Parents were injured in a Tesla crash. She ended up having to pay Tesla damages

https://apnews.com/article/tesla-china-lawsuits-musk-investigation-58b10ccace488784fcc63646ab78b410

by c420 • 1 year ago

132 63 1 year ago

Unusual that car black box data is not available to the car owner. I would expect it to be. With some effort, perhaps we can get it to be this way in California, though I suppose the fear is that the manufacturer will simply remove car telemetry in California if almost every car has something that could be twisted to be liability.

speedgoose• 1 year ago

They eventually did in this story.

    Tesla had finally given Zhang what she’d been asking for, but they’d published the data publicly and included her vehicle identification number. She said she and her family started getting threatened and doxed online. Besides, she wondered, how could she be sure Tesla hadn’t modified or redacted the data from her car? It was less than the victory she’d hoped for. Feeling besieged, she sued Tesla a second time, in March 2022, for invading her privacy.
    
    Zhang lost both cases she brought against Tesla.

packtreefly3• 1 year ago

The problem isn't that the owner didn't get the data. The problem is that the method for getting the data is that you must beg Tesla for it, rather than just slurping it out of a USB port inside the car.

If Tesla is going to go to the trouble of uploading all this shit to the cloud anyway, the least they can do is give customers a no-questions-asked download button.

thatguy09002• 1 year ago

I believe massachitses has such a law on the books but is currently being sued by aitomalers so can't enforce it

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/11/business/automotive-r...

ThePowerOfFuet• 1 year ago

massachitses
aitomalers

Are you feeling OK?

bigtones2• 1 year ago

Edited: Very similar to another Tesla crash in China with a social media protest. In that crash the brake lights did not come on at all. In fact the acccelerator was pressed down 100% for a full five seconds before the crash which was entirely the drivers fault.

The defendant knew this and Tesla gave the family the car telemetry data, but continued to falsely protest that the brakes were depressed during a lengthy social media campaign, and as a result determined by a Chinese court Telsa was awarded damages and the family was asked to publicly apologize.

https://carnewschina.com/2023/03/02/tesla-model-y-crash-inve...

hn1378• 1 year ago

Different crash. Article crash had people injured. Your link is a fatal crash.

OP's article is about a Model 3 crash, yours is about a Model Y.

bigtones2• 1 year ago

Thanks, amended post.

amscanne• 1 year ago

It seems the facts of the story are similar though. In the Zhang case, they were driving 50 mph over the speed limit. Brakes were depressed, but not hard or early enough. Automatic braking kicked in, which caused the brake pedal to be depressed much harder, but not enough to avoid the crash (and possibly led to driver believing that there was a brake failure?).

At least, this is what I found [1] while trying to understand the story a bit better. Who knows what's true?

[1] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-3-braking-fail...

throwaway519• 1 year ago

Yesterday was Wednesday. Different day. It was raining last night. Nothing can be inferred from which direction the sun will rise.

schiffern• 1 year ago

  >Dozens of Tesla owners had been publicly complaining about alleged brake failures, battery fires, unintended acceleration and other defects

Yep, "dozens" sounds like simply the base rate for humans pushing the wrong pedal, especially since they bizarrely lump that number in with fires (extremely rare compared to gas cars) and an absurdly sweeping catch-all category of "other defects."

Their one piece of 'data' is literally worthless, but I guess terrible journalism is fine as long as it's anti-Tesla.

cafard• 1 year ago

It does recall to me the complaints about Audis about forty years ago. People were reluctant to tell drivers, No, you pushed on the accelerator, not the brake, but on the other hand nobody was able to propose a different and plausible explanation.

I'm perfectly happy with being anti-Tesla, by the way.

Timshel• 1 year ago

In France there is a detailled report of a Tesla in a similar accident, it end up speeding over 100km/h and killed a cyclist.

What's interesting is that after a red light acceleration was initially inhibited (don't remember exactly why), driver pressed on the accelerator more and more up to almost 100% but the car was not speeding up much.

Then when inhibition was lifted the car basically started a quarter mile and the driver was overwhelmed and just steered the car without lifting the accelerator until it crashed :(.

Edit: In this accident too, the driver thought he tried to stop but with no effect. AEBS was triggered, but the driver missed the notification and just accelerated more when the car started slowing down. A residual pressure in the breaking system meant that acceleration was initially limited.

The full report: https://www.bea-tt.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/bea...

em-bee• 1 year ago

after a red light acceleration was initially inhibited, driver pressed on the accelerator more and more up to almost 100% but the car was not speeding up much.

does anyone else see the problem in the design here? if acceleration is inhibited and then the inhibition is released, the accelerator should not activate in full force right away.

maybe acceleration should continue to be inhibited until the driver releases the accelerator before trying to use it again, or it should be locked so you can't press it down at all until the inhibition is lifted, but that too doesn't stop a driver from pressing down hard on it. though at least they would get feedback when acceleration starts.

coldtea• 1 year ago

In that crash the brake lights did not come on at all. In fact the acccelerator was pressed down 100% for a full five seconds before the crash which was entirely the drivers fault.

According to Tesla's own telemetry!

chvid• 1 year ago

"It is not common practice for automakers — in China or elsewhere — to sue their customers. But Tesla has pioneered an aggressive legal strategy and leveraged the patronage of powerful leaders in China’s ruling Communist Party to silence critics, reap financial rewards and limit its accountability."

johnnyanmac5• 1 year ago

Everyone missing the big picture here with this statement. This is not usual at all, doesn't matter about stuff like "driver error".

simondotau9• 1 year ago

That's an example of the article being egregiously misleading.

It implies that Tesla used the courts to silence an innocent customer, when in fact the customer sued Tesla first. And also second. Given the actions of the customer, I'd argue that Tesla's strategy was quite restrained. There's no evidence of this being a "strategy".

As for the latter half of the paragraph, is there any evidence for any of that? Because it's certainly not presented in the article. Was any patronage "leveraged" here? Was any genuine critic silenced? Was any accountability limited?

Maybe, but there's no evidence for it.

FireBeyond2• 1 year ago

The customer initially sued Tesla because they were refusing to provide the data. Apparently, to you, that’s overreaching by the customer.

And then when they did, they didn’t release it to her, they published it publicly, with identifying information leading to her allegedly receiving threats (when we all know Tesla fans would never ever harass detractors).

Regardless of who was actually at fault, the contortions you go through to paint this as a “restrained” response would likely put a pretzel to shame.

shkkmo2• 1 year ago

The framing of this whole article is weird. Zhang is put forward as some kind of example of the favourable treatment Tesla is getting in the courts and how Tesla is silencing critics. Yet she was wrong about the cause of the accident and didn't just criticize, but actively protested at industry events and Tesla still didn't open their defamation suit until after she started hers.

I'm sympathetic to the idea behind this article, but it doesn't seem to actually do any of the work to justify it's conclusions.

I do think that owners should be given full access to all telemetry data from their vehicles and the fact that Tesla doesn't do this is very disappointing.

marcusverus• 1 year ago

Journalism is a masterclass in how to deceive without lying.

porridgeraisin2• 1 year ago

Nice way to put it, stealing that one.

kelnos4• 1 year ago

Yet she was wrong about the cause of the accident

I don't think we can take that at face value. Tesla refused to release the pre-crash data for... weeks? Months? And only did so after perhaps it seemed like they might lose the case. Why not release the data immediately?

Sure, it's possible that the driver screwed up, and even if he really did cry out "the brakes aren't working!" as the woman claims, he was just confused and doing the wrong thing. But I wouldn't put it past Tesla to release fake vehicle telemetry that supports their case, either.

shkkmo2• 1 year ago

But I wouldn't put it past Tesla to release fake vehicle telemetry that supports their case, either.

Perhaps, but there isn't any evidence of this, just speculation from an interested party. This speculation is what the whole premise of the article hinges on, but there is no support provided for it. Instead the article seems to bank on a readership that dislikes Musk so much that they don't engage any critical thinking skills .

The risk of being exposed for lying in court and faking telemetry data does not seem like it would be remotely worth it to win this lawsuit for Tesla.

rich_sasha2• 1 year ago

It's terrible handling of the early stages from Tesla. Or they know their car is faulty and took their time to doctor the data.

But assuming not, they could have just released the data and called it quits. It's not inconceivable that the driver was "pressing the pedal wrong" - wasn't that the ultimate problem with the Toyotas in the US? But they managed to peeve off a customer so much that they went berserk and frankly too far. But it's easy to understand the anger.

wruza4• 1 year ago

It almost feels like no one in this thread worked at a company. Who's to decide to release it or not? Low level workers have no decision rights. Mid-management that handles this has to cooperate with technical and legal departments and juggle associated risks, including "my-ass" risks. Upper management won't "just do it" without waiting on detailed reports on the facts and implications.

One doesn't simply just do it at Tesla scale, it doesn't work like that. No other automotive company would release it quicker than until the courtroom, unless there was a pre-designed set of processes for doing so anytime. You may blame Tesla for being shady in that regard -- that's true, they are opaque and tricky and their leader is a Demon Lord. But doctoring the case in a non-legal-risky way would probably cost much more to them than just throwing some money at $subj. Imagine all these departments working together to fabricate something not easily debunkable by a curious nerd... That's 100K..1M budget range with unavoidably huge reputational risks.

mquander• 1 year ago

If there's an actual problem with Chinese courts corruptly defending Tesla, why is this article presenting a case where Tesla seems to be in the right, rather than one in which the court made a clearly corrupt decision?

simondotau9• 1 year ago

rather than one in which the court made a clearly corrupt decision?

Are you aware of any clearly corrupt decisions?

wruza4• 1 year ago

The whole article is unrelated to the headline, it’s just a classic journalist turn. The authors already know who’s wrong without any hearings.

kelnos4• 1 year ago

why is this article presenting a case where Tesla seems to be in the right

The only evidence that the crash was caused by the driver was provided by Tesla themselves. Of course they would provide data to support their case, fabricated or otherwise.

It's weird that the woman in the article asked for Tesla to provide the pre-crash data, but they refused until much later, after the legal proceedings were going on. Why not provide that data immediately?

cosmotic• 1 year ago

I can't think of a single company that would provide data upon request. Certainly Google, Microsoft, Apple, Ford, GM,Samsung, UPS, etc... wouldn't.

samyar• 1 year ago

Hacker news or traffic news?

waltercool• 1 year ago

If the reason of the accident was responsibility of the user and then blamed the company, then I think is fair.

Especially like people in the US where people use the auto-drive function completely unattended, just to blame the company later.

ddxv2• 1 year ago

Another interesting flagged article related to negative news about Tesla

simondotau9• 1 year ago

It's flagged because it's clickbait. The article is about a customer who tried to extort Tesla with false/misleading accusations designed to inflict reputational harm, then took it too far by suing Tesla, and then suing them again.

ddxv2• 1 year ago

"The company has also sued at least six bloggers and two Chinese media outlets that wrote critically about the company, according to a review of public court documents"

From the article. It's more than just a single customer who they sued.

Parents were injured in a Tesla crash. She ended up having to pay Tesla damages

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