5 ms·

So they want $1m because.. they have nightmares about what would have happened if they couldn't get out of the car? Tesla certainly isn't to blame for the crash

by eridius 10y ago

So they want $1m because.. they have nightmares about what would have happened if they couldn't get out of the car? Tesla certainly isn't to blame for the crash, and it sounds like they're not to blame for it catching on fire either. In addition, the passengers didn't even try the emergency door release levers (presumably because they didn't know about them, even though they're documented in the physical owner's manual). Honestly, this just sounds like a money grab to me.

joezydeco 10y ago
...The owner of the vehicle and her boyfriend were sitting in the second-row seat... Um, where was the driver? Did he/she flee the scene or something? Killed in the crash?
- 21 10y ago
  Says in the article they had a chauffeur.
  - joezydeco 10y ago
    I meant, where was the driver when it came to helping the couple out of the wrecked vehicle?
    - 21 10y ago
      I've been in an accident once and immediately after I was in a state of shock, very confused and on auto-mode. Or maybe the driver dies in the accident, so I'm not really sure how this is relevant.
    - zkms 10y ago
      he "was hospitalized for more than 40 days with internal injuries and fractures" so I imagine that he got significantly injured and incapacitated.
- princetontiger 10y ago
  \maybe they have a different safety standard in china lol
- eridius 10y ago
  They had a chauffeur who ended up in the hospital for 40 days.
jstapels 10y ago
Not sure I follow this logic... Do you expect everyone that rides in the back of your car to have read your owner's manual? I realize in this case they also happen to be the owners, but I don't think that's the point here. Hiding a manual release BEHIND a speaker isn't exactly obvious. I have no opinion on if they deserve $1 million, but I do think Tesla needs take function over form in this case and make the manual override a lot easier to find.
- eridius 10y ago
  > Do you expect everyone that rides in the back of your car to have read your owner's manual? That's a rather misleading statement, given that you acknowledge that the people in the back of the car are actually the owners. And yes, I do expect the owners of the car to be at least aware of what to do in an emergency. The fact that they didn't bother to educate themselves about emergency procedures doesn't mean they get to blame the car manufacturer.
  - zkms 10y ago
    AFAICT (it's not in the digital version of the manual) the speaker-grill door release cable isn't even documented as an "emergency procedure", it's in the section of the manual about locks and keyless entry and stuff like that.
  - bicubic 10y ago
    You're ignoring th fact that anyone could have been in that back seat, and having non owners or children there is statistically more likely. Blaming the driver for not fully understanding the safety features of the car is just a red herring which makes you come off as confused at best, disingenuous at worst. It's entirely plausible for the driver to become incapacitated in a crash while the passengers in the back are usefully conscious and still able to move. There's a reason why all emergency actuation mechanisms are painted bright red and super visible in all forms of transport from cars to airplanes to buildings. That reason is you cannot reasonably expect all passengers to be intimate with the safety measures, nor can you even expect well versed passengers to be thinking clearly in an amergency situation. Tesla can certainly expect to get their asses handed to them by various federal regulators across the globe for hiding the 'get me out of the burning death trap' lever behind a god dammed speaker grill.
zkms 10y ago
> In addition, the passengers didn't even try the emergency door release levers The no-power mechanical release cable is hidden and not even properly documented. A reasonable person who has not pored over every page of the instruction manual or the first responder guide would not think to try to remove the speaker grill when they're sitting on a battery fire. It's absolutely unreasonable to expect every single person who sits in the back seat to have been given a bloody briefing of "oh, in case the 12V power dies, the door won't work, you'll have to dismantle the car a bit to pull an override cable".
- eridius 10y ago
  > and not even properly documented. It's documented in the physical owner's manual, and in the emergency guide. It appears the only place it isn't documented is the online manual. > A reasonable person who has not pored over every page of the instruction manual or the first responder guide would not think to try to remove the speaker grill when they're sitting on a battery fire. No, but a reasonable person who buys a car like this should at least skim the manual once, looking for info on what to do in an emergency, precisely because in an emergency they won't have time to look up such info.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Emergency measures should never be hidden. That's just plain stupid on the part of the designer. The best spot for such a handle would be on the fucking door, and in bright red.
    - eridius 10y ago
      If you make it ugly, people aren't going to buy it.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        If you make it invisible people will get killed. This is one of those situations where function should definitely trump form, if your door mechanism needs an emergency release that release handle should be exposed and marked. That's pretty simple. The reasons for which are plentiful but in order of coming to mind: - it need not be the owner that's trapped - it could be a child that can't read yet - what's in the manual will be forgotten during an accident panic is a very bad time to remember complex details - you don't have time to think in an emergency situation And so on. All in all a beautiful death trap is not something people would buy either.
JKCalhoun 10y ago
I suppose we could all just ask car companies nicely to make their cars safer. At other times though, money needs to be grabbed.
Mz 10y ago
Honestly, this just sounds like a money grab to me. I used to pay accident insurance. A serious car wreck can wreck your finances for the rest of your life, leaving you too maimed to work (or to make as much as you used to/should), with a pile of medical bills and ongoing expenses due to lasting health effects, etc. A million dollars really isn't all that much money for such a scenario. But, hey, maybe you would like to give me your dominant arm for, say, $10,000 and then spend the rest of your life contemplating if you made good money for it or if it cost you more than that over the long haul. (Or, we can just leave this here as a thought experiment, since I don't actually have $10,000 and don't actually want your arm. That is just the amount of money loss of a limb was typically worth on the policies I used to pay claims on.)
- eridius 10y ago
  None of the injuries sustained in the accident were due to the doors not opening. So unless you're arguing that it's ok to sue Tesla merely because they had an accident (even though Tesla certainly wasn't at fault for the accident), I don't know what point you're trying to make.
  - Mz 10y ago
    You are calling it a money grab. The only point I am making is that this is a ridiculous assertion. You only know as much as the article states. From my experience paying claims, I don't believe that in any way qualifies you to make any meaningful judgments here. Smoke inhalation can cause serious and long lasting damage. Being trapped in the car because they can't open the door can be a means to worsen that damage. Such damage is not visible to the naked eye. It is a better predictor of death in case of fire injury than the more visible burns. But don't let logic or anything get in the way of your opinions.
    - eridius 10y ago
      Sounds like you're not letting inconvenient facts get in the way of your opinions. Here's what the article says: > In the open letter, the owner says that she suffered a broken nose and a severe cut to her lower lip that needed a dozen stitches, but the driver got the worst of it. She wrote that “he was hospitalized for more than 40 days with internal injuries and fractures”. > Beyond the physical injuries, she added: “it brought us more serious mental harm, after the accident and still today, I often have nightmares about being burned to death inside the Tesla Model X. > It’s apparently what led her to ask Tesla for 8 million Chinese yuan (~$1 million) in compensation, which Tesla China is refusing to pay, but they are still investigating the accident and collaborating with the local authorities No mention of smoke inhalation, even though it documents the other injuries, and it explicitly mentions the mental harm angle, which is the only possible way to try and pin any of this on Tesla. Also, the car caught on fire after they got out. It wasn't on fire while they were still in the seat. So the whole "smoke inhalation" bit has no basis in reality.

by eridius 10y ago

joezydeco 10y ago

...The owner of the vehicle and her boyfriend were sitting in the second-row seat... Um, where was the driver? Did he/she flee the scene or something? Killed in the crash?

21 10y ago
Says in the article they had a chauffeur.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  I meant, where was the driver when it came to helping the couple out of the wrecked vehicle?
  - 21 10y ago
    I've been in an accident once and immediately after I was in a state of shock, very confused and on auto-mode. Or maybe the driver dies in the accident, so I'm not really sure how this is relevant.
  - zkms 10y ago
    he "was hospitalized for more than 40 days with internal injuries and fractures" so I imagine that he got significantly injured and incapacitated.
princetontiger 10y ago
\maybe they have a different safety standard in china lol
eridius 10y ago
They had a chauffeur who ended up in the hospital for 40 days.

jstapels 10y ago

Not sure I follow this logic... Do you expect everyone that rides in the back of your car to have read your owner's manual? I realize in this case they also happen to be the owners, but I don't think that's the point here. Hiding a manual release BEHIND a speaker isn't exactly obvious. I have no opinion on if they deserve $1 million, but I do think Tesla needs take function over form in this case and make the manual override a lot easier to find.

eridius 10y ago
> Do you expect everyone that rides in the back of your car to have read your owner's manual? That's a rather misleading statement, given that you acknowledge that the people in the back of the car are actually the owners. And yes, I do expect the owners of the car to be at least aware of what to do in an emergency. The fact that they didn't bother to educate themselves about emergency procedures doesn't mean they get to blame the car manufacturer.
- zkms 10y ago
  AFAICT (it's not in the digital version of the manual) the speaker-grill door release cable isn't even documented as an "emergency procedure", it's in the section of the manual about locks and keyless entry and stuff like that.
- bicubic 10y ago
  You're ignoring th fact that anyone could have been in that back seat, and having non owners or children there is statistically more likely. Blaming the driver for not fully understanding the safety features of the car is just a red herring which makes you come off as confused at best, disingenuous at worst. It's entirely plausible for the driver to become incapacitated in a crash while the passengers in the back are usefully conscious and still able to move. There's a reason why all emergency actuation mechanisms are painted bright red and super visible in all forms of transport from cars to airplanes to buildings. That reason is you cannot reasonably expect all passengers to be intimate with the safety measures, nor can you even expect well versed passengers to be thinking clearly in an amergency situation. Tesla can certainly expect to get their asses handed to them by various federal regulators across the globe for hiding the 'get me out of the burning death trap' lever behind a god dammed speaker grill.

zkms 10y ago

> In addition, the passengers didn't even try the emergency door release levers The no-power mechanical release cable is hidden and not even properly documented. A reasonable person who has not pored over every page of the instruction manual or the first responder guide would not think to try to remove the speaker grill when they're sitting on a battery fire. It's absolutely unreasonable to expect every single person who sits in the back seat to have been given a bloody briefing of "oh, in case the 12V power dies, the door won't work, you'll have to dismantle the car a bit to pull an override cable".

eridius 10y ago
> and not even properly documented. It's documented in the physical owner's manual, and in the emergency guide. It appears the only place it isn't documented is the online manual. > A reasonable person who has not pored over every page of the instruction manual or the first responder guide would not think to try to remove the speaker grill when they're sitting on a battery fire. No, but a reasonable person who buys a car like this should at least skim the manual once, looking for info on what to do in an emergency, precisely because in an emergency they won't have time to look up such info.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Emergency measures should never be hidden. That's just plain stupid on the part of the designer. The best spot for such a handle would be on the fucking door, and in bright red.
  - eridius 10y ago
    If you make it ugly, people aren't going to buy it.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      If you make it invisible people will get killed. This is one of those situations where function should definitely trump form, if your door mechanism needs an emergency release that release handle should be exposed and marked. That's pretty simple. The reasons for which are plentiful but in order of coming to mind: - it need not be the owner that's trapped - it could be a child that can't read yet - what's in the manual will be forgotten during an accident panic is a very bad time to remember complex details - you don't have time to think in an emergency situation And so on. All in all a beautiful death trap is not something people would buy either.

JKCalhoun 10y ago

I suppose we could all just ask car companies nicely to make their cars safer. At other times though, money needs to be grabbed.

Mz 10y ago

Honestly, this just sounds like a money grab to me. I used to pay accident insurance. A serious car wreck can wreck your finances for the rest of your life, leaving you too maimed to work (or to make as much as you used to/should), with a pile of medical bills and ongoing expenses due to lasting health effects, etc. A million dollars really isn't all that much money for such a scenario. But, hey, maybe you would like to give me your dominant arm for, say, $10,000 and then spend the rest of your life contemplating if you made good money for it or if it cost you more than that over the long haul. (Or, we can just leave this here as a thought experiment, since I don't actually have $10,000 and don't actually want your arm. That is just the amount of money loss of a limb was typically worth on the policies I used to pay claims on.)

eridius 10y ago
None of the injuries sustained in the accident were due to the doors not opening. So unless you're arguing that it's ok to sue Tesla merely because they had an accident (even though Tesla certainly wasn't at fault for the accident), I don't know what point you're trying to make.
- Mz 10y ago
  You are calling it a money grab. The only point I am making is that this is a ridiculous assertion. You only know as much as the article states. From my experience paying claims, I don't believe that in any way qualifies you to make any meaningful judgments here. Smoke inhalation can cause serious and long lasting damage. Being trapped in the car because they can't open the door can be a means to worsen that damage. Such damage is not visible to the naked eye. It is a better predictor of death in case of fire injury than the more visible burns. But don't let logic or anything get in the way of your opinions.
  - eridius 10y ago
    Sounds like you're not letting inconvenient facts get in the way of your opinions. Here's what the article says: > In the open letter, the owner says that she suffered a broken nose and a severe cut to her lower lip that needed a dozen stitches, but the driver got the worst of it. She wrote that “he was hospitalized for more than 40 days with internal injuries and fractures”. > Beyond the physical injuries, she added: “it brought us more serious mental harm, after the accident and still today, I often have nightmares about being burned to death inside the Tesla Model X. > It’s apparently what led her to ask Tesla for 8 million Chinese yuan (~$1 million) in compensation, which Tesla China is refusing to pay, but they are still investigating the accident and collaborating with the local authorities No mention of smoke inhalation, even though it documents the other injuries, and it explicitly mentions the mental harm angle, which is the only possible way to try and pin any of this on Tesla. Also, the car caught on fire after they got out. It wasn't on fire while they were still in the seat. So the whole "smoke inhalation" bit has no basis in reality.