this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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The car came to rest more than 70 metres away, on the opposite side of the road, leaving a trail of wreckage. According to witnesses, the Model S burst into flames while still airborne. Several passersby tried to open the doors and rescue the driver, but they couldn’t unlock the car. When they heard explosions and saw flames through the windows, they retreated. Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, could do nothing but watch the Tesla burn.

At that moment, Rita Meier was unaware of the crash. She tried calling her husband, but he didn’t pick up. When he still hadn’t returned her call hours later – highly unusual for this devoted father – she attempted to track his car using Tesla’s app. It no longer worked. By the time police officers rang her doorbell late that night, Meier was already bracing for the worst.

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[–] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 137 points 1 day ago (11 children)

If we lived in any sort of reasonable or responsible world then these cars would be banned from public roads all over the globe.

[–] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 60 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And Tesla would be fined and sued into oblivion.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And the people who knowingly put profits before lives would be individually serve time for manslaughter.

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[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Call me a Luddite but I won't ride in a "self driving" car. I don't even trust lane assist although I've never had a car with that feature.

I think my sweet spot is 2014 for vehicles. It's about 50/50 with the tracking garbage and the "advanced features" on those models but anything past 2015 seems to be fully fly-by-wire and that doesn't sit right with me.

I'm old though and honestly if I bought a 2014 right now and babied it as my non commuter car I could probably keep it until I should give up my keys. You younger people are going to have to work around all this crap.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago (14 children)

I've never had any issue with the lane assist in my Mitsubishi. It's absolutely built as an "assist" and not something that will actually try to take control from you. It's trivial to "overpower" it manually and turn out of your lane without signaling if that's what you want to do, but does a perfectly reasonable job of steering on its own when left to its own devices.

That said, I wouldn't be driving a vehicle new enough to have the feature yet either if I hadn't been rear ended a couple of years ago and had my 2012 Lancer written off. :(

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

I quite like lane assist in the 2019 Honda I drive, even though it gets it wrong occasionally. It will not function unless it detects that you're providing some steering input of your own, and it's easy to override just by steering the way you want to go. That and cruise control are handy on the highway and have worked well for 6 years with no problems. But it's very far from either functioning or being advertised as "full self driving."

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[–] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 7 points 17 hours ago

I liked lane assist. It's kind of like the Playstation triggers haptic feedback. It just makes the wheel slightly stiff as you near a line, but it's very passive.

[–] invertedspear@lemmy.zip 6 points 21 hours ago

I think Ford does a good job of offering the features and tech, but not making them required. Even their EVs have settings that can mimic a gas driving experience. Be a Luddite trust what you trust. But don’t pigeon hole your acceptable years of manufacture.

[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

My wife had a rental for a trip she and my daughter were going on for a gymnastics event and I got to drive it back from the rental place and it had lane assist.

Every time another car passed in the opposite lane the damn thing would try and jerk in the opposite direction of that car, sometimes almost running itself off the road into the ditch in the process.

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[–] absquatulate@lemmy.world 5 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Drove a few cars with "lane hold" and it's infuriating to have to suddenly correct the car's trajectory at every curve because it misjudges the road line. Some cars are worse than others but it was literally the first thing I disabled every time. I wonder how truck drivers feel about it. Do modern trucks even have this?

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 57 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

This is the kind of shit that makes me worried even seeing someone else driving one of these deathtraps near me while I am driving. They could explode or decide to turn into me on the highway or something. I think I about this more than Final Destination when seeing a logging truck these days.

[–] Joeffect@lemmy.world 27 points 18 hours ago

It's one of those rules you make for yourself when you drive...

Like no driving next to people with dents...

Or

Stay away from trucks with random shit in the back not strapped down ...

No driving near New cars, they are new and or it's because they got into an accident so best just be safe...

So

No driving near a Tesla...

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 39 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

Tesla tried to do it all at once instead of perfecting the electric tech first and then incrementally adding on advances. They also made change for change’s sake. There’s absolutely no reason mechanical door locks could not have been engineered to work on this car as the default method of opening and closing the door. It’s killing people.

[–] ZMonster@lemmy.world 17 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

There's absolutely a reason to not engineer something you're not required to. It's called capitalism. Tesla cut every corner they could.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 hours ago

Elon : some of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

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[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 15 points 11 hours ago (9 children)

Also, the fact that they removed Lidar sensors and just base their self driving on cameras is plainly stupid.

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[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 32 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

I have never ridden a Tesla, and I plan on requesting a non Tesla car from now on when I have to take a taxi.

Cars in general, Teslas in particular, should have a standardized blackbox data recorder that third parties can open and access the logs, we have had this kind of tech on aircrafts for many decades.

It is terrifying that Tesla can just say that there was no relevant data and the investigative agency will just accept that.

I remember watching an episode of Air Crash Investigations, where a plane crashed, and they could not find an immediate cause, but the flight data recorder was able to be analysed far back, way before the accident flight, and they noticed that a mount for the APU turbine had broken many flights earlier, and the APU had broken free during the flight, causing the crash.

It is not Tesla's job to tell the investigators what is relevant and not, it is Teslas job to unlock all data they have and send it to the investigators, if they can't or won't, then Tesla should lose the right sell cars in Europe

[–] atrielienz@lemmy.world 16 points 21 hours ago

Cars do have that in what amounts to a TCU or Telematics Control Unit. The main problem here isn't whether or not cars have that technology. It's about the relevant government agency forcing companies like Tesla (and other automakers) to produce that data not just when there's a crash, but as a matter of course.

I have a lot of questions about why Tesla's are allowed on public roads when some of the models haven't been crash tested. I have a lot of questions about why a company wouldn't hand over data in the event of a crash without the requirement of a court order. I don't necessarily agree that cars should be able to track us (if I buy it I own it and nobody should have that kind of data without my say so). But since we already have cars that do phone this data home, local, state, and federal government should have access to it. Especially when insurance companies are happy to use it to place blame in the event of a crash so they don't have to pay out an insurance policy.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 27 points 13 hours ago

You can choose not to drive bleeding edge technology, but sadly you have no choice in whether to share the road with it.

[–] shiroininja@lemmy.world 22 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Bad code. Guinea pig owners. Cars not communicating with each other. Relying on just the car’s vision and location is stupid.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 20 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Also, not only do they rely on "just vision", crucially they rely on real-time processing without any memory or persistent mapping.

This, more than anything else is what bewilders me most.

They could map an area, and when observing a construction hazard save that data and share it with other vehicles so they know when route setting or anticipate the object. Not they don't. If it drives past a hazard and goes around the block it has to figure out how to navigate the hazard again with no familiarity. That's so foolish.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 5 points 11 hours ago

and what’s even more ridiculous than that (imo) is that if every tesla mapped the area, you’d get it from loads of different angles: no more “oops 1 off computer vision edge case”

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[–] vegeta@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

the truth? Because Elon is the CEO errrr Teknoking.

[–] firepenny@lemmy.world 17 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Seems like a lot of this technology is very untested and there are too many variables to make it where it should not be out on the roads.

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 12 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Move fast and break things, but it's a passenger vehicle on a public road.

[–] itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works 10 points 11 hours ago

It's been a nightmare seeing tech companies move into the utility space and act like they're the smartest people in the room and the experts that have been doing it for 100 years are morons. Move fast and break things isn't viable when you're operating power infrastructure either. There's a reason why designs require the seal of a licensed engineer before they can be constructed. Applying a software development mentality to any kind of engineering is asking for fatalities

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 13 points 22 hours ago

News of malfunctioning Tesla cars and Musk going crazy are still not enough to crash Tesla stocks to zero. Which I am hoping will happen not just to inflict sorrow on Musk and his wealth, but so that I could hedge against the stock 😂

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 10 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

its on you if you bought a tesla after the twitter purchase, cant have buyers remorse.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 2 hours ago

Wait, I might know the answer. Is it because they don't use LIDAR and they're made by a company headed by some piece of shit who likes to cut costs? Haha, I was just guessing, but ok.

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 9 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

FYI, some numbers. The guardian article is still definitely worth reading, it just had no statistics.

*Nationally (USA), Tesla drivers had 26.67 accidents per 1,000 drivers. This was up from 23.54 last year.

The Ram and Subaru brands were again among the most accident-prone. Ram had 23.15 per 1,000 drivers while Subaru had 22.89.

...

As of October 2024, there have been hundreds of documented nonfatal incidents involving Autopilot and fifty-one reported fatalities, forty-four of which NHTSA investigations or expert testimony later verified and two that NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigations verified as happening during the engagement of Full Self-Driving (FSD).*

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2025/02/11/tesla-again-has-the-highest-accident-rate-of-any-auto-brand/

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