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Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order (2018)
- lesgobrandon 4y ago
- inkeddeveloper 4y agoTesla out here just pushing as many boundaries as they can.
- sircastor 4y agoAnd so many are celebrating this as improving the car industry.
- buro9 4y agoIt would be interesting to see whether European Tesla owners can utilise the GDPR to obtain the data.
- bjelkeman-again 4y agoI am convinced they can.
- t0mas88 4y agoIf it's linked to an individual, they can. And I'm sure Tesla data is linked to an individual via their account.
- zoydnog 4y agoSomeone should try to send them a variant of that 'nightmare GDPR letter'.
- NonNefarious 4y agoOr California law. I posted some info on that above.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoIt would also be interesting to see what legal basis (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-6-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-6-gdpr/) under GDPR they use to collect the data in the first place, or whether they simply don't collect that data from the EU.
- dubswithus 4y agoLogs don’t lie or is there a bug? It would be telling if someone had a dashcam pointed at their feet.
- t0mas88 4y agoFunny how they are so "protective of the customer's privacy" that they have their CEO tweeting about the data but can't share it privately with the affected customer. Tesla doesn't have a PR department but they're full of PR bullshit anyway, starting at the top.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ModernMech 4y agoTesla's PR department is Elon Musk and his PR team. I don't understand how people view him as an engineer, he's full of flim-flam and bluster.
- trothamel 4y agoAnd also practical electric cars, reusable crewed rockets, and worldwide high-speed satellite Internet. Is it bluster when it can be backed up?
- jrockway 4y agoAre those things because of Elon or in spite of Elon?
- ModernMech 4y agoTo be clear, Elon's companies are not Elon, no matter how much Elon's PR machine insists that's the case.
- AlexandrB 4y agoTesla deserves credit for popularizing electric cars, but the technology is hardly all of their making. Indeed, one could say that the Tesla is the iPhone of cars - integrating existing technologies better than their competitors and showing what's possible. A lot of the other novel aspects of Tesla's cars suck though - the "giant iPad" interface, the "yoke" steering wheel, the electric door handles. Meanwhile the one thing that Musk has been talking about since 2015 at least (FSD) still doesn't exist at anywhere near the level he promised. One could even argue that the electric car was inevitable, hybrids were already pushing electric drivetrains forward, and Musk was just in the right place at the right time. Oh yeah, and he didn't even found Tesla.
- kringo 4y agoThat's the driving force behind these connected cars. They'll make you pay for the car and collect all the data they could and make the money off it. Compare it to google, they're valuable because of the data that's being stored about every individual, imagine the same thing for Tesla. Data is currency
- akerl_ 4y agoIs Tesla selling any data/metadata? To whom? How are they making money off of my data?
- digisign 4y agoIn this case it looks more like loss aversion, protecting themselves from customer lawsuits. I'm sure there are other use cases for the data. Self-driving improvements have been mentioned.
- falcolas 4y agoAnd marketing - publicly releasing the cause of a crash when its user caused, or when the public needs to be diverted.
- gcheong 4y agoThey're not selling it as far as I know, but you're essentially providing them with free training data for their autopilot/self-driving AI which they do/plan to make money off of. In that respect it seems odd that they would be so stingy in handing data over to the person that generated it though you can apparently purchase a connection kit to access the event recorder data for about $3k.
- jayd16 4y agoThey offer insurance rates based on the data.
- NonNefarious 4y agoI suspect that this policy violates some privacy provisions in some states and countries. Don't California (and probably other) laws guarantee you the right to obtain any data a company has on you? The CA state Web site says: "You may request that businesses disclose to you what personal information they have collected, used, shared, or sold about you, and why they collected, used, shared, or sold that information. Specifically, you may request that businesses disclose: -The categories of personal information collected -Specific pieces of personal information collected -The categories of sources from which the business collected personal information -The purposes for which the business uses the personal information -The categories of third parties with whom the business shares the personal information -The categories of information that the business sells or discloses to third parties Businesses must provide you this information for the 12-month period preceding your request. They must provide this information to you free of charge." The wording is unfortunately vague, though. Disclosing WHAT information they've collected may be interpreted as different from disclosing THE information they've collected. However, I wonder if the "specific pieces" clause might be a basis for demanding "all data specific to a crash on such-and-such a date." This site seems to indicate that the "specific data" allowance goes further than that: https://www.bclplaw.com/en-US/insights/ccpa-privacy-faqs-if-a-business-receives-a-data-subject-access.html https://www.bclplaw.com/en-US/insights/ccpa-privacy-faqs-if-... From that page: "Pursuant to Cal. Civ. Code Sections 1798,100(a), and 1798.110(a) and (b), a consumer has a right to request, and a business that 'collects personal information about a consumer' has an obligation to disclose and deliver upon a verifiable request, 'the specific pieces of personal information the business has collected.'" It seems to me that in California, Tesla has to cough it up.
- user00012-ab 4y agoWhy do people post "news" from 4 years ago? News mostly isn't relevant a few weeks later; it would make sense if their was some follow up story or something about this. Even weirder is how people comment on this story like it just happened, did anyone actually check to see if this is still the case 4 years later?
- LegitShady 4y agopopular to attack Tesla at the moment
- JaimeThompson 4y agoIt would be less popular it Tesla had leadership that lead by example instead of dictate and if they stopped making promises they can't execute on year after year.
- LegitShady 4y agothat's not why a lot of the attacks on tesla are happening - the twitter acquisition and elon being political on twitter have opened him up to lots of people attacking his companies.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoTesla is very divisive, a lot of people get a sense of power and superiority by posting anything that makes them look bad. The subtext is "See? I'm smarter than you by hating Tesla." This isn't exclusive to Tesla.
- influxmoment 4y ago100%. Tesla hating brings out the crazy
- ShamelessC 4y agoLet me guess, you drive a Tesla.
- powerbroker 4y agoI just did a quick scrape of the NHTSA consumer-reported complaints for all models of Teslas for the month of May. 78 reports. 2 concern unintended acceleration. Mind you, 'unintended acceleration' reports come from all manufacturers and all models of cars -- so a fair starting position is that the driver mistook the accelerator for the brake. Nevertheless, it seems that giving the crash data promptly to the consumer would clarify to the consumer that they have 'fat feet', and settle the matter, at least in the consumer's mind. Incidentally, I narrowly missed getting hit by a lady who drove her car (non-Tesla) into a local Fedex-Kinkos, having left the store 5 minutes earlier, and returned 5 minutes after her car 'parked' inside the store.
- alexanderdmitri 4y agoI'm not sure driver mistaking the pedals is a fair starting point with the amount of software involved now a days. Telsas push updates over the air that affect these sorts of things. In this article[0] for example, it's suggested a once optional feature that is now mandatory can be used for one pedal driving. [0] https://electrek.co/2022/05/25/tesla-updates-car-software-regular-brakes-regenerative-limited/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/25/tesla-updates-car-software-re...
- aardvarkr 4y agoRemember the issue of Toyota’s with unintended acceleration? That was 100% due to fat feet so this is indeed a very fair starting point. This has happened so so so many times without any technology involved. The tech may have changed but the human behind the wheel hasn’t.
- belter 4y ago"Sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles" [1] The first major cause of unintended acceleration was found in March 2007, when an engineering analysis showed that unsecured all-weather mats had led to pedal entrapment and drivers accelerating up to 90 mph with decreased braking power... ...Early on, Toyota suggested that driver error was to blame, saying that some people may have hit the gas when they meant to hit the brake... ...This led to Toyota sending a letter to the owners of the affected car, a 2007 Lexus ES350, asking that they bring their cars in to switch out the all-weather mats... ...After this recall, Toyota decided to revise the internal design of their cars to ensure that there was "10 millimetres (0.39 in) between a fully depressed gas pedal and the floor," but decided to only implement the new designs upon the next "full model redesign", which wouldn't take place until 2010... ...In an attempt to hide these defects from investigators, Toyota switched to verbal communication on the defect rather than traceable forms of communication. As a result, many new cars were knowingly produced with the same floor mat issues that had been identified as being having the potential to cause SUA problems in association with the defective pedal design..." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration#Sudden_acceleration_in_Toyota_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration...
- anonymousiam 4y agoIt's interesting that all the accounts reported by Tesla indicate that ..."the accelerator pedal was abruptly increased to 100%.” How likely is it that, even if by accident, the driver would fully depress the accelerator pedal? How many people fully depress the brake pedal when stopping? Usually while parking, there is no need to fully depress the brake because sufficient braking action is achieved with less pressure, and the car will come to a stop gradually instead of abruptly. Maybe they have a CAN bus problem, or a software problem that they do not want to reveal.
- potatochup 4y agoThe brake pedal is physically connected to a hydraulic cylinder. You need to be very strong to fully engage the brake pedal, such that many vehicles, when presented with a sharp brake pedal stab, will electronically increase the amount of brake pressure given (because the system assumes you want to stop, but the driver may not be strong enough/have the right feeling for where maximum pedal application is). If you did this at speed, you'd probably engage ABS which tends to mess with the force-feedback though. On the other hand, the accelerator pedal is just a sensor, it doesn't require as much force to fully depress. I'd estimate the force required to fully depress the accelerator pedal to be 1/3 of the brake pedal.
- anonymousiam 4y agoIt is my understanding that Teslas have regenerative braking. Are you sure that the brake pedal is physically connected to a hydraulic cylinder?
- Xorlev 4y agoRegen braking works by letting off the accelerator, not by pressing the brake.
- vel0city 4y agoYes and no. A lot of EVs can do two different modes, where it "coasts" and mostly only starts the regen through the brake pedal. You're right though, from what I understand Tesla kind of forces the single-pedal driving mode.
- Patrol8394 4y agoWelcome to CaaS! Soon people will find themselves having to pay subscriptions to drive their own car! Crazy!
- cuteboy19 4y agoThat's just a rental car
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stcredzero 4y agoMore likely, there will be a subscription for the Full Self Driving software, combined with human drivers being restricted or banned.
- extheat 4y agoI don’t doubt that in the future, Teslas and Apple cars won’t have a steering wheel. Level 3 autonomy is already being tested by some manufacturers. However I can’t imagine not being able to buy a car with a steering wheel. Even if the car was super good at self driving, better than most humans, there will always be a market for low tech drive it yourself cars.
- stcredzero 4y agoEven if what you say is true, I predict that there will be some municipalities which will ban human driven cars, if for no other reason, than for the control of crime. (There are already shenanigans played with accessibility by public transport, motivated this way.)
- Gigachad 4y agoYou will own nothing. And you will be happy.
- 4y ago
- pvg 4y agoDiscussed at the time, 282 comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17237792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17237792
- tiahura 4y agoThe phone companies have the same policy.
- iamleppert 4y agoIf they don't have anything to hide, why not allow access to the logs? I highly doubt the 0-100 claim. Raw sensor data of the accelerator is likely to be sampled at a high enough rate that should make something like that impossible. In fact, the car should have at minimum a low pass filter and reject sudden accelerations like that, which would indicate sensor or signal failure. If it's a digital sensor, and sampled high enough, even if someone did "floor it", you'd still be able to see a gradual increase, just at a faster rate. When a sensor all of a sudden reports a huge, non-linear jump, it generally means there is some sort of failure. And if that's within normal operating conditions, the sample rate of the sensor isn't enough to tell the difference between failures and intentional (real) readings, and reject a failed sensor. And that's a problem too and 101 in any sensors and signals implementation. If it's a digital sensor on something as important as braking and acceleration, there had better be redundant sensors, a mechanism to fuse the data together, and reject a bad sensor from the state estimate of the pedal. Either way, just based on the statements they made anyone who has worked with anything robotics or autonomous can tell you that first instinct would be sensor failure. Of course, all of this is impossible to tell without the raw log data. Companies who are unwilling to provide such data or make it difficult to do so generally have something to hide in either their implementation, data quality, or the actual findings from the logs themselves.
- oh_sigh 4y agoThis is why I covered the internal cam on my model y. Basically, I can't see the video, only Tesla can, and the video would never help me in an accident, only hurt me.
- smeej 4y agoThis is a bit tangential, but this is far from just a Tesla problem. All cars since 2011, but many cars back to I think 2005 have Crash Data Recorders. I had to jump through hoops to get the data from the CDR in my Toyota that sound almost exactly like what's described here. My insurance company refused to listen to me without it because the other driver was insured by the same company and they had NO incentive to correctly assess fault, never mind that they do have the tool to pull the data and the expensive proprietary software to read it. I had to contact the manufacturer of my car, who sent me to a website with a list of independent people who own the $40,000 tool that can pull the CDR data. Fortunately one of them (and ONLY one of them) was within a two hour drive from me. And then the insurance company refused to review it anyway until my state insurance commissioner got involved and told them they can't refuse to review the facts of the case just because they're on the hook for all the damage no matter who caused it. And that's how they ended up on the list of companies I'll never do business with again.
- cbozeman 4y agoUm... please name all these companies?
- smeej 4y agoToyota manufactured my car, but honestly they were pretty helpful about it. GEICO is the insurance company I will NEVER do business with again.
- belltaco 4y agoDid you go to all that trouble to lower your premium? Edit: I was on mobile and wanted to ask why they went to that trouble if the car insurance company was the same and it didn't matter who's fault it was. Didn't mean to imply it wasn't worth it.
- donthellbanme 4y ago
- 4y ago
- nimbius 4y ago"he found that Tesla’s commitment to transparency was not all that it seemed" til in 2018 Tesla had a transparency commitment
- elif 4y agoWell if you buy Tesla insurance, it seems like you won't need the data, and in the cases where you really do it would be extremely straightforward to compell it legally due to their obvious natural bias.