Mitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law Angela Chao made panicked last call before dying in ‘completely submerged’ Tesla on Texas ranch: report
Mitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law Angela Chao made panicked last call before dying in ‘completely submerged’ Tesla on Texas ranch: report
Chao, the billionaire former CEO of dry bulk shipping giant Foremost Group, tragically died at the age of 50 on Feb. 10 after accidentally backing her car into the pond making a three-point turn.
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If anyone's curious, it looks like you "hold the brake and swipe up" on a touchscreen area to go in drive, and "hold the brake and swipe down" to go into reverse.
So yeah, it's not a physical shifter, though it seems pretty intuitive and simple. BUT if you're in reverse and try to swipe up to drive(like you'd do during a 3 point turn) , you have no feedback aside from looking at the screen to let you know it actually registered your shift.
IMO this is another idiotic implementation at going cheap on physical controls or "being high tech fancy" that shouldn't exist. It's dumb to not have important functions give physical feedback while driving. I'm not laying most of the blame on tesla for this. It still sounds like she's the one who really screwed herself, but I'd all but guarantee there's going to be a lawsuit for this one, and rightly so. Fuck all this touch control crap in cars. It's lousy enough just on the radios.
Don't forget the fancy electric door handles that stop working when you back into a pond.
There are emergency override handles, but not everyone knows where they are or how to use them, so they're not all that useful in an emergency.
These deadly features are purely cosmetic, so I would lay a decent amount of blame is on tesla
Stupid cosmetic designs have been an issue for a long time. There was a theater fire in Chicago in the early 1900's where a bunch of people died because they couldn't figure out how to use the fancy door handles while panicking and being crushed by everyone trying to get out. That's the reason why exit doors on buildings with a high occupancy are now required to swing out, and have those pushbar locks that allow the door to open even if you're just falling on it.
If it's possible that someone will need to use something while panicking, it needs to be as simple, intuitive, and failproof as possible
Wanted to chime in and clarify, the major issue there is you cannot operate a door handle in a crush, no matter how much of your senses you have. Can't use a door handle if you can't use your arms. Am drunk on the internet and hope this isn't interpreted as a hostile reply.
But isn't the point of crash bar locks that just the act of being crushed against the door will force it open? The only thing you have to do to open it is push on it or be pushed into it. Of course that won't help you when you fall as the door swings open and get trampled, but it's better than everyone burning to death.
Absolutely.
If it's possible
It's always "possible". In fact, it's inevitable that an accident or emergency will happen. They happen every day. It's clearly Tesla's fault for having terrible controls but what else is new?
That's why we have dedicated first responders instead of just fire hoses everywhere. Many fires can be stopped with just some baking soda or a wet towel, but non-professionals can't be trusted to act rationally in that situation.
I’d hope that this would institute federal rules for vehicle egress and drive controls. Even if it’s only because a Richie died.
Jeep was forced to recall their confusing shifters after one crushed that actor in his driveway.
But I can also see Elon being a fucking snowflake about it and trying to whine his way out of spending any inflated investor money fixing this problem.
… and have those pushbar locks that allow the door to open even if you're just falling on it.
Crash bars
I volunteer Elon as a test monkey. Lock him in a tesla that’s underwater and have him “engineer” <cough> his ass out of it.
He's gotta do time at his neuralink first
It wasn't that they didn't know how to use the door handles. It was that the doors opened inward.
There were also ornamental doors that were an issue, but those weren't actually doors, so it wasn't that the victims couldn't figure out how to use the handles, it's that the "doors" weren't really doors. They were walls.
If I had my way, regulations would require a physical connection for all door handles, and not just that a secondary physical release be available. I don't know how you would go about finding injuries associated with each design as a layperson, but I bet there's a death or two associated with each novel design.
An old man roasted in his Cadillac XLR because the battery was dead and he didn't know where the secondary release was. I think it's under the seat on that car. I don't care how cool that electronic door release was, or if the old man was negligent in not knowing his exits; it wasn't worth his life.
And let's not forget that there are people who have flexibility issues that can't reach under their seat in an emergency.
Or might have gained injuries during the accident preventing them from reaching.
This is why I liked driving the newer Army vehicles or well cared for Humvees. Everything was labeled. Anything important to not hit accidentally had a safety cover. And anything not obvious like an out of sight fire extinguisher has a high visibility sign pointing to it from your normal field of view.
Fuck fashion, give me cars that are comfortable and safe.
I love how they made the emergency door release a multi step process, which on some models recommended a flat head screwdriver or in others only is for the front doors.
A flat-head screwdriver for an emergency door O_o
How do these cars pass regulations?
When you regulate yourself, it's easy to pass
The only regulations we have is that we're not allowed to implement European safety features.
An exaggeration, but damn does it feel that way.
This would be at least the second time this "feature" has been tied to dying horribly.
The front driver and passenger emergency handles are so intuitively placed that every Tesla owner has to warn all their passengers not to use them.
The back is another story entirely if they even have them, but the front are fine.
Edit: I will grant people might forget after not using them for years in a moment of panic. But they know.
While I think any system where basic door functionality breaks in the event of a short or a dead battery is stupid beyond belief:
Everyone should have one of those combo hammer/seatbelt cutter things handy. Because even a properly designed vehicle can potentially lose door functionality in the event of a collision (e.g. getting t-boned). No, not in your roadside emergency bag in the trunk but actually within reach of the driver (and any passengers you care about, I guess?). I'm old enough to still believe in the importance of a physical atlas/set of maps so I keep that and a safety hammer in the pocket on the back of the driver's seat.
Because a lot of us remember the Mythbusters where they "proved" that you could sit in a car and wait for the pressure to equalize and then open the door and escape. But I am pretty sure they also demonstrated just breaking the fucking glass and escaping the moment you have collected your thoughts (and want to say Adam Savage has reiterated that many times in the years since).
I do have to find these but ….
- you don’t need the mechanical backup if you open the door immediately
- mechanical backup can’t help with unequal pressure while you’re sinking
- who the heck would think of that while underwater in a car full of water?
IMO, the real answers are:
- Train people to open windows when they go into the water and expect to swim out. There ought to be power long enough to do this
- Make sure there is a window breaker securely mounted someplace obvious
I don’t know if I’d do any better in a panic, but I really ought to get window breakers for all my family’s cars
I thought you couldn't open normal doors underwater anyway due to water pressure so the recommendation is to kick out your windshield. Do newer cars have doors that open more easily underwater?
These deadly features are purely cosmetic
No, electronic door handles are not cosmetic, they save a lot more lives than than they kill by people drowning or burning alive in their car because they are too stupid to read their cars manual.
Since you apparently do not know this, the purpose of electronic door handles is for the car to be able to lock you out from opening the door if there is a car or bicycle approaching from behind in your blind spot. That's why you only see them in cars with blind spot radars
That being said, Teslas design is still terrible. In Audis the electronic door handle doubles up as the mechanical emergency door handle, you just need to pull on it harder than normal and it will engage the manual mechanism
they save a lot more lives than than they kill
Do they? Can you provide any examples?
the purpose of electronic door handles is for the car to be able to lock you out from opening the door if there is a car or bicycle approaching from behind in your blind spot.
Seems like they created a lot of unnecessary risk to alleviate a relatively minor problem.
So it needs to fail open then. Without a charge it should fail into a position it can be opened or actually open itself.
This is not a new issue. Failure engineering has been around for a long time.
Bro, you dont need electronc door-handles to have electronic locks,
Anton Yelchin was also done in by a not too dissimilar feature. The gear shift of his vehicle returned to a "neutral position" after shifting so unless you looked at the letter indicator you may not realize what gear you're in.
I have the same annoyance with my prius. It's a physical shifter you move, but it electronically shifts and the shifter always goes back to the same spot. If I try shifting in a hurry it won't register every so often.
That's however not a good comparison because you still have a physical "way" of feeling where you are shifting to. I never had an issue with shifters that return to neutral, even in very high stress situations.
Touch controls are however a very different thing, because you have absolutely no indication if you actually shifted or not.
In fact, Ive had various cars now with return to neutral shifters - the new Mazda CX-60/70/80/90 don't have this and I happend to shift in neutral, simply resting my hand on the shifter...
My prius is like this and every once in a while if I let of the brake a touch to soon while I shift it won't register going from drive to reverse, or the other way around. It's annoying, but something I'm aware of. Something that never happens with a physical shifter.
I'm curious. In what situations do shifters need to return to neutral? Like, at a stop? Or when you open the door? Why neutral and not park, for example? Or is park also neutral in EV lingo?
"Return to neutral" does not mean neutral gear in this context. If you shift an old Prius into Drive, the shifter knob snaps back to the center of the jig, which is a neutral position for it to be in. It doesn't stay in the Drive slot while the car is in Drive. You can probably find photos or videos of this out there somewhere.
Edit: I understand it better. Thanks. Yeah, I think that can be annoying too. You have to pay attention to the knob in order to know which gear you are in, and when it lands where you want it to land. I guess new drivers would be more comfortable with that.
Thanks for the explanation!
Thanks, but that doesn't sound like the OP is describing, though. You're saying that in the old Prius, you put the car in Drive and it will stay in Drive. Whereas OP seems to be implying that they put it in Drive, and then the car switched to Neutral (not Drive anymore.) Otherwise, why would anyone be annoyed by that?
That is the worst idea ever. When I drove a snow plow I would shift from forward to reverse and back hundreds of times a storm. Without taking my eyes off my surroundings.
But bro, you'll save like $0.87 per car by not including a physical gearshifter. Won't anyone think of the poor shareholders footing that bill.
It's simple but it's not easy, because it's complex.
If there's anything we've learned in human history of engineering and design it's that complexity kills when relying on human nature to control.
Swiping up to drive is the same direction as tap up to reverse from a previous model Tesla. Kind of like how trackpads and mouse scroll wheels work in opposite directions. I can see how it’s not so intuitive if the direction contradicts 35 years of muscle memory.
Even a button shift. Literally just a row of buttons, select your gear by pressing it. Reverse would be under a safety cover so you don't hit it at 60mph.
Or, you just have logic in the car's software that stops you from shifting to reverse over 5mph.
Don't trust software. Just don't. Software crashes planes. There's no way car companies are programming better than plane companies. You can certainly have the feature, but a safety cover should also exist in such a configuration. There's no reason, except shareholder primacy, to not include it.
How’s that any different?
- My current Tesla has a stalk to click up/down to go into reverse/drive, but I always verify before taking my foot off the brake
- my Subaru had a physical shifter on the console to move forward or back to a specific selection , but I always verified by taking my foot off the brake
- I used to have a Pontiac with a shifter stalk on the steering wheel that I move to a specific selection, but I always verified before taking my foot off the brake
There's over 300 people here who seem to agree with me. Then there's you.