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Wenzhou Tesla "brake failure" incident the biggest reversal is coming!
The owner of the car publicly apologized on Weibo, admitting to mistakenly using the throttle as a brake. Previously, the owner of the car had told the media that he was an "old driver" with more than ten years of driving experience and would never make the mistake of "braking and stepping on the accelerator".
Just last month, there was an accident in Beijing caused by Tesla's misoperation. Why do people always mistake the throttle for the brake?
The "brake failure" was actually due to the wrong throttle
This Tesla Wenzhou "brake failure" incident was once rumored to be boiling.
In August 2020, a Tesla Model 3 owner in Wenzhou had a collision with multiple cars after driving his vehicle into a parking lot. According to the daily economic news previously reported, the accident not only caused more than 10 cars to be damaged, but also seriously damaged the accident vehicles, and the cost of compensation to the owner of the hit car exceeded 400,000 yuan. The owner himself was rescued after 7 hours of rescue and blood transfusion of nearly 5,000 ml.
"During the operation, I cut off 30 centimeters of small intestine and lumbar spine, which was medically identified as a grade 9 disability and I was incapacitated." The owner of the car, Mr. Chen, told reporters.
After the accident, the owner of the car said on social platforms such as Douyin and Weibo that the accident occurred because the vehicle suddenly accelerated and he stepped on the brakes without responding. After appraisal, the facts did not match the description of the owner, and the owner was sentenced to apologize and compensate 50,000 yuan. After that, the owner appealed, and the second instance was rejected.
Swipe to see the full text of the apology letter
According to the apology statement, the owner said that on the night of the accident, when driving home, he suddenly found someone in front of him and wanted to step on the brakes, but he stepped on the wrong accelerator. He also said that after the accident, although he knew that he had stepped on the accelerator as a brake, he was unwilling to fabricate "Tesla automatic acceleration brake failure" and other content on multiple media.
It is worth noting that the owner also said that after being sued by Tesla, other car owners who claimed to be "rights protection" also came to contact themselves and introduced a platform to provide them with first-instance lawyer fees. The owner of the car once joined the rights protection group, but later withdrew from the group because of "different ideas".
The owner once said that he could never be wrong
According to the City Express, Mr. Chen told the media at that time that he was an "old driver" with more than ten years of driving experience, and he would never make the mistake of "braking and pressing the wrong throttle".
However, on October 13, 2020, the Wenzhou Society of Automotive Engineers issued an "Appraisal Opinion" saying that after analyzing the background data and comparing with the EDR accident data, the brake pedals did not work (in the state of not being stepped on) within 5 seconds before the accident collision. After that, Mr. Chen made a record in the Wenzhou traffic police department, admitting that he did not step on the brakes at that time, but stepped on the accelerator as a brake.
However, after the appraisal report was released, Mr. Chen posted a video on the social platform, saying that he was only persuaded by his friends to settle the claim for the insurance company, and had to admit that he had stepped on the wrong pedal. At the same time, it was questioned that the test of the Wenzhou Society of Automotive Engineers was carried out with the help of a special inspection tool provided by Tesla, so there was a flaw.
The court held that after the issuance of the Appraisal Opinion, the defendant Mr. Chen admitted that he did not step on the brakes at that time, but used the accelerator as a brake, so the appraisal conclusion of the Appraisal Opinion was adopted, and the accident was caused by the defendant's improper operation when encountering the situation. At the same time, after the above-mentioned appraisal opinion and accident determination were made, the defendant published information on social platforms about the damage to the plaintiff's reputation that was inconsistent with the facts, resulting in the wrong perception of the plaintiff and the plaintiff's production of the "Tesla" brand car by network users and media viewers, as well as the reduction of the plaintiff's social evaluation, which has constituted an infringement of the plaintiff's right to reputation.
Why is it that someone always steps on the wrong pedal?
For Tesla, the driver's wrong pedal has an accident, far more than this time.
On April 22 this year, a car owner driving a Tesla Model 3 had a rear-end collision on the Beijing Airport No. 2 Expressway, and the vehicle was seriously damaged and stopped after hitting four cars in a row. The parties believed that the vehicle had caused an accident caused by "brake failure" and reported insurance on this ground.
Image source: Tesla official website
Tesla said that it then retrieved background data for verification, which showed that the driver avoided the truck in front and turned the steering wheel to the left, and pressed the acceleration pedal sharply during the steering, causing the speed of the car to rise and eventually led to the collision, and the driver did not step on the brake pedal before the collision. After the first collision, the driver pressed down the accelerator pedal for a long time, continuously, and significantly, and many more collisions occurred. During consecutive collisions, the driver has two successive braking pedals and each time the brake pedal lasts less than 1 second.
Tesla informed the parties of the situation, but the parties expressed their approval. Since then, the parties have also released a number of Tesla "brake failure" information on social platforms, which has aroused widespread concern.
Tesla said that after that, the insurance company hoped to divide the liability by retrieving EDR data, and the parties contacted the relevant departments of the national automobile quality supervision to express their hope to investigate the matter, and the relevant departments responded quickly. Under the joint witness of the relevant state departments, parties, third-party experts and Tesla, the four parties conducted on-site EDR data retrieval of the accident vehicle on April 27. The results showed that the EDR data was consistent with the conclusion of the background data analysis.
Judging from the current identification results, the accident was caused by the driver's wrong acceleration pedal. Why do drivers, even many years old drivers, step on the wrong pedal? According to industry analysis, this is related to Tesla's single-pedal mode of kinetic energy recovery, which is different from the driving habits of traditional fuel vehicles.
According to the Beijing Daily reporter's experience, Tesla's single-pedal mode allows the driver to start decelerating the "brake" as long as the accelerator pedal is lifted during the driving process, so in addition to the emergency braking situation, most of the time, the driver almost does not need to step on the brake pedal, and only the single pedal can complete the vehicle acceleration, deceleration and braking. It's also easy for drivers to get used to keeping their feet on the accelerator pedal all the time. This driving mode "simplifies" to a certain extent, and also helps the vehicle kinetic energy recovery and reduces power consumption, but if an emergency is encountered, the driver may indeed make a mistake in the busy and mistakenly use the "throttle" as the brake.
As a result, the rationality of this design is also controversial. Some insiders also called for further driving training for car owners, as well as giving car owners more driving mode choices.
In addition, from 2021 onwards, Tesla has stood on the cusp of public opinion due to frequent exposure of suspected brake failures. In addition to the Wenzhou accident, there are also accidents in Henan, Tianjin and other places, and the owner also claims that the brakes have failed. Among them, a Henan car owner once attracted great attention because of his excessive rights protection at the auto show.
On April 22, the China Consumers Association released the "Annual Report on the Protection of The Rights and Interests of Chinese Consumers (2021)", mentioning the tesla roof rights protection, saying that the consumption of new energy intelligent vehicles has caused new problems in rights protection, such as sudden acceleration during driving, brake steering failure, etc. The existence of these problems shows that relevant operators also need to continuously enhance their awareness of quality and safety responsibility and quality integrity and self-discipline, and promote the continuous improvement of product and service quality.
The above report also mentioned that there are difficulties in safeguarding rights in the consumer disputes of new energy intelligent vehicles, such as the existence of different degrees of reasons and difficulties in determining responsibility in disputes such as the failure of auxiliary automatic driving systems.
Source丨Beijing Daily, Zhongxin Jingwei, Daily Economic News, City Express, Beijing News Shell Finance
Editor 丨 Wang Lination