well-coached groundwork for a product-liability lawsuit than the outburst of a grieving distraught parent after the senseless, needless (and self-inflicted) death of a child.

Re:Morality

[hackwrench]

Okay, so what's the moral principle involved?

Are you Kidding me?

[Dust038]

Father Quote: "I don't know why they have to make a car that does that." Please Remove this Article from Slashdot. The Father is making a money grab

Re:What does the community make of this?

[GrBear]

I don't care what country you live in.. 0.4 is the LD50 (kills 50% of people) for alcohol. Your country is more than likely 0.05, no effin way it's 0.5.

freaking roads

[roman_mir]

He should sue everybody. The companies that lay down the roads, the government for hiring those companies, the taxpayers for paying the taxes for the money to lay down the roads, all car manufacturers for building cars, the oil companies for providing gasoline for the car that his daughter was swerving around, the metal ore miners for providing the metal for the cars, the oil companies for providing materials that the roads are built with, the alcohol makers obviously, the bars obviously, the glass companies for making glass bottles and shot/wine glasses, the Federal reserve bank for issuing the currency that serves as the means of exchange to acquire things like alcohol, cars, oil, metal, roads etc. (for good measure).

Did I miss anything?

He has a point

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla likes to brag about autopilot and other safety measures and yet they enable their cars to accelerate at fast, even "ludicrous" speeds. By any objective measure a feature that encourages drivers to accelerate to high speed in dangerously short period of time is just an invitation for accidents to happen.

It's not just Tesla of course but every performance vehicle that ends up wrapped around a pole or tree. Often it is because the acceleration encourages drivers to attain high speeds on sections of road that are not meant for it and for other practices such as racing the lights. It seems odd that states would impose speed restrictions but not impose acceleration restrictions. It should be relatively straightforward to regulate rates of acceleration in vehicles, especially in modern vehicles where it can be controlled in software.

Re:What does the community make of this?

[fnj]

in my country the legal limit is 0.5, and I personally don't feel anything at or around that value

Permit me to doubt that highly. What is your country? Are you sure the limit is not 0.05%? That little dot is called a DECIMAL POINT, and it MATTERS where it is in the train of digits. At 0.05%, one feels euphoria and has impaired concentration. At 0.5%, there is a high risk of poisoning and death.

Re:Let me try this on

[Duhavid]

The car was likely owned by the 45 yo boss.
He was likely hoping some alcohol and the chance to drive his insanely fast car would get him into her pants.

Uncomfortable Truth Incoming.

[Dishevel]

This is a bad parent. A person that should never have had a child.

He, "raised" a child that, "Grew Up" to be a person that gets drunk and endangers the lives of everyone around because she wants to have a good time.
Her attitude that her wants trump everything else on the face of the planet, including the lives of other matches perfectly with a father
that put no responsibility on his daughter. He never has. In his eyes, she has never been responsible for any issue in her life. This is why
she grew up to be such and insufferable cunt.

Now that, "father" unable to put blame on the daughter or his own failure to raise a decent human being must look outside to find a reason
this happened. Now we look to the biggest pockets around and blame them.

I do not really like Tesla. I think that people that can not afford that car paying to give people that can tax breaks to make the car cheaper for the rich is fucking insane at best. They though are not at fault here. This was caused by an irresponsible cunt, raised by an incompetent parent.

Re:Uncomfortable Truth Incoming.

[Ogive17]

Have you ever been drunk? The problem with being drunk is that you can stop making rational decisions. This is not an excuse, just reality.

Blaming the father for his daughter's poor decision is as bad as blaming Tesla for the car going to fast. She's to blame, simple as that. in a civil suit, maybe the driver going the wrong way holds a small part of the blame.

The father is grieving. It sounds a bit like he's stuck between denial and anger right now. About the only people who think Tesla should hold any blame are the ambulance chasing lawyers. If I were the father, I'd be more pissed at the people she was with that allowed her to drive home at all.

Re:Uncomfortable Truth Incoming.

[Dishevel]

That could be true. Till you see that the father is blaming Tesla. Then it makes perfect sense how his daughter ends up murdering people by, "Accident"
See you can be a good parent and still end up with a bad kid. But this guy has already proven himself to be a shit human, so it only makes sense that he had a hand in the creation of the shit that was his daughter.

Re:Uncomfortable Truth Incoming.

[geekmux]

This is a bad parent. A person that should never have had a child....He, "raised" a child that, "Grew Up" to be a person that gets drunk and endangers the lives of everyone around because she wants to have a good time....This was caused by an irresponsible cunt, raised by an incompetent parent.

This was caused by a human who made a mistake. Sometimes when humans make mistakes, it can be fatal, and this sure as shit isn't the first human to do this.

Humans make mistakes. Kind of like the one you made here by trying to dig deeper into this and not recognizing and acknowledging the fucking obvious.

Old Regulations that Spared Lives

[Neuronwelder]

In the old days they used to put a limit on what kind of car and how much horsepower you could legally have on the road for this reason. So you don't have the potential to kill people. Not only drinking - Emotions of: Anger, being late, frustrated in a traffic jam are all triggers. 0-60 in 5 seconds was pretty dam fast when the 1960's cars came out.. But there was little traffic then, No bikers blowing stop signs. Or pedestrians crossing the road without even looking both ways before they cross anywhere. (You used to get ticketed for 'jay walking.')... If you want that kind of acceleration, join quarter mile racing and get it out of your system.

Re:Old Regulations that Spared Lives

[HornWumpus]

Not in the USA. The insurance institute limited speed for factory configurations.

Fixing that has been as simple as removing throttle stops (in some cases).

Euro cars typically had sewing machine motors, but they've gotten better recently. A few even have V8s, like god intended.

obvious money grab

[JustNiz]

>Speckman has retained an attorney, and he's reportedly considering suing the automaker.

Seems to me the real problem is that the driving test in the US is way too lax. At a minimum they need to additionally include tests to ensure people can effectively recover and maintain control of a reasonably high performance car at the limits of its cornering performance. i.e. actually learn how to drive properly.

This is obviously just a lame attempt at a money-grab but it seems he won't have a leg to stand on in court.

That said, the US already has legislation that directly adversely affects the bodyshape of any car sold in the US, because it has to be designed to also protect people illegally driving without their seatbelt on, so I guess there's already an element in law of not being responsible for your own direct choices.

Why the fuck do people *swerve*???

[mark-t]

If you are approaching something that you didn't expect to see, you should be slowing the fuck down, not trying to swerve away into god knows what. This gives your brain more time to assess the situation, and you can then try to *safely* and slowly pull over, because you can look for a safe place to move the car off to the side instead of pointing the car randomly at what may be something just as bad or maybe worse.

Of course she was drunk anyways, and her judgement was impaired which can prevent her from making rational decisions but if while she was being taught to drive it had been hammered into her brain that using the brake was to become the *instinctive response* to any unexpected situation while driving, then she probably wouldn't have been swerving into a tree in the first place.

Re:Why the fuck do people *swerve*???

[mark-t]

You don't try and steer while under heavy braking, you brake so that you give your brain more time to visually assess *WHERE* you can safely steer to. The fact that she steered the car right into a building and tree exemplifies the fact that swerving to avoid a coillision is generally the *WORST* thing you can do, because you haven't yet assessed whether where you are swerving to is actually any safer. In this case, she swerved into a situation that she had even *LESS* time to react to, whereas if she had slowed down first and *THEN* pulled over, she would have had more time to react before hitting anything on the side of the road.

Re:Why the fuck do people *swerve*???

[mark-t]

The entire point of using the brake in an emergency is to slow down so that you can *give* your brain more time to figure out what is wrong and correct it. Obviously you don't brake on a skid, but you definitely shouldn't be trying to acellerate either. Again, the slower the car is moving, the better your position is going to be with regards to dealing with the situation. This was not a situation where she was under a skid however... this is a situation where a person swerved to avoid one thing she didn't expect and drove right into a situation that they had even less time to react to and exemplifies the very reason why swerving should *NEVER* be your goto response to seeing something on the road that you did not expect to see.

Obviously she should not have been driving drunk in the first place, but if people weren't so fucking obsessed with using the steering wheel as some sort of collision avoidance system and the instinctive response to seeing something you did not expect being to try and slow down, with skids alone being treated as a special case, then even when drunk she would have slowed down first before trying to pull over... and while the accident may have still occurred, at the lower speed it may not have killed both her and her passenger.

Slowing down when you see something that you don't expect is just part of defensive driving, and I think it's unfortunate that it isn't drilled into more young people as they are learning how to drive.

Decelerates from 60 to 0 in 3.1 seconds

[FeelGood314]

The electric car motors are also for breaking. I may never want to accelerate that fast but I want to know that I can decelerate that fast.

Bullshit

[ArchieBunker]

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.

Re:Bullshit

[rpstrong]

The Carrera was a race car that was made street legal.

To clarify: the Carrera was designed to race in a class which required that the car be available in a 'street legal' form - but it was intended solely for the track.

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.

This raises an interesting question: What is 'good' handling? Is it handling that you can readily recover from, or is it maximum performance? I'm thinking of the early 911s - wickedly fast in the right hands, but the trailing throttle over-steer could send even a good driver off a corner backwards.

Walker's death was a different situation

[SIGBUS]

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.

Re:Walker's death was a different situation

[SIGBUS]

s/would/wouldn't... it's 2017 and there still isn't an Edit button.

Re:Walker's death was a different situation

[drinkypoo]

While this is true, fuck that article's author. You don't blame the failure on the tires. You blame the failure on the driver. The "conditions" include the condition of the tires and Walker drove too fast for conditions and died, THE END.

Re:Walker's death was a different situation

[MirthScout]

Walker was the passenger.

Re:Walker's death was a different situation

[drinkypoo]

Walker was the passenger.

Yeah, that changes whose fault it is, but not the fact that it was a human's fault.

Re:Walker's death was a different situation

[rpstrong]

Put it in FAA aircraft crash reporting terms:

Cause of accident: Driver failed to maintain control of vehicle.

Contributing factors: Ages tires.

Yes, the driver is ultimately responsible, but identifying the weak link in the accident chain is of some value.

[This is especially true if you're interested more in cause than blame.]

Re:What does the community make of this?

[PPH]

no effin way it's 0.5.

In Soviet Russia ....

Re:Let me try this on

[MachineShedFred]

You're off by an order of magnitude.

If she weighed 120 pounds, she probably had at least 6 drinks in a short amount of time.

Re:Moral... buy a Volkswagen

[WheezyJoe]

The moral of this is to buy a VW... you never have to worry about your vehicle being too powerful.

You know who owns and builds Bugattis? Volkswagen.

Just Like Apple...

[TheFakeTimCook]

Tesla is ALWAYS blamed, no matter how stupid the user/driver is acting.

Re:Just Like Apple...

[JustNiz]

> Tesla is ALWAYS blamed
In most cases its actually well-deserved (because they seriously mis-represented their cruise control as an "Autopilot") but clearly not this case.

This is what you get when society holds humans to be so precious that it eliminates all forms of natural selection and any requirement of at least basic survival instincts/common sense from its members, then also becomes a "blame anything/everything else for not guarding me from my own stupidity" culture. Its further compounded by the law's ongoing support of pursuing blatantly frivolous lawsuits, and for the "war of attrrition" model to be at least one of, if not the most, successful legal tactic.

I'm all for bringing back natural selection. Our gene pool already looks like someone took a massive dump in it. If we keep going down the same road for much longer, humanity is gonna be in real trouble.

Re:Just Like Apple...

[gweihir]

Yep. The competition has just way too much to lose not to use the opportunities. They are trying to hold back progress (and keep cars poisoning people), so they are in a pretty bad position, admittedly.

Will he also sue the brewers?

[Viol8]

I mean they're responsible for getting his daughter drunk right? They made that evil alcoholic brew she drank and so are totally liable. The fact that she willingly drank it is no excuse!

[/sarcasm]

Seriously, I wouldn't put it past him given that he seems to think lawsuits are a way to dull grief. I suppose it was too much to expect a lawyer to find anything approaching a conscience and quietly tell him to go home and grieve properly then get back to us if you still want to go through with it.

Feels for the Dad, but . . .

[hduff]

The anguish of a parent who lost a child is not a good basis for establishing rules or laws.

Try to read more carefully

[fredrated]

The other car was going the wrong way. I know reading and understanding is difficult but you could try harder.

Re:Try to read more carefully

[guruevi]

I only read the /. article which says:

The Tesla could have been been trying to maneuver around a vehicle traveling on the wrong side of the street

Given the poor English writing of the whole summary indicated by "The Tesla was maneuvering" (Autopilot? Or was the driver maneuvering?) I just assumed a poor writer missing a comma. And if I call it poor writing, being myself a non-native English speaker, the entire thing lacks proper sentence-building, the name of the father in the next sentence could refer to the attorney or the father, only context makes it clear later on. There is no indication as to what party the part "traveling on the wrong side of the street" refers to just like the owner of the name Speckman later on. It could mean the Tesla was trying to get around a vehicle, traveling on the wrong side of the street or the Tesla was trying to get around a vehicle *which* was traveling on the wrong side of the street.

Given she was drunk, I would assume she was on the wrong side because she tried (and failed) to maneuver around it - either way, if she was on the wrong side or the other driver, you should slow down or stop if you're heading into any oncoming vehicle, not try to get around it or speed up. She was a drunk moron placed in a very common traffic situation and her drunkenness caused her to badly negotiate the situation, it's her own fault and the fault of whoever let her have and drive (or get in with her) an expensive vehicle when she was both too young and irresponsible to handle it.

No passing the buck allowed

[sjbe]

Even if the daughter isn't to blame, the owner of the car - her boss - who was also killed, gave her the keys (or whatever you use to operate the Tesla).

The driver is to blame. Whoever gave her the keys does not mitigate that meaningfully. It's really simple. Don't drive a high powered car unless A) you are competent to handle that vehicle when sober and B) are actually sober.

The daughter might be an adult but still relatively young whreas the boss was 44, old enough to have obtained a Tesla as a personal/company vehicle, yet he stupid enough to get drunk and allow another drunk to drive him home/wherever.

27 is more than old enough to know better than to drive drunk. That is not young and certainly not young enough to excuse such a lapse of judgement.

Re:No passing the buck allowed

[david_thornley]

I still want to know how she got that drunk at a company function, and why her boss gave her the keys, before I finish assigning blame. Obviously, she's at fault for driving drunk, but that doesn't mean other people weren't at fault. It's possible that whoever was serving drinks at the function, if there was such a person, is legally liable also.

Re:No passing the buck allowed

[Custard Horse]

I agree with what you say, I meant to establish that if there is a chain of blame, the driver would be first, then the person who allowed her to drive BEFORE even thinking about Tesla.

However, I agree that the buck appears to stop with the driver. Even if there was another vehicle involved on the wrong side of the road, sobriety would have perhaps avoided or mitigated the accident.

As for the comment about being 27, I recall saying at work that anybody under the age of 23 is basically a twat (a flippant comment meant in jest but ultimately 23 is not old enough to have enough wisdom not to be a twat). Every year that passes I add another year and I said it around 5 years old so the driver was basically a twat (being under 28) which is a shame as some wisdom may have saved her.

In 10 years time I will have added enough years to equal the age at which I made my bold proclamation which will make me a twat for saying it. There is always wisdom out there for people to glean.

Profiting from the death of a child

[sjbe]

He is free to blame whoever he wants.

No he really isn't. He can try but that just makes him an asshole trying to profit from the death of his daughter which is reprehensible. Tesla had nothing to do with his daughter's decisions.

That doesn't mean he is free to win money from Tesla at trial though.

He doesn't have to win money from Tesla to cost Tesla a lot of money defending against a frivolous lawsuit.

Idiot Buyers

[pubwvj]

"I don't know why they have to make a car that does that."

The answer is because people want cars that do that.

The bigger question is why do people buy cars that do that. Machismo.

It's the driver's fault.

Dumbest Lawsuit This Year

[EndlessNameless]

I don't think the Model S is the fastest car on the street, so the same argument would apply to other performance vehicles, possibly all of them depending on where you draw the line for a car being "too fast".

Another car was driving the wrong way on the street? Sue him. It might actually work if you get a sympathetic jury.

Driver was 3X the legal alcohol limit? While I have sympathy for the father, there is no excuse. I have seen drunk driving warnings repeatedly since childhood, and I am sure the driver did too. She broke the law and gambled with her safety---and lost.

I feel like this is a ridiculous lawsuit brought about by an ambitious attorney pressuring a heartbroken parent.

Re:Apparently you don't math

[religionofpeas]

Most rockets eventually turn sideways in which case the 11.8 m/s^2 of the rocket doesn't cancel with the 9.8 m/s^2 gravitational pull.

Also keep in mind that the rocket increases its acceleration as it's going up. The 11.8 m/s^2 is only for the first seconds. By the time it's going sideways, acceleration is a lot higher.

Good

[krray]

Good. I'm glad she's dead. Stupid is what stupid does.
One less drunk on the road that could kill me sober.
Why not blame those who made the alcohol? They're more to blame IMHO. Dumb ass lawsuit.

Re:Good

[gweihir]

Why not blame those who made the alcohol?

They tried that. Remember the little fiasco called "Prohibition"?

Re:What does the community make of this?

[cloud.pt]

You're completely right and I read it awfully wrong on the article. The legal limit around here (Portugal) is indeed 0.05% (the separator we actually use being comma, not a dot, but that's another story).

We have 2 other levels at 0.08% (increased penalty), and 0.012%, at which point it becomes an actual crime just to drive at these levels, sans accidents in the mix (it can still be a crime, even below 0.05%, if there's an accident where liability is assessed from DUI).

I was induced to error by the fact the breathalyzers around here apparently show the per thousand (they actually show grams per kilogram, which is mathematically the same), so the 3 times I was tested I saw values on the 0.0x scale (I don't drink and drive). That last threshold here in my country would show as "1.20" on the display, and that's also what they use for news headlines (e.g. "guy caught with record 12.3 blood-alcohol level" - this actually happened and they had to take a blood sample to confirm the value, since the breathalyzer didn't support those units).

And of course, that changes the whole point of my question: the father certainly doesn't have a clue to blame it on the car. Nobody would deem the least safe to drive a tricycle at 0.21% (or 2.1), let alone a Model S.

Re:What does the community make of this?

[cloud.pt]

Correct. Read reply to above comment.

Succint Summary

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"She was really, really drunk, drove way too fast and crashed and it's your fault."

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Sounds totally reasonable.

idiot

[slashmydots]

Why did they buy it then? Why did they get so drunk they couldn't tell which pedal is which? Why not brake? Oh and you think a 99 Chevy Cavalier or something has the brakes and tires and suspension to swerve around a car without skidding off the road? NOPE. It's actually safer to have a fast car if the driver isn't a drunk asshole.

It's not the acceleration that kills you...

[Bitbeard]

...it's the stopping. Pretty sure the tree is to blame here, not the car.

Then again, I own a 4.2 second car and when I've done that kind of acceleration my car has never steered toward the nearest tree.

So maybe it's the driver.

Breaking news

[wonkey_monkey]

Grieving father doesn't apply logic to reach a rational and objectice conclusion.

Norway is way lower than that

[Terje Mathisen]

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."

Re:Norway is way lower than that

[Bryan Ischo]

Jesus I really wish for that kind of sanity in the USA. It will never happen though.

Re: Apparently you don't math

[hackwrench]

The quote is bereft of detail. Apparently I and one of the other commenters just choose to apply details that result in one conclusion, while you chose others. The problem that has arisen here is when one of us delares the other incorrect.

You're driving a giant Samsung Galaxy on Wheels.

[Noishkel]

Let me see... you have a giant stack of stack of lithium ion batters on wheels, you crash it, and it explodes. How is this a surprise?

Re:Let me try this on

[david_thornley]

Getting into her pants when she's that drunk is likely to be considered rape, but he may not have been worried about that.

Nope

[XSportSeeker]

I don't usually side with Tesla because they are very wrong in some of the accident cases, but honestly?

She was DUI, no one forced her to drive, no one forced whoever the owner was to buy the car, and from what the investigation has come up with so far, it was the fault of another driver who was going the wrong way.

It's no use clinging to if scenarios. If we didn't have a culture that worships fast cars, if she knew better not to drive a fast car after drinking, if speed limit laws were properly obeyed and applied, if the streets weren't so tight, if automated driving was already around and working well, if electric cars didn't use batteries that can explode on impact, if the city provided public transportation and security good enough so no one needed to get a car, if if if.

I'm sorry for this father's loss, but I can even imagine that the car owner bought it considering the acceleration as bonus point. At the very least, this is shared responsibility. The only reason why car manufacturers keeps making cars that goes into dangerous speeds and with dangerous features is because people buy them.

I mean, really, we could all have cars that can never go over a certain speed limit and never accelerate too fast. It'd not only be easy to make, but also cheaper. If money was invested on efficiency and other features instead of speed, acceleration and whatnot, we'd probably also have gone past the whole oil dependancy thing by now. And I won't even mention the ammoung of accidents we would not have if we didn't live in an alcohol driven and dependant society. Alas, it is what it is.

It was murder.

[Kaenneth]

In Texas you can be charged with a felony in Texas for a DWI offense if Your DWI violation occurred with a car accident where another person suffered serious bodily injury or death.

Add in the 'Felony Murder Rule' where if someone dies because you commit a felony, you can be charged with Murder.

That woman Murdered her passenger.

Re:Yea, uh, if you're such a great father...

[SeaFox]

Someone further up pointed out, it was not her car, it was her boss's car. He was a passenger in the car with her and also killed.
They both got drunk at the company function, and he gave her the keys.
I would suggest someone was trying to play his way into his subordinate's pants.

Not in Texas

[bussdriver]

In Texas you can get away with murder if you are rich enough to claim Affluenza. If you have your teen driving a Tesla... you might be rich enough if your judge in that area is poor enough... (no, you google it and find out.)

Parental Controls?

[bussdriver]

Am I the only one who can see this resulting in Parental Car Controls?

Am I the only one who thinks it is nuts that we even could come to that? Children driving cars??

We trash our democracy over a few thousand dead people but when it comes to cars killing 40k PER YEAR we do nothing. I wouldn't let anybody under 18 drive and would be so hard on 18-21 that most wouldn't be eligible. I would also do serious yearly testing on everybody on the other side of the accident bell curve (retired people.)

My WW2 war hero neighbor smashed into a big yellow school bus and claimed he didn't see it! Turns out he was more truthful than he realized-- he was classified as legally blind afterwards because the cop did something which required the test. He was bitter about it too--- he claimed he saw good enough to drive but I think he was just pissed it was an Asian cop... you see, he thought all Asians were Japs and he still hated the Japanese.

Grief, Confusion, and Greed

[JimSadler]

People who drive drunk lose the ability to coordinate and she apparently could not use proper judgment in her use of the accelerator pedal. It may not have mattered a bit what vehicle she was in. A bicycle or a motor scooter with very slow acceleration can kill a drunk as easily as a Tesla. I am sorry for the father's grief but Tesla should sue him for this nonsense.

An important question:

[morethanapapercert]

Who bought the car? I mean really, there are a LOT of cars out there with impressive 0-60 times. Ford Mustangs, Dodge Hellcats, Chevrolet Corvettes etc very much etc. They sell because people want them. The driver, or her husband, bought the car. And I'm pretty sure that that the quickness of the electric drive train was one of the selling points. (remember that Tesla cars target the BMW, Maserati, Mercedes and Aston Martin, etc buying demographic. ALL makers of quick and nimble cars) Used correctly, such acceleration potential can prevent accidents, giving you the ability to nimbly dodge a potential collision.

Of course, I don't care you who are, or how skilled of a driver you normally are. If you are three times the legal blood alcohol limit you cannot possibly handle any car properly. If the deceased driver had a car of lesser potential, she would have probably collided with the idiot going the wrong way instead.

As far as I'm concerned, the fault goes like this: A) The wrong way driver created an emergency situation, placing everyone else on that road that day in severe risk. B) Because of her asinine decision to drive drunk, the deceased was not capable of handling the emergency. She likely panicked and floored it to avoid the oncoming car. Thus, the wrong way driver caused the accident, the drunk driver's mistake(s) doubled down on the consequences of that accident. I'm pretty sure that even had she been in a more sedate vehicle, there still would have been an accident. If she had been sober behind the wheel of the Tesla, she might have been able to avoid the collision with the tree.

Re: Frames of reference...

[hackwrench]

And which one is that? How do accelerometers work, anyways? Are they all reading 9.8 m/s^2 all the time, because if I understand your post correctly it would seem in your world they do.

This case doesn't have legs

[Bruce Perens]

What a horrible thing it is for these two people to die. The lady's father, however, does not have a case. It's only going to be necessary to show the degree to which the lady was intoxicated, and no judge or jury is going to be swayed by allegations that the cause of death is at all related to the power of the car relative to other cars.

Re:Let me try this on

[HornWumpus]

They were engaged. Unless he was a moron 'her pants' were familiar territory.

0.21% is good and drunk, but it's hardly passed out, covered in puke drunk (for a 27 year old).

If 0.21% makes someone a rapist, likely 99% of the world's drinking population (including women) are rapists.

Old joke: Sorority girl mating call 'I'm sooo drunk', fat sorority girl mating call 'I SAID I WAS DRUNK'

Its like the good old days

[Tangential]

The combination of this ludicrous story and the plethora of snarky comments ripping it to shreds really made my day.

This is the stuff that made /. great and kept me coming back for more in the late 90's.

So what he's really saying...

[campbellcj]

is unfortunately his daughter was an inadequately trained driver in addition to acting irresponsibly and illegally. Pure money grab.

I don't know why they have to make a car that does

[MrKaos]

that.

Because that's what she wanted. She wanted performance, risk and excitement in a car and was prepared to mix it with alcohol. She was at her limit and someone else screwed up. Was the vehicle in control? No. Both parties to blame? Yes. Case closed.

Personal responsibility.

So,

[BitztreamNotARealNam]

How's life in the hypocrite lane?

REALLY?!?!?!

[martinfb]

The accident was covered in the news as the scope dictated.

It is NOT, however, news to share the unreasonable misery-driven lashings-out of the father.
Anyone might find themselves similarly lashing out were such a tragedy to happen so close to (home).

Yet, this is NOT newsworthy crap. Let the man grieve in private!
Now go find a worth bit of news!