Tesla has assured that it will fully cooperate with Chinese law enforcement agencies in the investigation of the tragic accident involving a Tesla Model Y in Guangdong province, as a result of which two people died and three others were injured. At the same time, rumors about potential causes of the accident are spreading on the Internet, most of which are false or impossible.
The accident happened on November 5, and the video, which was stitched together from several traffic cameras, quickly spread on Chinese social media and went viral. In the video, the Tesla Model Y car can be seen first trying to park, then suddenly picking up speed, speeding down a two-lane road with sharp turns at high speed, knocking down other road users in its path, before finally ‘flying’ into a shop window store after about 30 seconds and 2.6 kilometers from the start of traffic.
Video of fatal Model Y crash in China (Warning: The video contains scenes of brutality, violence and death. If this is not acceptable to you, do not watch)
An unnamed family member of the 55-year-old driver said he had problems with his brake pedal when he tried to stop in front of the family’s shop, Jimu News reported. According to media reports, the driver survived and received injuries of varying degrees of severity.
As is often the case, Tesla was quick to clarify, citing the event log, that the brake pedal was not depressed during the incident, while the accelerator pedal was depressed for much of the incident. The automaker urged not to believe ‘rumors’ about the incident and to wait for the results of the investigation.
As you can see in the video from the CCTV cameras, the brake lights only come on once — about 23 seconds after the incident began. Whatever the case may be, the police in Guangdong, as part of the official investigation, will cooperate with a third-party expert firm, which will help analyze the event log of the car’s personal computer and surveillance camera recordings in order to establish all the circumstances of the accident. Tesla, in turn, assured that they are completely open to cooperation and are ready to provide law enforcement agencies with all the necessary data.
You can recall the numerous accidents involving Tesla cars in both China and the US, where drivers complained of software malfunctions and unintended acceleration, only to find out that the drivers were actually just messing with the pedals. Even in Toyota’s long history of ‘sudden unintended acceleration’ in 2009-2011, when the manufacturer acknowledged a design flaw, most of the incidents were the fault of the drivers, and they were more common among unskilled drivers and the elderly.
The American regulator NHTSA reminds drivers that 16,000 accidents occur annually in the United States precisely because drivers accidentally press the accelerator instead of the brake. But this did not prevent rumors from appearing on social networks about Tesla’s autopilot, which ‘went ashore and started killing people.’ There have been many posts on both Chinese and English-language social media suggesting various reasons without evidence, most of which do not stand up to any criticism. The behavior that can be seen in the video is not typical for autopilot, and even more so for car parking. And the video does not show that the driver tried to brake – at least the brake lights, which clearly signal this, did not light up.
Tesla has enough problems with Autopilot — the company is currently the subject of several investigations, including numerous accidents with parked special vehicles, and in early September, the company received a new lawsuit for misleading advertising of Autopilot capabilities. In addition, at the end of October, the US Department of Justice launched a new investigation into Tesla — after a dozen road accidents, including fatal ones, involving its autopilot.
