this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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The car came to rest more than 70 metres away, on the opposite side of the road, leaving a trail of wreckage. According to witnesses, the Model S burst into flames while still airborne. Several passersby tried to open the doors and rescue the driver, but they couldn’t unlock the car. When they heard explosions and saw flames through the windows, they retreated. Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, could do nothing but watch the Tesla burn.

At that moment, Rita Meier was unaware of the crash. She tried calling her husband, but he didn’t pick up. When he still hadn’t returned her call hours later – highly unusual for this devoted father – she attempted to track his car using Tesla’s app. It no longer worked. By the time police officers rang her doorbell late that night, Meier was already bracing for the worst.

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[–] But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Tesla’s garbage quality is sadly hurting the entire EV and self driving industry. Self driving cars will always have accidents. But a good self driving company will use every single accident to ensure that never happens again with their system. Humans can make the same error over and over but once self driving has been around a while, the rates of sef driving caused accidents will reduce more and more every year.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 24 minutes ago

We'll never have self-driving cars en masse, because for some reason society has accepted that humans make mistakes and sometimes people die, but they can't do the same for robots, even if they make far fewer of them.

[–] medem@lemmy.wtf 14 points 14 hours ago

I first thought this article was about their self driving cars and I was like who tf gets in a self driving car with their baby. It's not. It's about Tesla cars in general. Scary stuff.

[–] mhague@lemmy.world 15 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

What kind of engineers work at Tesla? I feel like normal people get anxiety over deleting databases or deploying secrets to production. Accidentally taking a service down.

But there you have all kinds of terrible things happening and it's purely because your company knows how to work policy makers. A dad dies in a fireball and what, it's an emergency meeting? Something you look into first thing Monday morning?

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Working in the aerospace industry has given me a lot of insight into the different ways engineers rationalize the potential for harm that they cause. The most common is wilful ignorance or straight up denial. No, the products I work on can never hurt anyone, it's just xyz I know personally engineers who work on weaponry and fall heavily into that camp and it blows my mind.

[–] innermachine@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

The guilty don't feel guilty, they learn not to. Easy to sleep at night when u can stuff ur pillow with 100's.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 3 points 14 hours ago

It sounds like it tracked who drives and who was into the car to decide if they were worth crashing.

You know, to maximize the most evil to the world.

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Several passersby tried to open the doors and rescue the driver, but they couldn’t unlock the car.

Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, could do nothing but watch the Tesla burn.

Did no one think to break open the windows?

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 12 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, that must be it... they didn't think to break a window.

Many modern cars use laminated glass on their side windows now and, as far as I'm aware, this model has doors that won't open from the outside without power, making them very difficult to break open without tools even when the vehicle isn't on fire. 20 minutes in to the Tesla burning, when it was already sitting on top of a bomb of a battery... you're beyond fucked at that point. Difficult to just put the fire out for responders, a rescue was over about 15 minutes prior.

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for serving a side of snark while teaching others.

I fucking hate cars, so this is a shit design feature (coming from a design engineer myself).

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 2 points 6 hours ago

All the best lessons come with some sass, but on a serious note, I'd hate to think of how someone who had powerlessly watched a person burn to death would feel about seeing people second guess their actions. You would feel awful enough already.

Laminated windows are great for a lot of things (e.g. sound dampening), getting in to/out of the vehicle rapidly is definitely not one of them. The inability to unlock without power is just a chefs kiss though, obviously.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 41 points 1 day ago

Wait, I might know the answer. Is it because they don't use LIDAR and they're made by a company headed by some piece of shit who likes to cut costs? Haha, I was just guessing, but ok.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 68 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Tesla tried to do it all at once instead of perfecting the electric tech first and then incrementally adding on advances. They also made change for change’s sake. There’s absolutely no reason mechanical door locks could not have been engineered to work on this car as the default method of opening and closing the door. It’s killing people.

[–] ZMonster@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (6 children)

There's absolutely a reason to not engineer something you're not required to. It's called capitalism. Tesla cut every corner they could.

[–] theneverfox@pawb.social 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

No, the problem is they engineered something they didn't need to, because Musk thinks everything should be electric because it's cool. They had to then engineer a mechanical release, because it was required by law (for good reason)

Mechanical door locks would have been cheaper. The fly by wire in the cyber truck is far more expensive, heavier, and far more dangerous than the very well polished power steering systems every other car uses

Maybe it's something like they wanted to make more money on repairs or something... But even that they could've done better by starting from very common, cheap technology

Let's be clear... The real problem here is that Elon Musk, opinion having idiot that he is, made decisions from on high with very little understanding of engineering

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[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Elon : some of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

[–] ZMonster@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Luigi: lol same

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[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 23 points 1 day ago (14 children)

Also, the fact that they removed Lidar sensors and just base their self driving on cameras is plainly stupid.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 39 points 1 day ago

You can choose not to drive bleeding edge technology, but sadly you have no choice in whether to share the road with it.

[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 127 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (6 children)

Article does not actually answer why Tesla vehicles crash as much as they do or how their crash frequency compares to other vehicles. Its more about how scummy tesla is as a company and how it witholds data from the public when it could incriminate them.

[–] GroundedGator@lemmy.world 66 points 2 days ago

In some ways that is the answer. Crashes keep happening because they are not being held accountable to regulators because they are not reporting these incidents and no one is exercising oversight to be sure the reporting matches reality.

I think over the years, accurate reporting by manufacturers has been done because they generally do not want to be known as that car company that killed a child and it could have been prevented with a 50 cent bolt. As a result, regulators have been less hawkish. Of course there are probably political donations in the US to help keep the wheels turning.

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[–] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 168 points 2 days ago (57 children)

If we lived in any sort of reasonable or responsible world then these cars would be banned from public roads all over the globe.

[–] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 76 points 2 days ago (3 children)

And Tesla would be fined and sued into oblivion.

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours ago

Tesla would be charged to dissolve, or forced to forfeit assets to the government.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 63 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is the kind of shit that makes me worried even seeing someone else driving one of these deathtraps near me while I am driving. They could explode or decide to turn into me on the highway or something. I think I about this more than Final Destination when seeing a logging truck these days.

[–] Joeffect@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago

It's one of those rules you make for yourself when you drive...

Like no driving next to people with dents...

Or

Stay away from trucks with random shit in the back not strapped down ...

No driving near New cars, they are new and or it's because they got into an accident so best just be safe...

So

No driving near a Tesla...

[–] firepenny@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Seems like a lot of this technology is very untested and there are too many variables to make it where it should not be out on the roads.

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Move fast and break things, but it's a passenger vehicle on a public road.

It's been a nightmare seeing tech companies move into the utility space and act like they're the smartest people in the room and the experts that have been doing it for 100 years are morons. Move fast and break things isn't viable when you're operating power infrastructure either. There's a reason why designs require the seal of a licensed engineer before they can be constructed. Applying a software development mentality to any kind of engineering is asking for fatalities

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

its on you if you bought a tesla after the twitter purchase, cant have buyers remorse.

[–] teuniac_@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Other road users don't have anything to do with it though, including those who aren't even driving

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