6 ms·

Cybertruck Owner Breaks His Finger Trying to Show Vehicle Is Safe

101 points by nickthegreek 2y ago

cs702 2y ago
> The YouTuber even tried it with a stick first, which broke in half. It's not enough to qualify for a Darwin Award, but with more, ahem, effort this YouTuber could win one. I'm certain of it.
- koolba 2y ago
  All he had to do to win was use a different stick shaped object for the test.
  - peteradio 2y ago
    > All he had to do to win was use a different stick shaped object for the test. His WEEEENNUS?????
rstarast 2y ago
What I'd like to know is how the YouTube ad income compares to medical expenses.
- permo-w 2y ago
  I sincerely doubt it's actually broken
  - bdcravens 2y ago
    I'm not a fan of watching injury videos, so I'm not going to watch it, but if the effect is the same as those putting things like carrots in the hood while it's closing, I'd be shocked if it wasn't.
    - permo-w 2y ago
      the way he's holding it afterwards makes it look very much unbroken, and all we have is his clickbait-word that it's true
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago
  He posted shorts which AFAIK doesn't share any ad revenue with creators.
kbos87 2y ago
The messy reality is that there’s a lot of misinformation and a public narrative about Tesla that is largely false. But… there are also kernels of truth!
- resource_waste 2y ago
  Maybe some journalist will investigate the root of all of this. I'm nearly certain Tesla does Astroturfing, which is why I saw 'Tesla quietly provides solar to disaster country' front page of reddit first post, years ago. Then I think the rest of the automakers realized that they could promote anti-tesla similarly. Have some company write a negative article, upvote farm bomb. Copypaste for every industry. Its creepy.
  - diputsmonro 2y ago
    We don't need other automakers to spread anti-Tesla sentiment, Musk is doing more than enough of that himself for free.
    - dzhiurgis 2y ago
      Does he? Or all his tweets are taken out of context and turned 180 degrees around by mass media to gain clicks? Sure he said few bad things over the years, but overall it's positive. And don't forget he's got a spectrum diagnosis, on antidepressants, works crazy hours, got beaten to death by black gangs and had terrible childhood by abusive father. Most people like him would end up as a recidivist.
      - diputsmonro 2y ago
        Honestly, have you read his Twitter responses? They are frequently transphobic and conspiratorial. I didn't even have to look very hard to find him clearly calling COVID a "scamdemic" and heavily implying baseless election fraud. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1788441056905707613?t=_vwwzdSXPqucVR9aPLu95A&s=19 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1788441056905707613?t=_v... None of the things you mention are valid excuses. This is why PR firms exist. He has chosen, in his hubris, to ignore them. When someone buys the world's largest communication platform and then uses it to spread hate speech, conspiracy theories, and misinformation - that is absolutely worth criticism.
lelanthran 2y ago
> These videos may have been funny at first, but watching someone literally break their finger in this perverse display of faith in Tesla or Cybertrucks or Elon Musk more broadly is getting pretty disturbing. I dunno. Personally, I don't find it that disturbing that a cult member gets out with only a broken finger. Let's be honest, we all wanted those people telling everyone else that they're "holding it wrong" to get their comeuppance. Negative results of blind loyalty to a corporate figurehead always has some element of schadenfreude for those of us outside the cult.
langsoul-com 2y ago
Thank God we don't have old style cars with lacking modern safety features! Many people must have hurt themselves for all the existing sensors to be added. Reminds me of Japan where their elevator doors have no sensors...
khalilravanna 2y ago
I wonder if the engineer working on this thought “I wonder if someone on YouTube will use this to try and become famous by breaking their finger? Surely not…” An algorithm that closes the door harder if it meets resistance seems a bit insane, right? What if there’s something fragile? Is this how these auto closing doors normally work? God I’m happy I drive a dumb manual car with no real electronics other than a radio.
- the-chitmonger 2y ago
  I know I'm preaching to the choir at HN, but I really wish there were more "dumb" EVs. Robert Downey Jr. recently hosted a giveaway for his vintage retrofitted electric cars (to clarify, he takes vintage cars and retrofits their engine to make them EVs), and I honestly wish I could just buy one outright.
  - Steltek 2y ago
    I feel the same way about e-bikes: expensive, proprietary parts and form factors everywhere. Oh, your battery is worn out? You need one that's custom molded to your downtube? That's too bad. Thankfully they're easier to DIY than an EV car.
    - evan_ 2y ago
      The battery case might be molded plastic but inside it’s probably just a wad of 18650s that can be replaced.
      - dreamcompiler 2y ago
        Can confirm.
      - AstralStorm 2y ago
        Unless you find out it's potted, the BMS needs to be reprogrammed and there's a custom mesh or holder that doesn't work with some standard cells because of tolerances...
aeurielesn 2y ago
I'm wondering what are the minimum standards for something to considered safe to drive and if such compliance is publicly available to consumers in any government registry?
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  The minimum standards are a set of regulations called FMVSS, administered and tested by NHTSA. I'm not aware of any parts of FMVSS that apply specifically to power trunks, but the equivalent force standard for windows is 100N. FMVSS compliance is largely self-certified by manufacturers though. NHTSA does release test reports of what compliance testing they do, but it's pretty limited.
toss1 2y ago
Yikes Tests it with a stick first, and it breaks. Fair enough, it looked like a somewhat flimsy stick, so maybe his finger was stronger. So then why not test with a stronger stick first? Maybe look up how strong bones are and get a similar one? Then, going ahead and testing with your most important finger - right index finger — wow. On the plus side, it's good training as he works up to his Darwin Award. Also, Cybertruck frunk closing motors are strong. Not sure that level of strength is necessary, but maybe users like to over-stuff it with luggage and have it actively compressed by the frunk lid?
- brtkdotse 2y ago
  Or, you know, don't risk losing a finger to prove How Great The Truck Is.
ratorx 2y ago
It is a bit worrying that there were no safety considerations in a portion of the electronics of a vehicle which claims to some degree to support self-driving. Might be different teams etc, but still can’t be a good look…
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  It shows a problem in thinking. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." is a good approach for solving some problems, like electronic power trains and unmanned rockets, but a bad one for others, like automatically closing trunks, self driving, and getting a manned mission to Mars.
  - lazide 2y ago
    [flagged]
datahack 2y ago
If anyone wants to see the video and skip the article here’s a Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/SipsTea/comments/1cinxjl/finger_vs_cybertrucks_trunk_after_recent_safety/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SipsTea/comments/1cinxjl/finger_vs_... It’s about 50 seconds in. I cannot comprehend this man’s choice to test his finger after cutting off the tip of a carrot in the same place, in the same car, just prior.
- cbsmith 2y ago
  I don't want to give it the views...
- bragr 2y ago
  That's a different video.
  - datahack 2y ago
    lol, my bad… I copied and then posted the wrong link. Is it insane that there are 2 different videos of people breaking their fingers with cyber trucks though? Can’t edit but this the right one: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/OTrK_7vUGiY https://m.youtube.com/shorts/OTrK_7vUGiY
- webdoodle 2y ago
  So he could make a video and sue Tesla...
mavhc 2y ago
What kind of sensor are they using to detect an object in the way?
- pelorat 2y ago
  I think they measure if the motor encounters resistance, then it tries again but with more force for each try.
  - mavhc 2y ago
    Should be pretty easy to use an actual force meter to see what the variables are then
- wongarsu 2y ago
  I believe the door is closed by a normal motor? When an electric motor encounters resistance it draws more current. I assume they just measure the motor current and back away when it exceeds some threshold, increasing that threshold each time.
bragr 2y ago
He's able to bend the finger after he "breaks" it, so it isn't broken, but that is a nasty crush. Edit: well it could be broken, but I'm suspicious without further evidence.
- Broken_Hippo 2y ago
  That's just not how that works. Bending depends on how bad the break is and where it is and how much swelling there is. People break ankles and walk around on them for some days, after all. I could bend my finger after I broke it... that day, anyway. The next day it was too swollen to bend it. This was a simple and clean break and healed well. Similar with my elbow. I could bend it at first, then less, and then the swelling really started and I could just barely bend it. I could bend it a little for the xrays, even (I was to do what I could) Weirdly, it didn't even hurt that much just stopped being functional.
  - lawn 2y ago
    Yeah, I broke my hand (bone above pinky) and could use my hand and fingers without issue the first hours. The day after though...
  - bragr 2y ago
    That's fair, but he didn't declare it broken in the ER after an x-ray. He declared it broken with a not visibly mangled finger, that by your own description would not have reached the painful point, so color me suspicious of the (probably) clout chasing youtuber.
- qzw 2y ago
  Surely a compression fracture also counts as broken? It doesn’t have to be actually severed.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gosub100 2y ago
This reminds me of a video a few years back of a man sticking his head in the minivan auto-closing door (trying to prove it was safe) and getting stuck. https://youtu.be/3bk6SJLSQY8?si=TWbstTXiihdK05Yh https://youtu.be/3bk6SJLSQY8?si=TWbstTXiihdK05Yh
- qzw 2y ago
  Had a minivan door close on my shoulder. The censor retracted it immediately, but I still felt a fairly decent impact from it. Definitely wouldn’t want to experience that with my head or anything more crushable.
croes 2y ago
>The engineer told him the frunk increases in pressure every single time it closes and detects resistance, Judkins said. It’s going to assume you want to close the frunk and maybe something like a bag is getting in the way, which would make it close harder. >Using this information, that means it closed on my finger harder than my hand and way harder than my arm,” the YouTuber wrote. Maybe that's not a good idea
- AtMaJane 2y ago
  Long-term self calibration; you can see how they got there.
rdtsc 2y ago
Now let’s see him try it with a plain old trunk and have his friend slam the trunk down. What did he think would happen after watching it break the stick. Are we supposed to feel bad for him and be angry with Tesla?
- whamlastxmas 2y ago
  Man stubs toe on Tesla, quick let’s make it a top headline
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    - The Gawker Media

101 points by nickthegreek 2y ago

> The YouTuber even tried it with a stick first, which broke in half. It's not enough to qualify for a Darwin Award, but with more, ahem, effort this YouTuber could win one. I'm certain of it.

koolba 2y ago
All he had to do to win was use a different stick shaped object for the test.
- peteradio 2y ago
  > All he had to do to win was use a different stick shaped object for the test. His WEEEENNUS?????

rstarast 2y ago

What I'd like to know is how the YouTube ad income compares to medical expenses.

permo-w 2y ago
I sincerely doubt it's actually broken
- bdcravens 2y ago
  I'm not a fan of watching injury videos, so I'm not going to watch it, but if the effect is the same as those putting things like carrots in the hood while it's closing, I'd be shocked if it wasn't.
  - permo-w 2y ago
    the way he's holding it afterwards makes it look very much unbroken, and all we have is his clickbait-word that it's true
YetAnotherNick 2y ago
He posted shorts which AFAIK doesn't share any ad revenue with creators.

kbos87 2y ago

The messy reality is that there’s a lot of misinformation and a public narrative about Tesla that is largely false. But… there are also kernels of truth!

resource_waste 2y ago
Maybe some journalist will investigate the root of all of this. I'm nearly certain Tesla does Astroturfing, which is why I saw 'Tesla quietly provides solar to disaster country' front page of reddit first post, years ago. Then I think the rest of the automakers realized that they could promote anti-tesla similarly. Have some company write a negative article, upvote farm bomb. Copypaste for every industry. Its creepy.
- diputsmonro 2y ago
  We don't need other automakers to spread anti-Tesla sentiment, Musk is doing more than enough of that himself for free.
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    Does he? Or all his tweets are taken out of context and turned 180 degrees around by mass media to gain clicks? Sure he said few bad things over the years, but overall it's positive. And don't forget he's got a spectrum diagnosis, on antidepressants, works crazy hours, got beaten to death by black gangs and had terrible childhood by abusive father. Most people like him would end up as a recidivist.
    - diputsmonro 2y ago
      Honestly, have you read his Twitter responses? They are frequently transphobic and conspiratorial. I didn't even have to look very hard to find him clearly calling COVID a "scamdemic" and heavily implying baseless election fraud. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1788441056905707613?t=_vwwzdSXPqucVR9aPLu95A&s=19 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1788441056905707613?t=_v... None of the things you mention are valid excuses. This is why PR firms exist. He has chosen, in his hubris, to ignore them. When someone buys the world's largest communication platform and then uses it to spread hate speech, conspiracy theories, and misinformation - that is absolutely worth criticism.

lelanthran 2y ago

> These videos may have been funny at first, but watching someone literally break their finger in this perverse display of faith in Tesla or Cybertrucks or Elon Musk more broadly is getting pretty disturbing. I dunno. Personally, I don't find it that disturbing that a cult member gets out with only a broken finger. Let's be honest, we all wanted those people telling everyone else that they're "holding it wrong" to get their comeuppance. Negative results of blind loyalty to a corporate figurehead always has some element of schadenfreude for those of us outside the cult.

langsoul-com 2y ago

Thank God we don't have old style cars with lacking modern safety features! Many people must have hurt themselves for all the existing sensors to be added. Reminds me of Japan where their elevator doors have no sensors...

khalilravanna 2y ago

I wonder if the engineer working on this thought “I wonder if someone on YouTube will use this to try and become famous by breaking their finger? Surely not…” An algorithm that closes the door harder if it meets resistance seems a bit insane, right? What if there’s something fragile? Is this how these auto closing doors normally work? God I’m happy I drive a dumb manual car with no real electronics other than a radio.

the-chitmonger 2y ago
I know I'm preaching to the choir at HN, but I really wish there were more "dumb" EVs. Robert Downey Jr. recently hosted a giveaway for his vintage retrofitted electric cars (to clarify, he takes vintage cars and retrofits their engine to make them EVs), and I honestly wish I could just buy one outright.
- Steltek 2y ago
  I feel the same way about e-bikes: expensive, proprietary parts and form factors everywhere. Oh, your battery is worn out? You need one that's custom molded to your downtube? That's too bad. Thankfully they're easier to DIY than an EV car.
  - evan_ 2y ago
    The battery case might be molded plastic but inside it’s probably just a wad of 18650s that can be replaced.
    - dreamcompiler 2y ago
      Can confirm.
    - AstralStorm 2y ago
      Unless you find out it's potted, the BMS needs to be reprogrammed and there's a custom mesh or holder that doesn't work with some standard cells because of tolerances...

aeurielesn 2y ago

I'm wondering what are the minimum standards for something to considered safe to drive and if such compliance is publicly available to consumers in any government registry?

AlotOfReading 2y ago
The minimum standards are a set of regulations called FMVSS, administered and tested by NHTSA. I'm not aware of any parts of FMVSS that apply specifically to power trunks, but the equivalent force standard for windows is 100N. FMVSS compliance is largely self-certified by manufacturers though. NHTSA does release test reports of what compliance testing they do, but it's pretty limited.

toss1 2y ago

Yikes Tests it with a stick first, and it breaks. Fair enough, it looked like a somewhat flimsy stick, so maybe his finger was stronger. So then why not test with a stronger stick first? Maybe look up how strong bones are and get a similar one? Then, going ahead and testing with your most important finger - right index finger — wow. On the plus side, it's good training as he works up to his Darwin Award. Also, Cybertruck frunk closing motors are strong. Not sure that level of strength is necessary, but maybe users like to over-stuff it with luggage and have it actively compressed by the frunk lid?

brtkdotse 2y ago
Or, you know, don't risk losing a finger to prove How Great The Truck Is.

ratorx 2y ago

It is a bit worrying that there were no safety considerations in a portion of the electronics of a vehicle which claims to some degree to support self-driving. Might be different teams etc, but still can’t be a good look…

SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
It shows a problem in thinking. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." is a good approach for solving some problems, like electronic power trains and unmanned rockets, but a bad one for others, like automatically closing trunks, self driving, and getting a manned mission to Mars.
- lazide 2y ago
  [flagged]

datahack 2y ago

If anyone wants to see the video and skip the article here’s a Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/SipsTea/comments/1cinxjl/finger_vs_cybertrucks_trunk_after_recent_safety/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SipsTea/comments/1cinxjl/finger_vs_... It’s about 50 seconds in. I cannot comprehend this man’s choice to test his finger after cutting off the tip of a carrot in the same place, in the same car, just prior.

cbsmith 2y ago
I don't want to give it the views...
bragr 2y ago
That's a different video.
- datahack 2y ago
  lol, my bad… I copied and then posted the wrong link. Is it insane that there are 2 different videos of people breaking their fingers with cyber trucks though? Can’t edit but this the right one: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/OTrK_7vUGiY https://m.youtube.com/shorts/OTrK_7vUGiY
webdoodle 2y ago
So he could make a video and sue Tesla...

mavhc 2y ago

What kind of sensor are they using to detect an object in the way?

pelorat 2y ago
I think they measure if the motor encounters resistance, then it tries again but with more force for each try.
- mavhc 2y ago
  Should be pretty easy to use an actual force meter to see what the variables are then
wongarsu 2y ago
I believe the door is closed by a normal motor? When an electric motor encounters resistance it draws more current. I assume they just measure the motor current and back away when it exceeds some threshold, increasing that threshold each time.

bragr 2y ago

He's able to bend the finger after he "breaks" it, so it isn't broken, but that is a nasty crush. Edit: well it could be broken, but I'm suspicious without further evidence.

Broken_Hippo 2y ago
That's just not how that works. Bending depends on how bad the break is and where it is and how much swelling there is. People break ankles and walk around on them for some days, after all. I could bend my finger after I broke it... that day, anyway. The next day it was too swollen to bend it. This was a simple and clean break and healed well. Similar with my elbow. I could bend it at first, then less, and then the swelling really started and I could just barely bend it. I could bend it a little for the xrays, even (I was to do what I could) Weirdly, it didn't even hurt that much just stopped being functional.
- lawn 2y ago
  Yeah, I broke my hand (bone above pinky) and could use my hand and fingers without issue the first hours. The day after though...
- bragr 2y ago
  That's fair, but he didn't declare it broken in the ER after an x-ray. He declared it broken with a not visibly mangled finger, that by your own description would not have reached the painful point, so color me suspicious of the (probably) clout chasing youtuber.
qzw 2y ago
Surely a compression fracture also counts as broken? It doesn’t have to be actually severed.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

gosub100 2y ago

This reminds me of a video a few years back of a man sticking his head in the minivan auto-closing door (trying to prove it was safe) and getting stuck. https://youtu.be/3bk6SJLSQY8?si=TWbstTXiihdK05Yh https://youtu.be/3bk6SJLSQY8?si=TWbstTXiihdK05Yh

qzw 2y ago
Had a minivan door close on my shoulder. The censor retracted it immediately, but I still felt a fairly decent impact from it. Definitely wouldn’t want to experience that with my head or anything more crushable.

croes 2y ago

>The engineer told him the frunk increases in pressure every single time it closes and detects resistance, Judkins said. It’s going to assume you want to close the frunk and maybe something like a bag is getting in the way, which would make it close harder. >Using this information, that means it closed on my finger harder than my hand and way harder than my arm,” the YouTuber wrote. Maybe that's not a good idea

AtMaJane 2y ago
Long-term self calibration; you can see how they got there.

rdtsc 2y ago

Now let’s see him try it with a plain old trunk and have his friend slam the trunk down. What did he think would happen after watching it break the stick. Are we supposed to feel bad for him and be angry with Tesla?

whamlastxmas 2y ago
Man stubs toe on Tesla, quick let’s make it a top headline
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  - The Gawker Media