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.
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
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 2 weeks ago
And Tesla would be fined and sued into oblivion.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And the people who knowingly put profits before lives would be individually serve time for manslaughter.
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Tesla would be charged to dissolve, or forced to forfeit assets to the government.
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Call me a Luddite but I won’t ride in a “self driving” car. I don’t even trust lane assist although I’ve never had a car with that feature.
I think my sweet spot is 2014 for vehicles. It’s about 50/50 with the tracking garbage and the “advanced features” on those models but anything past 2015 seems to be fully fly-by-wire and that doesn’t sit right with me.
I’m old though and honestly if I bought a 2014 right now and babied it as my non commuter car I could probably keep it until I should give up my keys. You younger people are going to have to work around all this crap.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I have a Sprinter van with lane assist for cross country travel. As obnoxious as it is 99% of the time, it has come in clutch a few times when I started to get drowsy and drifted off my lane.
vithigar@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I’ve never had any issue with the lane assist in my Mitsubishi. It’s absolutely built as an “assist” and not something that will actually try to take control from you. It’s trivial to “overpower” it manually and turn out of your lane without signaling if that’s what you want to do, but does a perfectly reasonable job of steering on its own when left to its own devices.
That said, I wouldn’t be driving a vehicle new enough to have the feature yet either if I hadn’t been rear ended a couple of years ago and had my 2012 Lancer written off. :(
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I liked lane assist. It’s kind of like the Playstation triggers haptic feedback. It just makes the wheel slightly stiff as you near a line, but it’s very passive.
invertedspear@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I think Ford does a good job of offering the features and tech, but not making them required. Even their EVs have settings that can mimic a gas driving experience. Be a Luddite trust what you trust. But don’t pigeon hole your acceptable years of manufacture.
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My wife had a rental for a trip she and my daughter were going on for a gymnastics event and I got to drive it back from the rental place and it had lane assist.
Every time another car passed in the opposite lane the damn thing would try and jerk in the opposite direction of that car, sometimes almost running itself off the road into the ditch.
absquatulate@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Drove a few cars with “lane hold” and it’s infuriating to have to suddenly correct the car’s trajectory at every curve because it misjudges the road line. Some cars are worse than others but it was literally the first thing I disabled every time. I wonder how truck drivers feel about it. Do modern trucks even have this?
Almacca@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
I’ve got a 2008 manual. It doesn’t even have cruise control. It’s perfect. I’m keeping it as long as I possibly can.
bradboimler@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As a pedestrian I trust waymos more than human drivers
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Every study ever done on the subject has concluded that vehicle fires happen far less in electric vehicles than ICE ones. If you want to talk about responsibility we would ban them all.
Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Humans first
dutchkimble@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
They don’t need to be banned. We just need to not buy them.