Last weekend, the major car friend groups were brushed by Tesla again! No accident, Tesla double-clicked "brake failure"!
A woman from Beijing, driving a Tesla Model3 on the airport second highway, the vehicle suddenly accelerated to 170 miles, drove nearly 1 kilometer, crashed 4 cars in a row, and finally stopped, the owner said that "the air bag opened to pick up a life."
The resulting new round of "Tesla brake failure" discussion, almost filled with the vast majority of my car-related WeChat groups, although Tesla has responded officially, but the crowd is still arguing, and even many people specially private messages to ask me, in the end is the brake failure? Then, with the triple identity of China's earliest Model 3 owner, professional racing driver, and driving trainer, I will analyze this accident for everyone, and tell you that in the future, if you encounter this situation again, where should you go to find the truth, hoping to help you solve the doubts in your heart.
# About the accident #
First of all, we can get the following information from the chat history of the owner:
The owner is a woman, in her 50s
The owner has 30 years of driving experience
Tesla said the owner made a mistake, and the owner said no
The vehicle accelerates suddenly, without warning
Usually the brakes are very hard, but at the time they were very soft
The vehicle accelerated to 170 miles, traveled 1 kilometer, hit 4 cars before stopping
The owner did not use autonomous driving
The car is basically scrapped, and the owner is not hindered
The first thing I would say is that women are not suitable for driving and are a completely wrong perception. According to the Ministry of Public Security, the probability of female drivers causing serious traffic accidents is less than one-tenth of that of male drivers; secondly, age is not related to driving technology, so age and gender should be invalid information. Then, let's look at the driving age, I personally think, using driving age to measure driving technology, there are many uncertainties, some people have a long driving age, but the driving mileage is not very long, some people do not have a long driving age, but every day to drive, driving mileage is very much. So I think that driving age really does not mean that driving skills are necessarily good.
This reminds me of a story about byd buses, when BYD first started delivering electric buses, there were frequent traffic accidents, and the driver complained that the brakes of the car failed and accelerated automatically, which even led many teams to start resisting the use of BYD electric buses. As a result, BYD sent a professional team to investigate the cause of the accident, and the resulting driving data showed that the cause of these accidents was almost all caused by human error. This can annoy the driver masters, the driver masters one by one patted their chests and said, which of us does not have 10 years and 20 years of driving experience, can we still throttle the wrong brake? What a joke! Faced with this dilemma, BYD thought of a dirt method, that is, installing a camera on the throttle, and unexpectedly, the dirt method really worked. Complaints about brake failures have suddenly decreased, and BYD electric buses have also stepped out of the country and sold well in the world.
We then went back to the Tesla accident, the owner first tried to overtake from the right side of the truck, after overtaking unsuccessfully, found that the tank 300 drove quickly from the left side, so suddenly hit the direction of the left with force, this action caused the body to swing for the first time. Let's not talk about whether overtaking on the right side is a correct behavior, the action of pressing three lanes in one second alone is a very dangerous way of driving. Subsequently, the owner accelerated to catch up with the tank 300, while the line of sight was completely focused on the tank 300, after the Tesla speed was significantly higher than the tank 300, that is, the 39th second of the video, the owner again wanted to overtake on the right side, but found that there was a truck blocking, so he hit the left again, this action caused the second swing of the vehicle, but at this time it was very close to the tank 300, the owner obviously panicked, guessing that it was at this time that the throttle was mistakenly used as a brake, we can see that the body has a significant upward movement, This is exactly the posture of the body that appears when you suddenly press the accelerator vigorously. Just imagine, if there is a sudden acceleration and brake failure before, the owner can completely use the vacant rightmost lane to dodge, rather than directly rear-end tank 300, rear-end tank 300, then the driver's eyes, always stay on tank 300. Subsequently, the front cover was bounced up due to the impact, completely blocking the line of sight, the vehicle did not slow down, still along the leftmost lane forward, until the front cover was lifted by the wind, a Volkswagen suddenly appeared in front, at this time the driver's response was very correct, using the left side of the gap to attach the guardrail to dodge. Unfortunately, the owner of the video behind did not upload, so we do not know how the vehicle ended up stopping, but judging from the route, the vehicle traveled a total of 1.5km from the first impact to the complete stop.
Speaking of which, some riders ask me, why did Tesla's automatic emergency braking function not brake the car? The first is that Tesla's automatic brakes can be turned off manually, but here I think the owner did not turn off the automatic brakes, but because of other reasons, the automatic brakes did not play their due role. Let's take a look at the manual of the Tesla Model 3:
The first is the working speed range of the automatic brake, which is 10km/h-150km/h, if the speed described by the owner reaches 170 miles, the automatic braking is unusable. In addition, the owner of the car must have received a warning reminder of the front collision before the impact, but hitting the steering wheel and suddenly stepping on the accelerator will make the computer think that you are in emergency dodging, thus interrupting the automatic braking. In addition, about this 170 miles, here I guess the owner wants to express 170km/h, not 170 miles (mile), because after 170 miles is converted into kilometers, the speed should be 272km/h, which is the speed that Tesla Model3 cannot reach.
Finally, when I saw the owner say that the brakes were usually very hard, but it was very soft at the time, I guessed that she might be stepping on the accelerator, but this is just my guess, not necessarily the truth. However, then again, Tesla safety is really good, 170 speed overturned the tank 300, hit 4 cars, people are fine, praiseworthy.
# About the truth #
So, where is the truth about this? The truth is in the car, because the Tesla Model3 is designed in the United States, so whether it is imported or domestic version, it applies to US law 49. CFR 563。
According to this law, Tesla Model 3 must be installed with a black box (Event Data Recorder), referred to as EDR, this device is different from the background (networked) event log data published by Tesla in the previous Henan accident, the data in the black box is stored independently inside the vehicle, and at the same time has the characteristics of anti-impact, tamper-proof, and local storage.
Then, if you want to determine who is telling the truth and who is lying, or whether the accident is human error or vehicle failure, you need a very fair third party, and this most fair third party is the EDR device.
Tesla's EDR device, located at the bottom of the central handrail box, theoretically hits the least likely place to affect
According to U.S. law, the EDR device is not aimed at Tesla vehicles, but for all brands of vehicles produced and sold in the United States, and the legal provisions clearly state the content of the records required for EDR, including deceleration, accelerator pedal opening, brake system status, speed, ABS, airbags and other information. Most importantly, the unit is tamper-proof.
The legal definition of EDR
In U.S. law 49.563.5, EDR is defined as:
A device or function in a car that records dynamic time series data (e.g., vehicle speed and time) or dynamic time series data (e.g., δ-V and time) during a collision event for retrieval after a crash event occurs.
In the EU Parliamentary Document adopted in 2019, the requirements for the EDR are:
They are able to record and store data before, during and after a vehicle collision, including data on speed, braking, the position and tilt of the vehicle on the road, the status and activation rate of all safety systems, based on document 112. At the same time, the eCall in-car system is connected, and when the airbag pops out, it automatically calls for help.
China's EDR regulations have been implemented this year, standard number GB 39732-2020:
China currently has two standards, namely the recommended national standard "Car Video Driving Record System" and the mandatory national standard "Automotive Event Data Recording System" (EDR), China's EDR regulations require local storage, prohibit the storage of data in the cloud, and emphasize that imported cars are not allowed to store data abroad, and imported vehicles must meet domestic EDR requirements before they can be sold. The State Administration for Market Regulation said that the regulation is mainly for the management department to accurately confirm the status of the vehicle, analyze the cause of the accident, ensure the fairness and justice of the accident handling work, and maintain social fairness and justice when a passenger car collides.
Using EDR data as a precedent for evidence in court
United Kingdom
The UK was the first country to use EDR evidence in court, and in antonio Boparan-Singh's case, when a 19-year-old driver drove a Jeep and collided with a Land Rover that paralyzed the baby girl passengers inside Land Rover, the Birmingham court, after retrieving EDR data, confirmed that the Jeep driver was speeding to 72 mph on a speed limit of 30 mph, so the 19-year-old driver was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
United States
On November 2, 2011, Massachusetts Vice Governor Tim Murray drove a government vehicle on Interstate 190, and local police only treated the accident as an ordinary accident after an investigation. The lieutenant governor stated, "I was skating on ice, not speeding, wearing a seat belt and on the brakes." But Bruce McNall, a former Maine police officer with 25 years of experience in handling accidents, thought there was something wrong and suggested reviewing the EDR data, so 63 days after the accident, Secretary of State William F. Galvin ordered the state police to extract the EDR data and publish it, and the resulting EDR data showed that the speed of the car was 173 km/h when the accident occurred, and it was still accelerating, and the lieutenant governor did not wear a seat belt. The incident also became one of the triggers for the deputy governor's resignation in the future.
Canada
In Quebec, two cars collided at an intersection and resulted in the death of the driver of one of the vehicles, with the surviving driver stating that speeding and running a red light caused the accident and demanding financial compensation from the other side, but there were no cameras or witnesses at the scene. After retrieving the EDR of the accident vehicle, the judge found that the surviving driver lied and that it was he who was speeding at the time, not the deceased driver, so the surviving driver was convicted of "dangerous driving".
How to read Tesla's EDR data
The EDR data of Tesla vehicles is stored in the RCM (airbag) module, and there are currently two ways to read this data, one is through the CAN bus connection under the co-driver B post, and the other is to connect the airbag module directly. (CAN bus connection uses cable 1139996, direct continuous use of cable 1094601) Then, using a CAN-USB adapter, connect to a windows computer, use Tesla EDR Retrieval software to extract data, and finally you will get a report file in PDF format.
Tesla Model 3's EDR report template
Tesla's EDR report is extremely detailed and fully meets the requirements of the laws of the United States, the European Union, Japan and other countries for EDR data. In addition, EDR only records the event data of a vehicle collision or similar collision, and does not record any data during normal driving. You can log up to two events at the same time.
epilogue
That is to say, if you encounter a Tesla owner in the future who says that the brakes fail, you let him plug in the computer to see the EDR data, and the truth of the incident can be revealed, it is as simple as that. But if someone crashes and shouts "brake failure" while putting a seal on their car and not allowing anyone to get close, then their purpose may not be so pure. However, as the State Administration for Market Regulation said, the implementation of this regulation is to ensure the fairness and justice of accident handling and maintain social fairness and justice.
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