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?

[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?

[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?

[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]

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[dave420]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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?".

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

[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

[nitehawk214]

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

Re:Reverse logic

[Gilgaron]

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

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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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).

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

[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

[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

[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.

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).

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.

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.

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

[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.

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

[Kaenneth]

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

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.

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.

The funny thing about decimals

[Smerta]

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

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: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: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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[MirthScout]

Walker was the passenger.

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.

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.

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.