The First Person Ever To Die In a Tesla Is a Guy Who Stole One 443
mrspoonsi sends this news from The Verge:
Elon Musk can no longer say that no one's ever died in a Tesla automobile crash. But few people will be pointing fingers at the electric car maker for this senseless tragedy. Earlier this month, 26-year-old Joshua Slot managed to successfully ride off with a Model S he'd stolen from a Tesla service center in Los Angeles, but police quickly spotted the luxury vehicle and gave chase. According to Park Labrea News, the high-speed pursuit was eventually called off after officers were involved in a fender bender of their own, leaving the police department strained for resources and without any feasible way of catching up to Slot. Reports claim he was traveling at speeds of "nearly 100 mph," but losing the police tail apparently didn't convince Slot to hit the brakes. Instead he sped on, eventually colliding with three other vehicles and a pair of street poles. The final impact was severe enough to "split the Tesla in half" and eject Slot from the car's remains. The Tesla's front section wound up in the middle of the road and caught fire. Its rear portion flew through the air with such force that it slammed into the side of a local Jewish community center and became wedged there.
Died Outside a Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
Considering he was thrown from the vehicle (likely from not wearing a seatbelt) I'm not sure you could say he died 'in' a Tesla.
Re:Died Outside a Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Died Outside a Tesla (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Died Outside a Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Died Outside a Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
Lol, you are technically correct.
The best kind of correct.
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Re:Died Outside a Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
As there have only been 100 billion humans ever on the planet, 7% of us are still alive, making being human only 93% lethal.
I suspect the number of Tesla owners versus dead Tesla owners demonstrates them to be nearly immortal.
Re: Died Outside a Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
So Tesla's anti-theft system is 100% lethal?
Good riddance (Score:3)
No, but evolution's anti-massive-stupidity system is pretty lethal. Less so nowadays, but... still.
"Hey, think I'll drive triple digits in a randomly active urban environment in a vehicle I'm not familiar with, while (justifiably) paranoid!"
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Got killed when the Tesla ejected (rejected?) him.
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It's a new feature on the smartphone app: you could already honk the horn, open the windows and roof, and many other things. Now they added "split in half and eject driver". Very useful, I must say.
Re: Died Outside a Tesla (Score:2)
hopefully it said some cheesy Arnold ask phrase like "time to split, asshole."
Died Outside a Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
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Considering he was thrown from the vehicle (likely from not wearing a seatbelt) I'm not sure you could say he died 'in' a Tesla.
I'd be surprised if they found most of him in the same city.
Thrown from the vehicle (Score:5, Insightful)
So, assuming he wasn't already dead, technically he didn't die in the Tesla.
Re:Thrown from the vehicle (Score:5, Informative)
He didn't die in the car itself, but he died of injuries sustained from the car crash. The summary makes this distinction by saying "in a Tesla automobile crash", but the article itself does not.
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The Business Insider link said that he was resusitated but died later.
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No. The article says that he died at the scene, but was later resuscitated. He died twice.
Re:Thrown from the vehicle (Score:5, Funny)
There have been two deaths resulting from a Tesla crash.
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There have been two deaths resulting from a Tesla crash.
Serious winning.
Re:Thrown from the vehicle (Score:5, Informative)
Loking at those pictures, while bad it was probably survivable if he had been wearing a seat belt. It was being ejected that killed him.
Re:Thrown from the vehicle (Score:4, Insightful)
Loking at those pictures, while bad it was probably survivable if he had been wearing a seat belt. It was being ejected that killed him.
It was the sudden stop after being ejected that killed him.
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" Emergency responders suspected that Slot was already dead when they arrived at the debris-littered scene. But he wasn't. Perhaps it's a testament to Tesla's safety measures that Slot remained alive and was briefly resuscitated en route to the hospital"
From the article...
Holy crap. perhaps he died of medical malpractice :O
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Yep you could die in an F1 car if you get thrown out (although it would take a very odd impact - if you don't wear your seatbelt in an F1 car, because of the shape of the cockpit and seat, in a frontal impact you'll become a gross puddle in the footwell).
Re:Thrown from the vehicle (Score:5, Informative)
Incorrect, in modern F1, it's virtually unheard of for the monocoque (the footwell, plus the rest of the area the driver sits in) to be compromise in any way. This includes head on into the barriers at 200mph type crashes. At the British grand prix last week, Kimi Raikkonen walked (with a sore ankle) out of a 47g impact. The monocoque was perfectly in tact.
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They make them out of carbon fibre, layed up in interesting ways usually involving a honeycomb sandwich between two layers of flat carbon fibre.
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Another example https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
In this crash, Kubica hit the wall at 300km/h. While the car was completely destroyed, the monocoque was again, completely in tact.
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another tesla fire (Score:5, Funny)
from summary: The Tesla's front section wound up in the middle of the road and caught fire.
Yup, another tesla fire.
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Arg, beat me to it.
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And how many cars do you think are completely safe from fire after a 100 MPH collision?
This does nothing to tarnish the safety of a Tesla, in my mind. I still would not buy one, but mostly because I can't afford it.
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Re:another tesla fire (Score:4, Insightful)
You're saying Michael Bay's engineering team designs ways for cars to *not* catch on fire? I would think rather the exact opposite would be true.
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I'm pretty sure he meant that Michael Bay's designed car would be on fire before going 100MPH+, crashing, splitting in two, wedged into a Jewish community center...then exploding (with an impractically large explosion) then transforming into a semi and driving into the sunset.
Anti-Theft (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like an anti-theft feature.
Great Story! (Score:5, Funny)
Hi speed chase, hum? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, in who's interest is it that the police perform these "for show" stunts?
Wouldn't it be much better to deploy a helicopter, drone or other means of tracking the car from a distance, and not risk killing several bystanders in a crash? This time only the bad guy died, but even him did not deserve capital punishment for a car jack ...
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capital punishment
Well that's one way to rewrite the story. Why don't we just go ahead and say he driving an electric chair?
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And not for endangering the lives of everyone else in the city while he was speeding on his joyride either?
Stealing a car is the least of his crimes.
Re:Hi speed chase, hum? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the police called off the chase (for other reasons) and he kept going at 100+mph, there's no "punishment" involved, let alone capital punishment. This is a Darwin Award pure and simple, pure suicide-by-stupid.
I do agree that police chases are a spectacle who's time has long-sinced passed, but you mention drones as a means of tracking them, and they're now "teh new evil" no matter what purpose they're put to by authorities, so until the country gets a little less schizophrenic I don't see that changing.
Re:Hi speed chase, hum? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read article? The police had given up on the chase before the guy crashed the Tesla that the final time.
According to the source, "the pursuit was terminated because there wasn’t enough time or police resources in the area to catch up with the vehicle." It didn't help that the pursuing officers were involved with a minor collision of their own.
Re:Hi speed chase, hum? (Score:5, Informative)
Minor collision? The BusinessInsider source claims the pursuing officers had to be hospitalized. That doesn't sound "minor" to me.
And they only broke off pursuit when it became impossible for them to continue, not when it became unsafe. Many police departments now have a policy of not performing chases for non-violent crimes because, statistically, you're more likely to kill bystanders by chasing than by letting the criminal drive off.
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the pursuing officers had to be hospitalized
Police offices can be hospitalized for even minor injuries, largely because of liability concerns. Just because they're in a hospital doesn't mean they had limbs amputated or third degree burns or severe trauma or some such. It could very well have been whiplash or cuts and bruises or smoke inhalation or even concussion-like symptoms.
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A) Police can't initiate a high speed chase without someone that's already fleeing at high speed.
B) The police stopped chasing him.
C) He kept fleeing!
"Approaching" 100MPH is what many people do on the way to work every day where the speed limits are 75, and Tesla's should easily be able to handle that speed. Definitely operator error all the way in this case.
Re:Hi speed chase, hum? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hi speed chase, hum? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having had the experience of having my own performance car stolen temporarily, and damaging it to the extent of needing a new engine and reupholstering, at the time I felt capital punishment is not enough.
You may think this is a little severe, but people who are into cars feel they have had part of their soul ripped out of them if it is stolen and trashed, especially if it is their personal hobby and they are doing it at the limits of their budget.
I understand that many people attach a lot of their self-image to their vehicles, and devote disproportionate time, attention, and money to them. That doesn't mean that their priorities should be encoded into law.
Your hobby is not more important to society in general than human life. Yes, it may be more important to you than some other person's life. Laws exist partly to mediate between people's conflicting self-interest.
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So's your house and all your stuff. Doesn't stop people from feeling violated when their home gets robbed. People are not always strictly rational, and any successful society has to recognize that and deal with it.
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You don't get the death penalty for robery either. And no one is trying to justify it by saying someone robbed their soul.
Re:Hi speed chase, hum? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless I'm misreading it badly, he's not trying to justify the death penalty for carjacking; he's explaining why he wouldn't mourn for a carjacker. And I bet the typical just-robbed homeowner would agree.
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So would anyone that had just been wronged by a criminal. That's why we have a judge and jury give out punishments, and not the victim or vigilantes.
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Remote Kill Switch. (Score:2)
I thought Tesla's had remote kill switches.
Couldn't the police just call Tesla and have them disable the car?
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Since GM runs ads about how they can remotely kill OnStar equipped vehicles, I am sure that if the capability exists in Tesla Cars, they wouldn't need a warrant to do it. They would only need authorization from the owner. Only time Tesla would need a warrant from the police is if the police are chasing the Owner and the Owner won't grant authorization
Unsafe at any speed (above 100 MPH)... (Score:5, Funny)
So at times the Tesla was being driven at speeds up to 100 MPH, collided with three cars and two utility poles along the way, and eventually suffered an impact that split the car in two, immolating the front half and embedding the back half within a nearby building.
Can't people see how dangerous and unsafe these vehicles are?!?
If something as trivial as multiple high-speed impacts can lead to driver fatality, imagine what could happen in a REALLY serious accident!
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Re:Unsafe at any speed (above 100 MPH)... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, getting your car ripped in half after hitting a pole apparently is "normal", in that it happens to many cars. https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com] It's unfortunate, but physics isn't your friend in situations like this.
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Re:Unsafe at any speed (above 100 MPH)... (Score:5, Informative)
http://articles.latimes.com/20... [latimes.com]
http://www.autoevolution.com/n... [autoevolution.com]
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news... [nbcnewyork.com]
How much are you betting that in that last article, the driver of the Maxima wasn't driving 100 MPH? Most highway limits are 65 MPH, you're talking 50% faster, which is perhaps not a "huge difference" but it's not negligible. It also doesn't matter if the car splits in half, as long as the driver is protected within the cage (look at how F1 cars crumple when they crash, without a pole, but protect the driver). What matters more is someone probably not wearing a seat belt...
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Re:Unsafe at any speed (above 100 MPH)... (Score:4, Informative)
I think I can help you out. [bit.ly]
It's actually a rather common, and well studied occurrence. For instance here's a 70 MPH into a tree [wreckedexotics.com] car split in half. Many cars have had extremely weak [autosafetyexpert.com] side impact designs for years. It's also one of the hardest things to protect against since there is no crumple zone on the side to absorb energy, unlike the front and back.
I bet across the country there are multiple cars split in half every single day, many from hitting narrow objects like light poles at relatively modest speeds, like 45MPH.
Re:Unsafe at any speed (above 100 MPH)... (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you aware that the kinetic energy is proportional to the SQUARE of the speed, right? There is a huge difference in safety - much bigger than between 40MPH and 70MPH.
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Last year in a town in California, someone who was not being chased, managed to split a compact car completely in half by hitting a tree. The two parts of the car ended up quite a distance from each other. He wasn't driving on a freeway, or a sidestreet, but was on a street with a 35 or 40mph speed limit. Reports said the speed was "up to 100mph"
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Well out running the police ... (Score:2)
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Is a win for the Tesla, but it sounds likes it pretty spectacularly failed when he hit something.
...while it was going 100 mph. I'm all for safety but I don't expect ANY car company to design a car that will keep occupants safe in a crash with enough kinetic energy to embed half the car in a fucking building...
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Is a win for the Tesla, but it sounds likes it pretty spectacularly failed when he hit something.
...while it was going 100 mph. I'm all for safety but I don't expect ANY car company to design a car that will keep occupants safe in a crash with enough kinetic energy to embed half the car in a fucking building...
Exactly. And with the amount of deaths recorded every year, only the truly ignorant would assume that driving anywhere is a safe activity.
Oh wait a second, I forgot...we already have the truly ignorant behind the wheel who thinks they can text, surf, and drive all at the same time.
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>> I don't expect ANY car company to..
More to the point, no one who curerntly thinks they want it would actually want it once they found out the associated downsides of massive increases in weight and cost of every new car.
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From the pictures I saw it looked like it was survivable so long as you weren't in the rear seats. The front of the passenger compartment was intact and whatever fire there was doesn't look like it was very extensive. There might be some melting of the upholstery.
...but every Nice Morning Drive must be safe! (Score:2)
You can never have too many safety features! [mgexp.com]
FIRE! (Score:2)
See, another one caught fire! These things are unsafe, they're constantly catching fire! This is just one of many smoldering teslas!
Anyone who thinks (Score:5, Insightful)
or tries to blame this on the Tesla car killing someone in a 100MPH accident and not the car thief's actions, is a straight up retard
I have no illusions about Musk doing this to get richer but so far his shown that being a psychopath is not a requirement to being a CEO who might actually like to see the world change for better and move humanity forward.
Bang (Score:2)
Out with a bang, not with a whisper.
Bet he wasn't buckled in... (Score:2)
I'm willing to bet the guy wasn't buckled up. Even when cars are tore in half in crashes if the person is buckled in they are usually still attached to the seat (even though they are sometimes dead from the car being sheared in half).
There is like a 95% chance that if he was ejected that he wasn't buckled up (the seat itself would've had to been sheared to cut the lap belt). I bet the final investigation notes that he wasn't buckled in (there is no guarantee of survival if the passenger compartment is compr
The victims (Score:4, Informative)
"Sgt. Chris Tatar, with the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station, said five people in the three vehicles that were struck by the Tesla sustained “varying degrees of injury.” They were hospitalized, and had been released as of Monday, he added."
Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm amazed at how the safety cage is still there, pretty much undamaged, even if the car was split in half...
Looking at the pictures from TFA, looks like he would still be alive if not ejected from the car (if he could've gotten out before it caught fire)
No wonder NHTSA broke their machine while testing roof resistance
http://www.roadandtrack.com/go... [roadandtrack.com]
What tragedy? (Score:2)
>>> for this senseless tragedy
What tragedy? IMHO its actually a success in gene pool improvement. We all need to stop this 'every life is sacred no matter what' thing.
Only 100 mph? (Score:2)
" Reports claim he was traveling at speeds of "nearly 100 mph"
So, is that so special in the US? I drove much faster than that this evening on my way home from work on the highway (180 km/h on GPS = 113 mph), But then, I don't drive a Tesla.
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Stole a Tesla? How? (Score:3)
I thought Teslas had a literally encrypted key that all but guaranteed the car couldn't be stolen sans key.,
Did the service center leave the key with the car or is the car inherently insecure?
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Informative)
*amused* give some credit to the Tesla for him lasting that long
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He probably wasn't wearing a seat belt. Judging from the pictures the driver's compartment and front seat were intact, so the crash would have probably been survivable if he was buckled up.
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Cyclists ARE a menace, to themselves. I nearly killed one two years ago because he blew a stop sign coming down a hill, swerved in front of me, hooked his tires into a trolley track and fell over about 20' in front of my car. If I hadn't been driving below the speed limit he would have been street pizza.
Biking in hilly, high density areas (like downtown Seattle) should require a license. One that can be revoked.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently saw a cyclist come from the sidewalk on my right, cross an intersection diagonally across me (between two left-turning lanes of north/south traffic), get back up onto the sidewalk, and then later get into the bike lane going the wrong way, at an alarming speed.
As a motorist and a cyclist, I was completely stunned. It's cyclists like that why motorists hate cyclists.
Nobody can avoid killing you if you don't even pretend to follow the rules of traffic. But many many drivers forget that they are required by law to not run over cyclists, even if they are inconvenient.
I have seen more cyclists do ridiculous things than I could count. I give them a wide berth, but, I have to admit, some of them seem like they're trying to get killed.
Likewise, a lot of drivers more or less don't give a damn and will practically run them over, or off the road, or door them. Sometimes buses don't even obey bike lanes.
I won't ride a bicycle on city streets anymore.
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Even better is the reason why cyclists have to use the street, vs the sidewalk - Cyclists are expected to be predictable, and follow a set pattern (i.e. the rules of the road), whereas pedestrians are presumed to be completely unpredictable.
Do the crazy cyclists just not grasp the physics of getting hit by a car?
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody can avoid killing you if you don't even pretend to follow the rules of traffic.
I'm a cyclist, and I follow the rules of traffic to the extent that I can. But the metal rims of my bicycle don't have enough surface area to consistently trigger the vehicle-sensing induction loops at intersections. At some intersections in my home town, I've seen even a bicycle and a motorcycle put together fail to trip it. So in the 35 states that haven't passed dead red laws [pineight.com], I don't understand how to follow the law against crossing the street at a red light, other than by not traveling at all.
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Re:Why is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or do give a damn and do those things on purpose. Or will throw things at them [latimes.com]. I've only had one or two cases in several years of daily commute cycling where I suspect a driver was maliciously trying to edge me off a road, but in some regions its apparently a frequent hazard, and if anyone brings it up, a lot of victim-blaming happens (e.g. cites story of a time they saw a crazy cyclist similar to yours, then claims the person being harassed by a motorist was probably doing something similarly bad, or attempts to charge the guy for inciting the incident in some fashion (see previous link)).
I try to call out cyclists behaving badly, but I find it isn't all that common. When I'm out and about I notice a lot of cyclists behaving perfectly well -- it's just that the odd one or two that don't are the ones that stick out and you notice. The same is true of any vehicle operator -- it's just that people have gotten so used to seeing several dozen traffic violations every day (e.g. failing to signal, running red lights or stop signs, improper turns, failing to leave appropriate space, various parking offenses) without even touching speeding (which would bring it up to likely some 95% of the traffic on the road -- people failing to exceed the speed limit are more likely to be noticed and considered out of place than people speeding). That one cyclist being crazy (and I agree they exist -- I've seen some pretty egregious cycling behavior before) sticks out more since cyclists in general are more rare, but I suspect fewer cyclists in total behave badly with regard to traffic safety (probably because of the inherent additional danger to cycling).
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(in other words, all bad news about Teslas are exaggerated beyond belief, kind of how like cyclists are a menace on city streets due to all of the traffic laws they break, even though cars kill tens of thousands of people a year).
Wait... What 'cars kill tens of thousands of people' has to do with 'cyclist are menace on city'? They are 2 completely different stories. In other words, even though the statement about cars kill a lot of people is true, the statement does NOT make the cyclist are menace to be false.
idiots with more car than they can handle (Score:2)
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Make it another 10, please.
Re:Ejected from car -- seatbelt? (Score:5, Funny)
...be sure you buckle up! You can't expect Elon Musk to do it for you.
Don't give anybody any ideas!
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Re:Jews? (Score:5, Funny)
Or Israel will retaliate by bombing Los Angeles.
I'm trying to see the downside.
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To continue your deft analysis of current events, they'll call first and watch to make sure the civilians are out before surgically bombing the thief's house.
Israel has killed over 100 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, in retaliation for three Israeli deaths. So cut the crap about their deep concern for human life.
Re: Jews? (Score:4, Informative)