Vandal Who Keyed A Tesla Discovers That It Filmed Him (electrek.co) 174
For the third time, someone who vandalized a Tesla discovered that the car's "Sentry Mode" had filmed them -- and after the video went viral online, decided to turn themselves in.
An anonymous reader quotes Electrek: The 20-year-old said that he was frustrated after a car cut him off and he thought the Model 3 might have been the same car. The Edmonton man said that he saw the video online and "became overcome with disappointment and embarrassment." He added that he doesn't have anything against Tesla and he regretted doing it right away...
Earlier this month, we reported on the case of Alan Tweedie's Tesla Model 3 being keyed badly by a woman for seemingly no reason while he was at his daughter's soccer game. The Tesla Sentry mode video of her keying the car went viral and she ended up turning herself in. There was also another similar incident involving two men who ended up turning themselves in earlier this year and now this new incident in Canada becomes the third example of vandals turning themselves in because of Sentry mode.
While Tesla Sentry Mode is useful to capture those incidents and pressure the vandals, the hope is that the feature gets publicized enough that people become less inclined to vandalize Tesla vehicles in the first place.
An anonymous reader quotes Electrek: The 20-year-old said that he was frustrated after a car cut him off and he thought the Model 3 might have been the same car. The Edmonton man said that he saw the video online and "became overcome with disappointment and embarrassment." He added that he doesn't have anything against Tesla and he regretted doing it right away...
Earlier this month, we reported on the case of Alan Tweedie's Tesla Model 3 being keyed badly by a woman for seemingly no reason while he was at his daughter's soccer game. The Tesla Sentry mode video of her keying the car went viral and she ended up turning herself in. There was also another similar incident involving two men who ended up turning themselves in earlier this year and now this new incident in Canada becomes the third example of vandals turning themselves in because of Sentry mode.
While Tesla Sentry Mode is useful to capture those incidents and pressure the vandals, the hope is that the feature gets publicized enough that people become less inclined to vandalize Tesla vehicles in the first place.
Illegal (Score:2, Interesting)
A note to EU owners who own a Tesla: using this is illegal. You would need to put up signs warning people that you have CCTV wherever you park, and take steps to block the camera's view of anything other than your car.
Re: Illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Illegal (Score:2)
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No, nothing to break. The fact is, that it is legal in America, and most likely in most nations in the world. Even in the UK, only businesses have to put up signs. Individuals taking recordings do NOT have to notify SHIT. [thesun.co.uk] There are so many GD trolls on this site anymore. Amimojo is one of many.
Never, ever link to the s*n or the daily fail.
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Stop quoting fucking cartoons and read the guidance from the public body responsible for enforcing the law:
https://ico.org.uk/your-data-m... [ico.org.uk]
Relevant part:
If your CCTV captures images beyond your property boundary, such as your neighboursâ(TM) property or public streets and footpaths, then your use of the system is subject to the data protection laws.
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They modded my reply "overrated" too, so it's not just some random fruitcake, they are at least slightly organized.
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I’m also not familiar with this Tesla feature. Is it always recording or only when someone gets close to the vehicle?
Re:Illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
1) you have to enable it (locally on the UI or via remote car 'app')
2) there has to be enough fat32 storage (and high enough speed) and there has to be a creatable and writable toplevel TeslaCam (iirc) folder.
3) it records based on motion changes and you get a 'preroll' saved when a trigger happens (along with several seconds of video after, I forget how long, but its fairly long)
limits and bugs: when the car goes to sleep, it unmounts the disk harshly and the clean bit is not set or cleared. they don't (or didn't) do a graceful unmount. next time the car wakes up and tries to mount, it fails and does NOT do sentry mode.
odd workaround: a raspi zero (usb host mode) simulates storage and renames files out of the way when done so that the top folder and 'device' is always clean and ready. quite clever, actually, as a user workaround. too bad its still a bug, last time I checked (v10 sw on model 3)
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It doesn't need to be FAT32. I use ext4.
I haven't seen this behaviour.
Re:Illegal (Score:5, Informative)
In principle, you cannot post footage from security cameras or dashcams without permission from the people shown in the footage. In practise, it is sufficient to blur out faces and number plates of any wrongdoers... you don't have to blur everyone unless they later contact you and ask for that.
So: using this is not illegal. Posting it without blurring the culprit is... but in most cases nothing will come of it unless the culprit comes forward and you ingore their demands for the video to be taken down.
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It used to be the same here in CZ until 2018, when the Office for Personal Data Protection decided it will no longer issue fines for this. Personally, I applaud the move.
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Ok, I can understand blurring out the faces, plates of the innocent.
But WTF do you have to blur out the face and identifying info of the culprit/criminal that you are catching outright in the act of committing the offense??
That makes NO SENSE whatsoever...is this really a thing or did you have a typo there?
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did you have a typo there?
Nope. In fact if you don't blur them and they get caught later, a judge may hand down a much lower sentence because the perp "has already been publicly punished". For this reason, when the police themselves post footage of a crime in action and ask for witnesses to come forward "if you have seen this person", the perps will hilariously often be blurred out as well... I kid you not.
Our judges are a little nutty in certain areas like this. But at least they are all equally nutty, so justice here tends
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Who appointed you judge, jury and executioner?
The State wants to reserve that power for itself. If you try to challenge the State's monopoly on exercising power, the State will "have words" with you, which you might not survive.
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In Europe the courts decide on the punishment for criminals, not the victim or vigilantes who happen to capture their crimes on video.
If you disagree with the court's punishment you can appeal to the court, but you can't set up a pillory and have people throw rotten food at the perpetrator.
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So: using this is not illegal. Posting it without blurring the culprit is... but in most cases nothing will come of it unless the culprit comes forward and you ingore their demands for the video to be taken down.
It is illegal if you don't put up warning signs..
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It depends how you photograph them. If you are taking pictures specifically of them then data protection rules come in to play and you are subject to them. If they just happen to be in the background when you take a photo of a building or something then it's fine.
With CCTV if it captures anything off your own property then you have to inform people that you are capturing video. You also have to take steps to protect their privacy, such as making sure the camera can't see into private areas like through thei
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. If you are taking pictures specifically of them then data protection rules come in to play and you are subject to them.
That is not the case in the UK.
It is though a still emerging area of the law and you will easily find a barrister willing to make themselves even richer by pursuing a case on your behalf.
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A note to EU owners who own a Tesla: using this is illegal.
Which is absolutely fucking hilarious in the UK, because it's one of the most camera-surveilled nations on the planet. At least you can power all those cameras on the heat energy alone from Orwell's spinning bones.
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They will cease to be a EU member sooner or later anyway.
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it's one of the most camera-surveilled nations on the planet.
UK is not even close to being the most surveilled.
First of all, the most relevant statistics are cameras per capita, and cameras per unit of area. Not the number of cameras.
China is said to be #1 in both regards now, but the UK was #1 per capita as recently as 2014. So it was recently #1, and is now #2. How is that not one of the most? The USA appears to be #3, so I'm not trying to get proud here or anything, only to state facts.
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Here are the guidelines for UK domestic CCTV: https://ico.org.uk/your-data-m... [ico.org.uk]
Since your car will be recording people in public, not on your own property, you need to comply with the GDPR and relevant UK data protection rules. That includes signage and obligations to take care of the data and process GDPR requests. You should have a policy available on request that explains the justification for capturing the video, how it is used and how long it is stored for.
Because the car just saves the video to a flas
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More simply, you can do pretty much what you want for security, but you should not keep the data unless you have a legal reason to do so ie exposed a crime. Any device should delete data automatically, after anything from 7 to 30 days, clearly it was written with this intent, though they obfuscated it, so mug punters would be less inclined to bother but commercial premises would be free to do what they are already doing. So car security cam trigger by any bump or close presence, fine, record away but delete
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You mean like this? [wp.com] :)
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I would say check your legal jurisdiction. Here in Norway, which is not part of the EU but has signed all the data protection directives it's legal because a car is not considered a fixed installation and sentry mode is event-based and not a continuous recording. However, that only applies specifically to the recording and storing of the video. If you're using it to establishing a personally identifiable register like people coming and going that's illegal. If you're publishing the video with identifiable p
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You sir are mistaken .It is not illegal in the EU, it is illegal in some member states. Read the local laws regarding recording in public.There are places like Germany where this would be illegal (but still admissible in a court). There are places like the Netherlands where it is legal to have a dashcam running like this (but having a fixed stationary camera recording the public road is illegal).
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In a public place, such as street parking? I think not. It's not filming the environment at large, it's recording the area immediately around the car which is your property.
Re: Illegal (Score:3)
It is illegal to key a car too
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Re: Illegal (Score:2)
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No it's not. It's in a legal grey zone in some countries, but there's nothing in the EU that bans you from having surveillance systems for your vehicle in any public area.
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There's nothing to prevent you from having whatever surveillence systems you want in any PRIVATE area - assuming you have permission of the owner (and in many countries you'd also need the individual permissions of people entering the property). But in general, in PUBLIC areas, you're going to run into problems.
If you happent ot park your car near a school, then there's a pretty high chance of you g
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Yet another argument for Brexit.
More surveillance?
Re:Illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet another argument for Brexit.
Because of some unsubstantiated claim some Internet rando made? That about sums it up, I guess.
Forgot to add the emoticon. (Score:2)
No. Because it's a joke. Laugh!
(Sorry I forgot the smiley, but I was still waking up.)
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Because it's a joke.
[citation needed]
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Yeah, yeah, but..... I heard that the EU were going to let Turkey join, and then 80 million Turks were going to invade England to use the NHS and the entire health system would collapse!
(And you might think this is satire, but it's actually true, and even if people didn't actually believe it, it contributed to the climate of fear and resentment towards the EU, though it was provably false.)
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Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep your hands to yourself. Don't touch others things unless you ask first. Simple respect.
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Aside from the one example that was carryover from road rage (getting cut off)....what possesses people to just damage cars and other items that are nice?
Is it jealousy?
If so...why? Just because someone has a nice, expensive car and you don't, why does that make you want to damage their nice car? Wouldn't you rather be inspired to work harder, etc so YOU could get one of those if that's what you want?
This isn't exactly new with Teslas, only the built in cameras capturing th
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It's not just three examples. Sentry Mode has caught dozens of people. Some people have even started making clip compilations of them [youtube.com].
Why do people do it? Beats me. Some people have problems. I hope the presence of cameras like this starts making people think twice about doing this sort of stuff. If not, maybe they'll have to make the "Keep Summer Safe" [cleantechnica.com] voice command be more like the original [youtube.com].
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Yeah, we should set up surveillance cameras everywhere to stop bad behavior. My guess is this wasn't a Tesla you Musk acolytes would be apathetic or completely against surveillance cameras in cars. What a cult!
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People have keyed Porsches and other nice $$ cars forever it seems, and I've just never understood that mentality. How has someone owning a nice thing harmed you?
Most of the time with stuff like this, “people” means “young guys”. A lot of young guys do things which, if they thought about it even slightly, they’d realize they’d be better off not doing.
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In the past, I think I'd largely agree with you, but these days, I think females are making this a much more equal opportunity offender thing.....
One of the first Tesla keying videos I was was of a lady and she didn't just casually drag a key lightly down the side of the car,
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I'm not sure it is 'these days'. I think it's just more apparent now.
Eventually the justice system may even catch up.
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Neighbors and family members of all genders engage in this kind of expensive but not life threatening destruction.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to defend car keying scum, but resentment against the rich and their conspicuous consumption isn't exactly new. When things get bad enough, people lose their heads.
Incidentally, US income inequality is greater than it was in revolutionary France.
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Incidentally, US income inequality is greater than it was in revolutionary France.
Except for pockets the whole of Manhattan is ripe for some pitchfork action.
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It ain't the median income earners who trundle out The National Razor. It's the 50% below them. But the medians join in because do you really want to get an extra close shave to stick up for some rich dicks?
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Incidentally, it isn't income that's the main problem.
It's wealth. Even poor Americans still own enough (and thus could lose enough) that they don't see the point of a revolution.
When it reaches the point where are large percentage of people own nothing, then heads will roll. We're heading that way, but not there, yet. This time those in power are smart enough to actually give us cake to eat.
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Not defending car keying either, but one of the most common ways cars are damaged here is door dinging. The spaces are often very small and cars are getting bigger, especially SUVs. Teslas are pretty wide too.
As this sort of thing becomes more common I can see claims of door dinging becoming pretty common.
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I think you've nicely demonstrated the attitude that makes the poor angry, yes.
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I just don't get some people.
Aside from the one example that was carryover from road rage (getting cut off)....what possesses people to just damage cars and other items that are nice?
A friend of mine once keyed a car just off 6th street in Austin in an adjacent angled space because the driver parked right on the line (like two feet away from their curb on the other side, the spaces on that street are/were in isolated pairs) and then actually turned the steering wheel all the way over so that their wheel/tire was preventing the passenger door from being opened. We were parked all the way over to our side, too. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Re: Good (Score:2)
I don't buy it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't buy for a second that either he "immediately regretted it" and I highly suspect that this isn't the first time he's keyed a car. This guy deserves everything that's coming to him.
Re:I don't buy it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Aaah, American "morals": (Score:4, Funny)
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Ah, the good ol' European 'moral superiority' that produced both World Wars, and ideologies like Nazism, Fascism, AND Communism! So smug, and yet so incoherent all at the same time.
1. Neither of the posts you are responding to used the word 'punishment', so where did your claim come from? For that matter, when is 'punishment' a 'newspeak' word? It's neither new, nor is it a euphemism for anything. It describes a very specific concept useful to discussions.
2. WTF? You trash more than 300 million peopl
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I don't buy for a second that either he "immediately regretted it" and I highly suspect that this isn't the first time he's keyed a car.
Was it the pickup truck or the baseball-cap-and-checked-shirt wardrobe that brought you to this conclusion?
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Sentry mode not possible in ICEV (Score:2, Informative)
BEVs can run their A/C even when parked in closed spaces without emitting carbon monoxide for extended periods of time. Not possible in ICEV.
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I think you overestimate how much power a couple of cameras use, particularly when they're operating as sentries.
If the trickle discharge actually was a concern, the manufacturer could stick in a small auxiliary lithium ion battery.
Having kilowatts of battery power available does let you do some interesting things. Running a few cameras isn't one of them.
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What are you talking about? You can buy plenty of security cameras for your car. They don't require anything else but a rechargeable battery in the system.
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BTW you are slipping. Not up to your old games. You still have not found my postings claiming "I paid 50K" and "I paid 55K" for my tesla proving what a bad liar I am. Also you used to have some thing about me not having an account in teslamotorsclub.com proves I am not really a Tesla owner.
Wo
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I've looked into this recently. The current best available dashcams with parking mode use about 1.3W in that mode. That's with low frame rate and a motion sensor for triggering, it's much higher if they do image processing for triggering.
Anyway, that's per camera. So for a system like Tesla's that can capture from 4 cameras (front, back, both sides) to cover door dings and keying you are looking at about 5.2W average.
Let's say you get a 10,000mAh battery of the type widely available. You will experience abo
This isn't a Telsa Thing (Score:3, Informative)
Six years ago I bought a Korean-made dash cam and mounted it in my Ford Escape. It has both forward and rearward cameras.
It doesn't go to sleep. Whenever it is parked and its motion sensor gets triggered I get some high-def footage of what is going on in its view. It would have caught these vandals even though it doesn't have the visibility of the side cameras that a M3 has.
So why is this a Tesla issue? Any car can have a dash cam. This "Sentry Mode" is absolutely nothing new.
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Tesla owners think everything that Musk puts out is novel and unique.
Re:This isn't a Telsa Thing (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla owners think everything that Musk puts out is novel and unique.
Nope. It just happens Elon does it from the factory and and on your car its aftermarket only. In addition to that it was a software update using existing hardware, an idea a customer submitted. Let's see your car do that.
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Almost... you still need an extra USB disk for the data.
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Who cares if it from the factory or not? You Musk acolytes are something else. He builds a crappy tunnel and you guys show up and cheer like he is a rock star. Completely dumb.
Great rebuttal there! Keep up the "good" work for your puppet masters. You make them proud.
Wait, they are Apple fans? (Score:2)
Err, I mean Microsoft fans?
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FunnyTesla hateboi like you call everyone in sight a fanboi
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You are right, having a dashcam isn't new. What is a Tesla thing is that when I bought my model 3 there was no dashcam or Sentry mode. Then one day I got an over-the-air update and BOOM, I suddenly did have a dashcam and Sentry mode, and it integrates with the car sound system to play an alarm if there is a break-in, and it sends a message to my phone, and it was free. How many other car manufacturers IMPROVE their the product for free after purchase?
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How did you get new hardware over-the-air? I assume the cam was there when you bought it. So it was just inactive? Did Telsla disclose the cam prior to purchase?
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All Model 3 cars come with 8 cameras which, along with the forward radar and 12 ultrasonic sensors, are used for the autopilot. When I bought the car the only the backup camera was directly viewable, and none of them could be recorded. They added Dashcam and Sentry mode as new software features that record video onto a USB drive.
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Tesla pushing updates to their own products isn't a third party, and certainly not a random one.
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Any car can have a dash cam. This "Sentry Mode" is absolutely nothing new.
So which of them have dashcams as a standard feature? Which of them record a 360 degree view rather than just the front and back?
When you fail to answer these questions you'll know why it's a Telsa issue. The fact that you bolted a clearly inferior in coverage aftermarket product to your car is irrelevant.
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It does not do it now, but Tesla has said it is going to upload the recorded clips through LTE to its servers. It will keep them for three days. Thus if the thief breaks and grabs the recorded media, it can still be available to the owner.
BTW there are thousands of after market devices for cars. But when something is made standard equipment for the first time, it is significant.
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No. It would not. It might have caught some video of the people keying the cars when they were in front or behind your car, but it would be trivially easy for them to argue that they just walked past. That assumes that your dashcam would have been triggered by the very slight mo
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At least half the cars I've been in have the CLA powered when the car is off.
And pretty much anything security / safety related is wired to a hot connection; so there are lots to tie into. (Alarms system, interior lights, etc, keyless entry system), or just run a wire right to the battery.
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You've said it yourself.
The way your camera is positioned, it would only give you circumstantial evidence that someone keyed your car, not direct evidence that someone did.
My own GM car has additional fish eye cameras located on the rearview mirrors to help with the 360-top view, so it could capture such incidents, but just like with your car, it doesn't give me access to its builtin cameras when the car is off, so I've had to purchase my own dashcam system aftermarket also.
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Would it have caught these people? Even the Tesla system isn't 100% reliable at catching them.
For a start you need coverage of the sides of the car. Front and read cameras don't cover the door areas so won't capture this kind of damage, or the more common accidental door ding.
The other issue is getting their licence plate so you can pursue them for your losses. The Tesla system doesn't always get it either, as it records 10 minutes after the event but if they take longer than that to drive away it probably
Where are the cameras? (Score:2)
Re:Where are the cameras? (Score:5, Informative)
... yes. To pretty much all of the above.
Forward facing, 3 cameras, all above the rear view mirror. Wide angle(35 degree), main (50 degree) and fisheye (150 degree) focus points.
Then two side cameras in the B pillars. (80 degree)
Two rear facing cameras under the side view mirrors. (60 degree)
One in the rear trunk lid. (140 degree)
And then, one in the cabin above the rear view mirror - still not in use.
Plenty of coverage ....
Good News - Bad News (Score:2)
Good News: There's recording equipment to help protect your Tesla from vandals and it's being made public knowledge in hopes of preventing more incidents.
Bad News: It's an unmarked, public video recording system that may break laws in some places. Also, people who plan to vandalize those cars will simply mask their appearance since they know there are recording devices installed.
I wonder if the self-admitted vandals got lesser punishments because they turned themselves in?
Someone could conceivably sue for t
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Every single person did something dumb in his life. Doesn't mean we should lock who they are down to that one error, and disallow them to be anything else.
Good thing that's not what happens when they get video of them fucking up posted to the internet, then. They get fifteen nanoseconds of infamy and then the world moves on to the next fuckup.
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TrunkMonkey(tm) mode is not via software update; you have to buy the car with that option if you want it.