“Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told KPRC 2 that the investigation showed “no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla when the accident happened. There was a person in the passenger seat of the front of the car and in the rear passenger seat of the car.”
> Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water over four hours to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.
The first result for my query says "copious amounts of water are recommended as the best means to extinguish a high voltage vehicle fire." What did you find?
I'm guessing those strategies work well for phones but maybe not cars which are absolutely enormous amounts of battery and possibly wrapped around a tree at the time of the fire.
Secure a large, continuous and sustainable water supply — one or more fire hydrants or multiple water tenders. Use a large volume of water such as master stream, 2 1/2-inch or multiple 1 3/4-inch fire lines to suppress and cool the fire and the battery.
Right. A fire extinguisher is a "first aid" response to a fire. The kind of advice that's relevant to fire extinguisher usage is predicated on a small fire; general advice is that any fire larger than a small trash can is too big to fight with an extinguisher.
The fire department plays from a different rule book.
A lithium battery fire is considered a class B fire, so pouring water on it is not standard procedure. They should have known that in the first place, but if they had googled it, they would have found out very quickly anyway.
Yes, my point is that a possible explanation for using 32,000 gallons and calling Tesla is that spraying 3,000 gallons on the battery did not successfully extinguish it.
What you are overlooking is that the correct procedure as documented by Tesla, which is what the firefighters had been doing for four hours, didnotstopthefire.
Sounds like they did already know this and that's why they did it. If they googled it, they might have got the wrong answer like you did. So your criticisms aren't valid.
Fire departments are going to need to learn how to put out battery fires and have the relevant equipment available. If they are in the profession of putting out fires, at some point it's on them to know how to not waste 32,000 gallons of water as these vehicles become more common.
From their own Manuel:
FIREFIGHTING
USE WATER TO FIGHT A HIGH VOLTAGE BATTERY FIRE. If the battery catches fire, is exposed to high heat, or is generating heat or
gases, use large amounts of water to cool the battery. It can take approximately 3,000 gallons (11,356 liters) of water, applied directly
to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire; always establish or request an additional water supply. If water is not
immediately available, use dry chemicals, CO2, foam, or another typical fire-extinguishing agent to fight the fire until water is available.
Apply water directly to the battery. If safety permits, lift or tilt the vehicle for more direct access to the battery. Apply water inside the
battery ONLY if a natural opening (such as a vent or opening from a collision) already exists. Do not open the battery for the purpose
of cooling it.
Extinguish small fires that do not involve the high voltage battery using typical vehicle firefighting procedures.
During overhaul, do not make contact with any high voltage components. Always use insulated tools for overhaul.
Heat and flames can compromise airbag inflators, stored gas inflation cylinders, gas struts, and other components which can result in
an unexpected explosion. Perform an adequate knock down before entering a hot zone.
Battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish. Consider allowing the battery to burn while protecting exposures.
After all fire and smoke has visibly subsided, a thermal imaging camera can be used to actively measure the temperature of the high
voltage battery and monitor the trend of heating or cooling. There must not be fire, smoke, or heating present in the high voltage
battery for at least one hour before the vehicle can be released to second responders (such as law enforcement, vehicle transporters,
etc.). The battery must be completely cooled before releasing the vehicle to second responders or otherwise leaving the incident.
Always advise second responders that there is a risk of battery re-ignition.
Second responders may choose to drain excess water out of the vehicle by tilting or repositioning it. This operation can assist in
mitigating possible re-ignition.
Due to potential re-ignition, a Model S that has been involved in a submersion, fire, or a collision that has compromised the high
voltage battery should be stored in an open area at least 50 ft (15 m) from any exposure.
Warning: When fire is involved, consider the entire vehicle energized. Always wear full PPE, including a SCBA.
Water, in general, isn't specific enough. Hot water definitely won't help. It's low temperature, high thermal capacity / high latent heat of vaporization extinguishants that are best. The FAA has a whole protocol and training materials on how to put out Li-ion fires.
The latent heat of vaporization of water is so high that the temperature of liquid water can’t possibly make a big difference (specific heat is 4.18kJ/kg/K, latent heat of vaporization 2,260kJ/kg.)
I have no idea. I'm also not a firefighter. As electric cars become more common, we'll need to have a solution that is not "spend 4 hours trying and then call the manufacturer."
Tesla has a relatively comprehensive set of first responder guides on their website. They are all PDFs, which might not help people in the field, but they seem like a good thing to print out and throw in to a binder in every truck. Honestly, if I was tesla I would print, bind, and ship these to every fire dept in the country.
I mean the manual pretty much instructs to do exactly as it was done here:
> USE WATER TO FIGHT A HIGH VOLTAGE BATTERY FIRE. If the battery catches fire, is exposed to high heat, or is generating heat or gases, use large amounts of water to cool the battery. It can take approximately 3,000 gallons (11,356 liters) of water, applied directly to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire; always establish or request an additional water supply. If water is not immediately available, use dry chemicals, CO2, foam, or another typical fire-extinguishing agent to fight the fire until water is available.
> Battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish. Consider allowing the battery to burn while protecting exposures.
It's not water that puts it out, but low temperature to stop thermal runaway like the FAA advocates for Li-ion battery fires. <0 C salt water would be best.
German cities are in the middle of equipping all fire departments with containers that they can flood with water to submerge EVs in. The idea is to let the EV burn, cool it with water, and then tow it under supervision of a fire truck to a fire station to put the EV into water for 1-2 days. Compared to ICE vehicles it's very complicated and binding a fire truck over a span of multiple hours instead of 1 or 2.
What do you propose? Damaged batteries short and burn, it's the way it works. The energy needs to go somewhere. Damaged fuel tanks leak fuel much (MUCH) faster and burn much hotter and more dangerously. Do you demand that that be fixed before we allow ICE engines to become more common?
This whole "we couldn't put out the fire" nonsense is click bait. Battery fires burn longer, and that's important to know and requires different techniques to manage. But objectively they are safer than gas fires. Period. There is no serious debate on that point.
You think Tesla needs to rethink the fact that... batteries store a lot of energy? I really think you're missing the point.
Going full-on didactic on you: Vehicles have huge energy requirements to move them around. To meet those requirement they need to store energy on-board in some manner. This creates known failure modes where damage to the vehicle releases that energy in an uncontrolled way. That's bad. But it's completely unavoidable given the constraints of the system.
You seem to want Tesla to do the impossible and invent batteries that don't burn. Which seems ridiculous, given e.g. Ford's nearly-century-long failure to invent gasoline that doesn't burn.
The question you should be asking is "Are battery fires safer than gasoline fires?". And... duh. Yes, they are. And it's not even close.
> You think Tesla needs to rethink the fact that... batteries store a lot of energy?
Just as the environmental externalities of fossil fuels need to be internalized, so do the public safety externalities of the kinds of batteries in use, here. If its going to be a “price of doing business”, the right parties ought to pay the price.
Then, whether or not it is sensible to mitigate in manufacturing will be handled by the properly-aligned incentives.
But what are the externalities?! You and the upthread poster aren't elucidating any. All we have at hand is the linked article, which is... a fire. Batteries burn, in a safer and more controlled way than gasoline.
How is that a bad thing? What are you asking for battery or car manufacturers to do that they aren't already doing simply by replacing existing more-dangerous technology?
No no no, logic works the other way around: you are the one claiming that this is a new and more dangerous technology.
If you want to do that, you are the one who needs to bring evidence.
I'm simply arguing from first principles: car batteries store less energy than fuel tanks and release that energy slower and over a longer period of time in a fire. Ergo, they are safer for pretty obvious reasons.
Most car fires do not actually involve the entire gasoline tank catching alight; as the gas tank is well-protected and not particularly near sources of ignition. An engine bay fire is much more common.
If gasoline is spilled, foam works well to extinguish it and keep it from igniting.
Once a gasoline fire is out and cool, it is going to stay that way,
Lithium-ion battery fires are self-sustaining thermal runaways. You cannot put out such a battery fire by smothering it; it does not need oxygen from the air. All you can do is try to keep it cool by running water on it.
Even after such a fire seems cool, it can reignite unexpectedly.
The actual gross volume of energy is not necessarily what makes fighting a fire dangerous or not; it's the unpredictability. Firefighters may be more worried about compressed gas-strut explosions (from hatches, hoods etc) than they are about the gas tank exploding.
Reducing the battery capacity would make things better. We don't need such massive battery capacity for daily use but we buy them to support rare use cases.
I think Tesla's car design is, for the most part, reasonably safe (their driver assist technology is debatable, but that's a side issue). However, there are design trade-offs they made to favor range and power over safety and weight. For instance, the cells they use are substantially more dangerous than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells. The latter have lower energy density, so they aren't the best to use in a range-optimized car. (I believe Tesla is now buying LFP cells from CATL for some of their model 3s. Not sure if those are just for the China market or if it's available elsewhere.)
I don't know if they could have done more with their batteries to prevent damage from causing thermal runaway. Maybe they could isolate modules from each other better, or use the built-in liquid cooling system in clever ways. (Maybe use the coolant to boil a reservoir of water, so all the excess heat gets used to make steam?) Maybe add heat shielding between the battery and the rest of the car. Maybe design the battery to detach from the car if it gets too hot.
At any rate, I don't think cars can be made to be perfectly safe, and a modern Tesla is reasonable, especially compared to a gas-powered car. However, the possibility always remains of improving upon Tesla's current design along every desirable vehicle attribute, including safety.
Well how do you put out a battery fire? What new materials does every single fire station in America need to acquire? What new skills/training do local firefighters need? Who's going to pay for all this?
Ice, dry ice, liquid nitrogen would be even better. It's not about water putting out the fire directly, it's getting the Li-ion battery below thermal runaway to stop the self-immolation.
Maybe they can learn some techniques, but also car manufacturers must make the cars more ready for those kind of situations. It won't be the first time more "dangerous" vehicules are created, and technical solutions to be found (think of the liquefied petroleum gas design which had to have a safety valve).
I would design the batteries element with little robotic legs, so that when a thermal runaway occurs, they would disassemble and run away dispersing from the hot elements, to cool down each individually. </me mode="overengineering">
lol or to your local tire storage facility.. oil refinery... nuclear power plant... lumber yard with thousands of cut trees waiting for processing... paper mill... there’s lots of good options to pick from
"Use lots of water" is actually the best practice for extinguishing these kinds of fires.
First of all, there are actually parts of the car that are on fire (plastics, fabrics, etc.) and may spread fire to the surrounding environment. You need to extinguish those.
Secondly, the battery system is not "on fire" in the classical sense. It's undergoing a self-sustaining thermal runaway. You pour as much water as you can on it to remove heat and break the chain reaction.
> You pour as much water as you can on it to remove heat and break the chain reaction
...For long enough to remove the immediate danger of the fire to the surrounding people. Such a damaged fully charged battery will probably undergo thermal runaway and reignite repeatedly as soon as it stops being cooled. The best bet is to just keep the fire under control and not let it expand while it burns itself out.
The unsatisfying response in this case might just be: some fires can't be put out. At least, not quickly enough to matter for anyone inside the car. The priority in cases like this might just be to remove occupants from inside the car if possible.
According to Tesla's information, battery fires can be extinguished by using a lot of water. So, it is possible to do with an ordinary fire truck (and self-contained breathing apparatuses so firefighters can get near a burning car without breathing the fumes), but it might actually be a rare case where putting the fire out is consequential to the outcome for the occupants: I'd imagine in most cases they either got out in time or it was already too late by the time putting the fire out is a plausible option. Maybe I'm wrong about that, though.
Isn't removing occupants of any burning enclosure (be it a car, building, boat, ...) always the first priority? I can't imagine any case where a fire department would pour water on a burning car without first getting people out of it.
I would assume that they'd try to get people out first.
My comment is more addressed to people such as myself whose natural inclination is to regard a burning car as a bad situation that the fire department aught to be able to quickly remedy, and to suggest that most of the time putting out the fire may be a low priority.
I could imagine the fire department dousing a car if it was already too hot to get people out of safely, but I'm not a fire fighter and I don't know what they'd normally do in that situation.
I’m confused how this is possible. I have a 2020 Tesla and you have to turn the wheel every couple of minutes while Autopilot is on otherwise it will just turn off after beeping a ton.
Tesla has not thought of incorporating a sensor to ensure that someone is actually behind the wheel and not at the side of the wheel? I would find that unlikely.
Well, you'd be mistaken. The only use the torque sensor in the steering wheel. There've been news articles with Tesla engineers asking for a better system, and Musk's explicit response was that technology like eye tracking or such would be ineffective.
Most of Tesla’s ass-covering mechanisms can be circumvented easily. The steering wheel nag in my Model X is easily fooled by any kind of asymmetric weight on the wheel. There are other mechanisms, like seat belt and seat weight monitoring, but these can be easily circumvented as well.
To Tesla’s credit, they have reportedly recently started using gaze tracking on cars equipped with a passenger-facing cam, which is much harder to circumvent. If you look at literally every other public sale automaker doing self driving, they use gaze tracking.
If you're actively circumventing your car's safety features to use it in out-of-spec ways it's hard to argue that an accident is anything but your own fault.
It's like pulling high negative G in a Cessna 172 and then blaming the manufacturer when the wings fall off.
What if the Cessna salespeople and marketing was all doublespeak about high G flying (allegedly the salespeople on the floor go way beyond doublespeak sometimes)? Yeah the pilot would be to blame, but in that case Cessna would also be to blame.
> What if the Cessna salespeople and marketing was all doublespeak about high G flying
The driver deliberately set out to sabotage mechanisms which are there to protect you.
A more apt comparison would be if the pilot disabled the stall warning on the aircraft. Then attempted to do low flying maneuvers at the threshold of the aircraft's stall speed.
If someone deliberately disables safety features, they hold the bag.
but to honest, when left to its own devices the car drove at high speed into a tree. Its not a subtle obstacle. If the car can't figure out what is going on in this senario, thats not a good look.
Diving autonomously is hard, but not running into static obstacles seems one of the more basic things.
If you turn off autopilot and put a brick on the accelerator the Tesla may also drive into a tree! Or any car made in the last 100 years for that matter.
You have to actively ignore multiple safety warnings and deliberately bypass failsafes.
The big thing I have to wonder about is how on earth did they get the car going so fast on residential streets? Autopilot is hard-coded to limit you to 5MPH over the speed limit. I know you can push the gas down with a brick or something stupid like that, but doing that disables the car's ability to slow down or stop automatically which is a pretty fundamental part of what Autopilot does and how it operates.
So many people look at this as if the driver pushed a simple bypass button to get around a safety feature, but getting a Tesla going fast enough to wrap itself around a tree on a residential street is not simple at all.
Tools to fool Teslas minimal hands on detection have been available for years. Amazon even sells them[1]. Anyone buying them should have their license suspended as precautionary measure.
Totally agree with you. I own a Tesla and I am definitely not a big fan of how they communicate or treat their customer (customer service is just horrible). But in the present case, this is not a tesla issue, just an issue of two irresponsible people. The car would have beeped thousands times before crashing (at least very loud beeps for not applying force on the steering wheel and other loud beeps because the car was going off road and hitting a tree - obstacle detection).
Yeah, it seems to me that this sort of safety measure only has to be strong enough to force people to go out of their way to circumvent it: anyone who circumvents it has ipso facto displayed malicious intent and should be liable for any damage caused.
I was thinking the same.. the driver had to be up to some kind of shenanigans. The front end damage from the tree didn't look too bad. Maybe the driver was drunk and fled or got in the back seat to avoid arrest?
Right.. there could be a few scenarios where it could have happened, but I highly doubt that he would have went to the back seat if the car was engulfed in flames. e.g. he was really drunk, the fire didn't start until later, he buckled himself in to wait for cops, dozed off and succumbed to smoke inhalation. You really don't think one of the first things that a drunk tesla driver that was in an accident would think would be to blame the automated driver?
I’m sure the Tesla crowd will jump in to say this is driver error because Tesla has a disclaimer that the feature requires active driver supervision, but the problem has always been the marketing that causes users to over estimate the system’s capabilities. Musk says that autopilot is safer than human driven miles, but this is apples and oranges since the human driven miles include city driving and all models of car, which have much higher rates of accidents than luxury cars like Teslas.
Full Self Driving’s marketing has been criminal. Tesla is trying to solve self driving without lidar, which it’s competitors are using. Waymo is way ahead of Tesla, but they create the illusion of being ahead by releasing features that are clearly extremely dangerous.
I don't see how autopilot was involved here. This was a tiny cul de sac (the address is in the article). Autopilot simply won't achieve the kind of speeds needed to cause that collision.
Frankly I agree with other posters here that the most likely scenario is that there was a human driver in the seemingly-undamaged drivers' seat who fled the scene. Absent that, you'd have to play games with launch mode or some kind of device to press the accellerator. You just can't do this with autopilot as I see it.
If so the investigators on the scene are wrong, from the article:
“Herman said authorities believe no one else was in the car and that it burst into flames immediately. He said it he believes it wasn’t being driven by a human.
Harris County Constable Precinct 4 deputies said the vehicle was traveling at a high speed when it failed to negotiate a cul-de-sac turn, ran off the road and hit the tree.”
Again, that scenario (taking a high speed turn in a cul-de-sac) just doesn't correspond to any known accessible autopilot behavior. Given the choice between "initial investigation was wrong" and "heretofore unseen high speed residential driving by autopilot" (also "non-autopilot driving from passenger seat" probably needs to be in the list), I know which way Occam points.
To be glib: if you could get the car to drive itself at 60mph+ on a residential street, that shit would be all over youtube.
I agree it doesn’t look like there’s much ramp up, I’d want to know why the people actually there sound so confident there was no 3rd party. Here’s the approximate location of the crash:
https://goo.gl/maps/4Rk3DPdtnnRQuGd69
"Village Of Carlton Woods neighborhood is located in SPRING (77382 zip code) in MONTGOMERY county. Woodlands - Village Of Carlton Woods has 437 single family properties with a median build year of 2006 and a median size of 6,371 Sqft., these home values range between $789 - $3045 K"https://www.har.com/pricetrends/woodlands---village-of-carlt...
Occam's Razor says: "entities should not be multiplied without necessity", but it's your explanation that is "multiplying entities", specifically the occupants of the car and certainly without necessity: two car occupants suffice to cause an accident.
If you look at it on a map, it is very odd. The address where happened is maybe 200 meters into the cul-de-sac, which requires a hard right turn to enter. The crash site isn't very close to the right turn. And the street itself isn't long, maybe 300 meters total.
Trying to imagine how it was going fast enough to cause this, well after a right turn, with nobody in the driver's seat...isn't easy. Occam's razor is hard to apply, because I don't see a simple explanation.
I don't think Occam's razor is hard to apply: there's no evidence of a third person in the car, there's no reason to assume a third person in the car.
Occam's razor cuts out unlikely explanations. It doesn't help you find a likely explanation, but at least it helps you avoid wasting time in considering unlikely ones.
Also, the modern interpretation of Occam's Razor, that "the simplest explanation is usually the right one" (see wikipedia) doesn't mean that the most likely explanation should be simple. For example, it can equivalently be restated as "the least complex explanation is usually the right one", which clarifies that the most likely explanation need not be simple, just less complex than others.
Occam's razor can be used to rule out "more complicated" explanations for the same evidence.
The problem is that I haven't seen any explanation for how else the car got up to that speed. Without a actual competing explanation, you can't use occam's razor at to rule out unlikely explanations.
There is a very simple explanation: the car crashed because of the actions
of the two people we know were in the car. Any explanation that requires a
third person is more complex than that.
What where the actions of the two people in the car that caused the crash? That
we can't know yet because we don't have enough information. So in that case,
Billy Occam would say "sit tight and wait until you know more".
"they did something and it caused them to crash" isn't really an explanation...so don't go ruling out other valid explanations as "too complicated" till you have enough information to create a proper alternative.
Otherwise you are mis-applying occam's razor. Occam's razor isn't a rule of logic, it is a heuristic to help you navigate complicated epistemic situations.
I think what you're saying is that if you don't have a good explanation, then everything goes, you're free to imagine anything you want. Until "you have enough information to create a propper alternative" you can "multiply entities" to your heart's content- and make any kind of assumption you like.
In saying that you are using Occam's Razor which is soley intended for distinguish two theories of identical explanatory value.
There are plenty of other epistemic tools to evaluate the likihood of various incomplete explanations with different levels of explanatory power.
Edit: Occam's Razor is like a tie breaker after you have brought out all your other epistemic tools and failed to break the tie. You are nowhere near that point.
>> In saying that you are using Occam's Razor which is soley intended for distinguish two theories of identical explanatory value.
Is it? The Razor says "entities should not be multiplied without necessity" (see wikipedia). Assuming a third person is "multiplying entities without necessity". Any explanation that assumes a third person is "multiplying entities without necessity". So it should be cut by the Razor, meaning we don't need to consider it. It doesn't matter if there is no better explanation yet. Any explanation that doesn't assume a third person in the car will always be better than any explanation that assumes a third person in the car. So the Razor can indeed help us distinguish between likely explanations even when we haven't yet formulated those explanations.
Also, I'm curious- do you really think that if we don't have a good explanation then we're free to imagine anything we want? That's an obvious error of reasoning that you would have tried to avoid if you were aware of it, yet it really seems to me that this is what you're doing. Would you like to go over that for a bit?
Edit: I've edited this comment repeatedly to make it less contentious, like HN guidelines advice. I suggest we refrain from discussion of technicalities and avoid veering off into technical language, otherwise we'll just make this conversation even more tedious than it already is.
I explained to you what kind of epistemic tool the Razor is. There are plenty of other tools that let you make arguments about the likihood that there was an additional person present. You can't make that argument with that Razor.
If you would like a more detailed understanding of why the Razor is limited to this use, you'll have to out more effort into learning epistemology than perusing wikipedia. It is an interesting topic and worth your time and attention.
The sort version is that this is the only way to use the razor that increases the reliability of your epistemic process.
See, when I said that we should refrain from discussion of technicalities, the reason was to avoid the tactic you're employing now, of trying to "win" the conversation by saying I don't understand the Razor etc. This is an underhanded tactic that does not honour you and demeans me as your interlocutor.
You suggest I lack a detailed understanding of why the Razor is limited to a particular use. I pointed to wikipedia because it's a resource that is easy to access. According to wikipedia, then, the Razor says:
"Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".
I wasn't trying to win, I was trying to offer you an honest suggestion.
You do lack an understanding of Occam's Razor and I encourage you to go learn more about it. It simply cannot be used to rule out explanations like you are saying. It only provides a heuristic preference between explanations that make identical predictions.
Occam's Razor is an epistemic guideline that was originally formulated in the terms you specify, it is however a concept that has been widely discussed and refined beyond that original formulation.
If you aren't interested in going past reading on wikipedia, the article there does touch on the Razor's limitations even if it doesn't delve deeply into the reasoning behind them.
Even if you stretch Occam's Razor past it's limit and use it to establish preference between two theories that make different predictions but only about phenomenon that you personally can't practically check (i.e. a case such as this one), then you are still only establishing a preference for the "simpler" explanation and cannot actually rule out the other explanation without checking the difference in predictions (i.e. an investigation into the crash.)
Bite what? I'm not proposing any explanations. I'm pointing out that it doesn't make sense to assume a third person, for whom we have no evidence, was in the car.
My understanding is that you use Occam's razor on a list of possible answers. A third person isn't less likely unless there is some more likely choice. I don't know what that would be.
Edit: You're sort of glossing over that "nobody in the driver's seat" is unusual by itself. All explanations I can think of for how this happened are unlikely.
You don't need to have a "list" of explanations. Any explanation would either assume there were more than two people in the car (why stop at three?) or it would assume there were no more than two people in the car. Any explanation that assumed there were more than two people in the car would "multiply entities" more than any explanation that assumed there were only two people in the car, so the Razor would always cut out the former in favour of the latter.
>> Edit: You're sort of glossing over that "nobody in the driver's seat" is unusual by itself. All explanations I can think of for how this happened are unlikely.
That means you can't think of an explanation for it, not that there isn't one.
Again as I said in other comments, if you find yourself thinking "I can't think of a better explanation", that's a sign you need to sit down and think of a better explanation.
The Razor, as originally stated by William of Occam, is: "entities should not be
multiplied without necessity" (see wikipedia) [1].
Clearly, assuming a third person was in the car is "multiplying entities without
necessity". Note also that the original formulation of the Razor makes no
mention of hypotheses, competing or otherwise, or of any requirement for
comparisons.
Even going by the more modern interpetation of (stated informally) "prefer the
simplest hypothesis", a comparison can be made "on the fly": any hypothesis that
needs a third person in the car is less simple than a hypothesis that doesn't
need a third person in the car. So we can prune away the entire branch of the
hypothesis search tree that begins with "suppose there was a third person in the
car" without wasting any time considering those hypotheses even if we don't yet
have any competing hypotheses.
And, btw, we sure do: there were two people in the car and they caused the
crash. That's a competing hypothesis. I don't know why people keep saying
"there's no competing hypothesis". That you don't like that hypothesis makes no
difference.
You'll notice also that the more modern interpretation ends up agreeing with
the original: any hypothesis that needs a third person in the car is
"multiplying entities without necessity" (the entities being the people in the
car), whereas any hypothesis that doesn't need a third person is leaving the
number of entities (at least people in the car) well enough alone.
_____________
[1] No, please, really do see wikipedia. I think it will help clarify much confusion
about what the Razor is. For instance, there are five or six different
formulations of the Razor, each with its own, multiple, interpretations. But I
can't see any one that "requires a comparison". That sounds to me more like a
Calvinball rule. If you want to say I'm "using it wrong", then start by
clarifying which formulation and what interpetation of it you are using, as I
have done throughout this thread.
> Note also that the original formulation of the Razor makes no mention of hypotheses, competing or otherwise, or of any requirement for comparisons.
Well, the Wikipedia article states, in the very first line:
> ...or more simply, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.
and further down it defines what a "razor" even is:
> The term razor refers to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar conclusions.
So both of these do seem to directly relate to comparisons. It's not simply a misunderstanding of the term to say that Occam's Razor involves comparisons of competing hypotheses.
> any hypothesis that needs a third person in the car is less simple than a hypothesis that doesn't need a third person in the car.
The trouble is you need to define what you mean by "entities." Obviously this does not need to literally refer to bodies. It means facets and complications of the hypothesis.
So we need to decide which hypothesis requires more entities: one that supposes the possibility of a third person, or one that supposes the possibility of people tricking an autopilot to do what no one believes it ought to be able to do.
The point is, we need something beyond what we have been told. If it were simply "drunk man crashes into tree," we need no further explanations, no further entities. That story explains itself. But if the initial story isn't by itself sufficient -- "autopilot drove itself at high speed in a narrow cul-de-sac with no one in the driver's seat, against all programing and prior experience of Tesla cars" -- then we must hypothesize additional entities. Wonky programming. Hacked system. 160 lb weight on the driver's seat and fake hands on the steering wheel. Third person.
I don't know that the third person hypothesis is, in fact, simpler. But I don't think you can say that Occam's Razor suggests that that should not be a rational hypothesis. I don't know how many additional entities would be required to get a Tesla to do what was suggested in the article.
Yes, wikipedia gives different interpretations of the Razor that, as you say, "directly relate to comparisons". None of them requires a comparison. I mean, you won't find that rule anywhere: "to use the Razor, you must make a comparison, otherwise you can't use the Razor". That is Calvinball.
>> The trouble is you need to define what you mean by "entities."
I think this is splitting hairs. A person in the car is clearly an "entity". Assuming a third person in the car is "multiplying entities".
>> Wonky programming. Hacked system. 160 lb weight on the driver's seat and fake hands on the steering wheel. Third person.
... or a 160 lb bag of stones. Or three giant rabbits. Or a pair of labradors. Or... etc.
We really don't need to assume any of this. The two people in the car and sufficed to have caused an accident. Assuming more people, or anything else, is multiplying entities without necessity.
Stop with the condescension. The wikipedia article literally defines "razor" as "distinguishing between two hypotheses." If you disagree with that, edit the article, but don't tell me to read the article ("No, please, really do") and then dispute it.
> The two people in the car and sufficed to have caused an accident.
You keep saying that. I don't know it's true. Do you know it's true?
Like others have said said, this would go against every prior experience with Teslas, and our understanding of how the system works. It would be the first Tesla, ever, to have gotten into an accident on a narrow residential road with no one in the driver's seat.
You need something else in the explanation, even just "the system actually works in some other way." That is also multiplying entities. That was my point, which you missed.
You can't simply state, ipso facto, that the description given "sufficed to have caused an accident," when numerous people have disagreed with that.
There is a misunderstanding I'd like to clear up. By saying "Calvinball" I am
not being condescending. I am calling you out for trying to invalidate my entire
line of reasoning by introducting a new rule to Occam's Razor, that it must be
used in a comparison (between two hypotheses). This is a rule that is not there
in the original formulation of "entities should not be multiplied beyond
necessity". It is also not there in subsequent interpretations, including the
interpretation you quote from wikipedia. It's a rule that you came up with and
it is a rule that you came up with for the sole purpose of helping you win the
internet argument. So it's a Calvinball rule.
Besides which, as I said before, there do exist many hypotheses that we could be
making and the Razor is useful in prunning many of them away before we have to
waste our time formulating them and exploring them in detail. For example, all
the hypotheses that start with "Suppose there was a third person in the car"
need not be considered because "there was a third person in the car" is
"multiplying entities without necessity", and so hypotheses that make such an
assumption are less likely to be true than hypotheses that do not.
The misunderstanding I'm pointing out and that I advised you to read wikipedia
to clear up, is that you seem to understand the Razor as requiring at least two
competing hypotheses to be fully formed to the point that they could be written
down, perhaps even in a formal language. There is no such requirement. That's
your Calvinball rule, made up on the spot and for the sole purpose of winning
the internet argument. Or, perhaps, only for the purpose of forcing me to waste
my time by considering all the unnecessary hypotheses that start with "suppose
there was a third person in the car".
This is so frustrating, because you're not seeing my point that, without a simpler hypotheses, it doesn't make any sense to dismiss hypotheses on the basis of the Razor alone.
And, again, from what everyone understands of how cars and Teslas work, the initial description doesn't have enough elements to be a complete story.
This is honestly what this whole conversation sounds like to me: Suppose we find a baby stuck high up in a tree.
Me: "How do you suppose it got there?
You: "No idea. All I know is that there's a baby in a tree. The baby got there."
"Perhaps someone put him there?"
"Occam's Razor states you shouldn't multiply entities unnecessarily. Another person would be another entity."
"Ok... I mean, maybe there was a flood and-"
"And maybe a flying pig put him there! What don't you get about Occam's Razor???"
"So how do you think he got there?"
"I have no idea."
"Ok... So, I think that someone putting him there is the most likely -"
"How do you not understand that Occam's Razor doesn't require comparisons!"
"WTF?"
At this point, I don't give a damn about what Mr Occam said. This nitpicking over the original formulation is completely irrelevant. All I've been trying to think from the beginning is what the most likely explanation is.
A third person may well NOT be the most likely, or simplest explanation, but since you haven't provided one this conversation has been pretty useless.
Occam's Razor says you shouldn't multiply entities unnecessarily. That last word, "unnecessarily," I realize in retrospect, is the one I've been focussing on this entire time, while you've been talking about "entities."
If the initial story isn't sufficient -- and the fact that this would be the first Tesla ever to drive at high speed in a narrow cul-de-sac with no one in the driver's seat suggests it isn't -- them we MUST multiply entities. Bugs, trickery, GPS malfunction, whatever. We can then argue about which entities are reasonable and which aren't, if we like, but that's separate from the fact that we need to multiply them.
(And, indeed, it is this word "unnecessarily" in the original formulation that does require simplER hypotheses, which is why that wikipedia article that you told me to read all the way through is chock-full of reference to "simpler" or "competing hypotheses." Without another explanation, you have no idea if the additional entities are necessary or not. All explanations require at least one "entity," except perhaps the Big Bang. The particulars of the case determine how many entities are necessary and sufficient.)
I am seeing your point. You say that there needs to be a comparison between at least two hypotheses and then the Razor will help us choose one if it's simpler than the other.
There are many competing hypotheses to choose from in this case. They include all the hypotheses that assume there was a third person in the car; and all the hypotheses that do not assume there was a third person in the car. Any hypothesis that does not assume there was a third person in the car is "simplER" than any hypothesis that assumes there was a third person in the car. Assuming there was a third person in the car is to multiply entities beyond necessity, i.e. as you say "unnecessarily".
You can check my comments in this thread to verify that I've said this many times. The comments that wonder about what "entity" means are yours, not mine.
> Any hypothesis that does not assume there was a third person in the car is "simplER" than any hypothesis that assumes there was a third person in the car.
Nonsense.
A hypothesis that there was a third person in the car is simpler than a hypothesis that there were only two people in the car and an advanced animatronic ice sculpture in the driver's seat which melted after the crash. (I remember my minute-mystery solutions.)
A hypothesis that there was a third person in the car is simpler than a hypothesis that there was a rare combination of a bug in the software, a GPS malfunction, a solar flare, and a paint spill that looked like a painted lane marker.
There are an infinite number of hypotheses that don't contain a third person that are more complex than the hypothesis that there was a third person.
> You say that there needs to be a comparison between at least two hypotheses and then the Razor will help us choose one if it's simpler than the other.
If you think that was my point, you didn't read my comment above at all. That was not my point. It was that, IF the known facts of a story aren't sufficient cause to result in its conclusion, then there is required to be at least one more cause than has been explained.
>> There are an infinite number of hypotheses that don't contain a third person
that are more complex than the hypothesis that there was a third person.
Yes! You're right, and I'm very excited now because you seem to understand how
it works.
Note that all those hypotheses that you bring up also "multiply entities beyond
necessity" - so they are "more complex" than any hypotheses that don't, and we
don't need to examine them, we can just prune them out without even having to
state them.
So to correct what I've been saying above that was indeed too general, "any
hypothesis that does not assume there was something else in the car is simpler
than any hypothesis that assumes there was something else in the car"
("something else" meaning "something besides what was actually found in the
car"). Please correct me again if you think I'm still wrong.
I think we're getting to something we can agree on now, yes?
Yes, but you haven't accepted the central premise of all my posts yet, which is that entities should only not be multiplied "without necessity."
If the initial known facts of a story aren't sufficient to describe an event (a baby in a tree, a car doing something it never has before) then the actual cause must involve additional entities, whether a person or a solar flare.
>> Yes, but you haven't accepted the central premise of all my posts yet, which is
that entities should only not be multiplied "without necessity."
This is not the central premise of all your posts. For most of our interaction
the central premise of your posts was that I'm misunderstanding the intended use of
Occam's Razor. In recent posts you concluded that the reason I misunderstand it
is that I don't take into account the "necessity" part of the Razor's original
formulation.
Yet, I have constantly said that we don't need to assume that there is a third
person in the car because the two people we already know were in the car suffice
to explain the crash and that therefore assuming a third person in the car is
multiplying entities beyond necessity.
In fact, I keep repeating the "beyond necessity" part like a broken record, so
how come you're now insisting that I'm missing that particular point?
I think what you are saying is that you "need" to assume a third person in the
car, otherwise you can't explain what happened. Well, that is a "need" in the
same way that "I don't have an iPhone, therefore I need to get one" is a "need".
It's not so much a "need" as a "want". You can't think of anything better and
you want to explain what happenned, so you make up some entity that must be
responsible for what happened. So you have an explanation you're happy with and
your "need" for an explanation you're happy with is satisfied.
However, that's still "multiplying entities beyond necessity" because you may
"need" an explanation, but you don't need a third person in the car to explain the
crash.
>> Frankly I agree with other posters here that the most likely scenario is that there was a human driver in the seemingly-undamaged drivers' seat who fled the scene.
Do we really need to imagine a third person, who left leaving behind no evidence of his or her existence, to explain this accident?
To be honest, I don't either, but if I understand correctly the OP thinks there must have been a third person because the driver's seat was "seemingly undamaged".
We need a human driver or some other mechanism for the car to have propelled itself into the tree. A human driver seems the most likely solution but others are of course possible.
There were two people in the car. That's plenty to crash the car. The question is "how" but for that we don't need a third person, especially when we have no evidence of such a third person.
It would be far from the first time a car was found mysteriously crashed without a driver or with a passenger who swears up and down that they don't know who was driving.
When this happens to a non-Tesla (and it does happen) the usual assumption is a drunk driver. Why is that so hard to imagine here?
Because there is no evidence of such a third person.
If there was a third person, why not a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth? Or a dozen, or two? It would also be far from the first time that a troupe of clowns fit in a too-small car.
The evidence of the third person is that otherwise you've got to explain how the people in the car tricked the autopilot into driving at crashable speeds in a tiny cul-de-sac, where normally it wouldn't even engage, even apart from tricking it that there was a driver in the seat.
At this point, it's an Occam's Razor question, though different people will argue about which was simplest.
If there had been a third person who fled the scene, though, you would expect any physical evidence to have been left behind after that fire.
>> The evidence of the third person is that otherwise you've got to explain how the people in the car tricked the autopilot into driving at crashable speeds in a tiny cul-de-sac, where normally it wouldn't even engage, even apart from tricking it that there was a driver in the seat.
But that's not "evidence". That's just an unanswered question.
As I said recently in another comment, if you find yourself at the point where you're thinking "I can't think of a better explanation", that's not the time to say "that must be the answer"; that's the time to think harder until you find a better explanation.
In this case, if you can't find a better explanation than "there must have been a third person that we don't know was there", then it's time to sit down and think harder about how the accident could have really happened.
Because if you start assuming things we have no evidence for, you might as well assume invisible space leprechauns, for all the good it will do.
And what evidence usually exists of a third person in a non-Tesla missing-driver crash?
Look, all I'm saying is that if this was literally any other car, we would all see this evidence and say "Yup, looks like a drunk driver fled the scene of an accident". It would be an obvious conclusion. We wouldn't be scratching our heads saying "Well, gee whiz, maybe there's some other explanation we haven't thought of".
This is not the first time police have found a crashed car with no driver. The only difference this time is that it's a Tesla.
The difference is that there were two people in the car, one of which was the driver (and owner) of the car.
But you are right to suggest that the police are themselves jumping to conclusions. Just because the accident happened in a tesla, doesn't mean that self-driving was somehow involved.
I don't disagree about that. I disagree about the necessity of assuming a third person, when the two present suffice to have caused the accident and when there is nothing to indicate that a third person was involved.
Finally, assuming a third person introduces a new question: who was it?
"Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told ABC News the two men who were found dead inside the car had dropped off their wives at a nearby home and told them they were going to take the 2019 Tesla S class for a test ride.
"The man, ages 59 and 69, had been talking about the features on the car before they left."
You're saying that Autopilot cannot be blamed for this failure, because you take it as an axiom that Autopilot doesn't cause this kind of failure? That's just an empty tautology.
Failures are failures, you can't just assume they don't happen on such a complex system.
Autopilot has not been observed to behave like this. That's not an "axiom", it's "evidence". I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm saying that the data we have suggests alternatives as more likely.
KPRC 2 reporter Deven Clarke spoke to one man’s brother-in-law who said he was taking the car out for a spin with his best friend, so there were just two in the vehicle.
It happened entirely within the culdesac, and there were multiple witnesses.
Tesla Autopilot has killed two more people. (The entire rest of the self driving industry combined 1 pedestrian fatality at night).
Name one short seller who has been backed by the oil industry. Tesla is worth 3 Exxons, 3 Chevrons, or 10 BPs. This is a tired excuse that gets the motivations of short sellers backward. They do not short a company and then find damaging information, they find damaging information and then short the company. None of that excuses Tesla’s complete disregard for human life, particularly here by not having the advanced driver monitoring capabilities that their competitors have and instead relying on easily bypassed measures like steering wheel torque that will clearly lead to predictable abuse. Elon Musk has never condemned the social media stunts where people recklessly test self driving by getting out of the driver’s seat, and even commented on the porn video without condemning the behavior it encourages.
Did you see that video? It's clearly a propaganda video with various obvious lies, biases and cherry-picking. It contains false statements like "Elon musk is not an engineer, he is a scam artist". It's very clearly produced by oil industry or someone who benefits from delaying electric cars. It's professionally made to have an emotional effect. It's very similar in style to all those anti-vax propaganda videos.
It's fine to point things out, but on HN please do so in a way that is (a) informative and (b) avoids inflammatory rhetoric.
Even assuming you have a good underlying point, the comment you posted was internet flamebait as well as pointing way off topic. We're trying to avoid that kind of thing here, not just because it's below the desired quality threshold but more importantly because it evokes worse from others. If you think of the value of a comment as the expected value of the subthread it will lead to, this may make more sense.
>Musk says that autopilot is safer than human driven miles
Is there a breakdown for income with road safety? The best I could find is that poorer countries have higher road deaths / km, but I couldn't find any data on road safety within a country.
Here’s a report linking vehicle age to accident outcome and showing a correlation, I would assume higher incomes are associated with newer vehicles. I only took a quick look so not sure if they compare likelihood of an accident with vehicle age. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
They might have been using the orange hack to make Tesla think someone was driving (orange wedged in the steering wheel causes enough weight/pressure for the sensor to think it's a hand)
It's a little awkward when as of today (and has been for years), Tesla on its website has wording around FSD saying "The driver is only in the seat for legal purposes. The vehicle doesn't require it."
"The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions."[0]
"Currently neither Autopilot nor FSD Capability is an autonomous system, and currently no comprising feature, whether singularly or collectively, is autonomous or makes our vehicles autonomous"[1]
> Tesla has a disclaimer that the feature requires active driver supervision
Tesla has also had, since 2017, a prominent page on the website that says "The driver is only in the seat for legal purposes. The vehicle doesn't need it." (Ironic, given the circumstances of this accident).
I went looking through the Wayback Machine's archive of that page to see if I could find a version of the text with those exact words. In none of the archives could I find a version; the biggest change to the text is in the description of regulatory status. Prior to ~March 2019, the text here used to read:
> Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval. Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year.
(Hilariously, the "details of which will be released next year" was retained on the page for three years before being dropped.) The current text instead makes it more clear (although not by much) that the actual full-self driving capability of the car doesn't actually exist yet.
While those exact words may not be present in the text, the general whiplash theme of "this car can 100% drive itself!" and "you are totally required to supervise the car at all times, it cannot drive itself" was and is still present.
The revised words were absolutely present until today. Look at HN search, Reddit search - there are dozens of mentions of this with those exact words. There’s also in the linked video.
"The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat."
I did find what you are referring to, however.
There is a video ( https://vimeo.com/192179726 ) embedded below "Future of Driving" section of the autopilot page. When you hit play the first message presented is:
"The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself"
That video with that statement is still on the autopilot page as of me writing this.
While a subtle nuance, I believe that wording is specific to the video demonstration ie. "what you are watching is completely automated, but if we filmed it without a person in the seat we would get in trouble" instead of "anyone can run Tesla without a driver, we just < wink wink > tell you to be in the driver's seat for legal reasons."
Have you ever driven a Tesla with full self driving?
If you engage self driving the car pops up with a giant alert to keep your hands on the wheel and the car doesn’t allow you to use full self driving unless you wiggle the steering wheel every few minutes. There is no mystery as to what is safe.
The driver... wasn’t in the seat. Yes I would say that’s driver error.
> Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.
> Tesla’s recommendation is to fight a Tesla Energy Product fire defensively. The fire crew should maintain a safe distance and allow the battery to burn itself out.
How the heck was the car driving itself with nobody in the drivers seat? Surely that's a minimal requirement the car must pass before it engages autopilot.
I've been wondering about that too.. could have sworn that was the case. The front end damage from the tree looks minimal, have been wondering if the driver was drunk, the car crashed, he didn't think it was going to burst into flames, so he got in the back seat and buckled in to try to avoid getting arrested. Or maybe they were screwing around and the driver changed seats, then it crashed?
It's not physically possible. The car can't be operated with no one in the driver's seat. Autopilot shuts off automatically. Further, it was in a cul-de-sac, some place autopilot doesn't operate.
What is though? My first thought was halon gas but I think you still have outrageously hot temperatures in the cells that will reignite after the halon has dissipated.
Put a large bell jar over the car and then pump out all the air? Or maybe pump liquid silicone into the battery compartment? (The theory there is you need a flame-retardant 'foam' at very high temp but you could submerge the battery compartment in...something like silicone, to isolate it from atmosphere; there would be heat as the batteries discharge, but no combustion.
When it comes to extinguishing fire, you play the cards you have to mitigate the situation. If what you have is a residential fire hydrant system that can supply 36,000 gallons, you use water in overwhelming force. As evidenced by the article, it will not quell the reaction but it will dampen the overall thermal situation enough to permit humans to be extracted safely.
Presumably it would have been better to dump a few thousand pounds of sand on it but there are few sand hydrants in USA residential neighborhoods.
"Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water over four hours to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery."
Wow. Have there been other electric car fires which are so difficult to put out?
This is even worse than the deadly autopilot, EV cars are much more likely to burn and the fire is much hard to extinguish, but no one who tries to sell you an EV will tell you "hey you are more likely to die by being burned alive!"
My car gets irritated that I let go of the steering wheel for a few seconds. I've never dared to see how it reacts to a continued violation but presumably it could disengage the gas or engage the brakes.
Doesn't Tesla have some kind of seat or steering wheel sensor to prevent this? Could the owner have defeated the checks somehow?
They do have a steering wheel sensor. And yes, it can be defeated.
Per the article this happened on a cul de sac in a residential neighborhood. My question is how on earth they managed to get the vehicle to a fatal speed in that environment (seriously: Google the address, there's almost no runway available). It seems likely they were playing with launch mode and not autopilot, or perhaps manually messing with the accelerator from the passenger seat.
This definitely doesn't smell like an "autopilot" failure, though we'll have to wait for details.
(In fact as others are pointing out based on the location of the damage: it actually seems not unlikely that there was a human driver who fled the scene.)
Well Teslas are known for their incredible acceleration, and then if the occupants weren’t wearing seatbelts, even a relatively low speed crash can cause severe injury.
Tesla autopilot doesn't exploit that, though. The question is how they launched the car, and how they managed to launch it into a tree. You just can't do that with autopilot to my eyes.
How fast would they need to be going for this to be fatal? I could definitely see autopilot missing this turn and crashing into the tree, and it’s possible they were trapped inside rather than killed on impact.
The whole front corner wrapped around the tree. That's a highway-style crash, so figure 50+ mph I'm guessing? I have a hard time imagining the front passenger survived the impact given the way the cockpit collapsed, but maybe the back passenger was trapped.
My first thought on seeing the tree in the right front quarter of the car and the fact that the driver's seat area is uncrushed, is that there was a third person, who departed the scene. I'm guessing whatever data the car collected to tell one way or the other perished along with the electronics. But don't these cars also upload telemetry all the time?
>The owner, he said, backed out of the driveway, and then may have hopped in the back seat only to crash a few hundred yards down the road. He said the owner was found in the back seat upright.
My first thought was they were making a YouTube video
dang or other moderators, can someone add the official title to this post? It’s unclear from the submission’s title that no one was driving the car, which is the only thing that makes this post notable.
Maybe Tesla can help design some portable wall/dam system that could be setup around vehicles to capture water used in a pool rather than have it all immediately lost to drainage.
I live in this neighborhood and it's easy to see how you could get a Tesla up to high speed and quickly encounter a tight turn. The entire area is full of that kind of layout. It's all long roads with curves around trees.
so, aren't tesla coming with an attention system and aren't tesla autopilots allowed on the pubblic road to the condition that a driver is always attentive?
I'd say there have been enough death from inattentive drivers and it's about time the legislators and licensing bodies start looking into the issue.
They measure torque on the wheel from the drivers hand. It is possible to fool via defeat devices etc (ex www dot autopilotbuddy dot com).
There is a WIP system that uses the selfie camera to monitor the driver but it's still possible to fool (image taped in front or block it with tape etc) so unlikely it can catch all cases of drivers being willfully being dangerous. https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1379928419136339969
Back in the 1970s, I heard a story (from my dad, a USAF officer) about a young officer in a foreign air force, from a wealthy family, who was in U.S. pilot training in San Antonio. Supposedly the young gentleman bought a tricked-out van, with a bar and a bed and everything. He got onto the freeway, put the van on cruise control, and went into the back to mix a drink. Fortunately, no one else was injured in the ensuing crash that killed him. (I have no idea whether the story is true and am disinclined to research it.)
The more I read Elon’s responses to these things, the less I feel like he actually cares. Elon’s response for me translates to “It’s not a misunderstanding of the name, it’s a misunderstanding if the name by experienced users” In the end the name Autopilot is a really cool name, but it is by actual definition misleading af. Given I don’t think Tesla’s cars are inherently more dangerous, it just seems like people think Autopilot is more than it is, experienced or not. They absolutely should implement features to make sure the driver is at least in the seat!!
Those features exist. The article mentions that it is not specified whether or not the driver assist features were even in use in this instance.
> One of the men killed was in the front passenger seat of the car, the other was in the back seat, according to KHOU. Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told KPRC that “no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla at the time of the crash. It’s not yet clear whether the car had its Autopilot driver assist system activated.
Friend of mine thought they activated the driver assist and let go of the steering wheel, only to go straight and off the road in the next curve of the road.. Had only activated cruise control or so.
Is there an example of a gun mfg CEO that didn’t care that their product hurt someone because of failure to understand/explain a feature?
If there is a gun with an “autoshooter” feature and people think it’s something it’s not, that seems relevant.
HN disagrees you should throw digs at people you don’t know but don’t like for owning tools you are fearful of. I don’t mind. I like when people are upfront about their positions, and in many place that will definitely get you internet virtue points.
Of course he doesn't. Autopilot is already saving lives. It sucks when people die, but THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. How many others died in car crashes while OP was typing that question? 20? 50? 100? Where are the tears for them??
I find the implication highly questionable that naming this feature something else would have prevented this boneheaded incident. Stupid people do equally reckless things in their normal cars every day. As Musk says, experienced Tesla drivers know the limitations of the system and just get complacent. Or for all we know these people were just suicidal.
There's been aggressive self-driving promotion for Tesla cars from the company and the naming of the 'autopilot' feature is just a small part of this. I don't know if this specific accident happened in a way that related to this, but I think it's likely that the general way that Musk and Tesla talk about their cars has led to accidents where people trust autopilot more than they should, or are trying to show off how great their car is because they think it can do more than it can.
This is the exact reason why Google/Waymo moved on from a similar system a decade ago to directly making level 4 autonomy work. It provides users a false sense of security. Same with FSD feature set as well. Tesla and Musk’s constant misleading statements and marketing doesn’t help either.
At the very least, these kind of systems must have fairly strict driver monitoring. Musk says it’s not effective because they don’t try hard enough. The wheel nag and seat weight check currently implemented are too easy to defeat. There are literally products you can buy online to overcome that. I don’t know what’s stopping them from implementing an eye tracking system using cameras the way GM Super Cruise does. It’s a much more effective solution IMO.
its pretty wild that you start out trying to automate driving but are on a route that requires you to automate warning a human who is giving too much trust to your automation.
Is there more than anecdotal evidence confirming that more people than average are getting killed by this? HN is usually so critical of anecdotes and single sample points, unless it comes to Tesla.
There is not even anecdotal evidence. I am 100% sure that the rate of deaths per 1000 autopilot-driven miles is at least an order of magnitude lower than the rate of deaths per 1000 human-driven miles. Tesla has that info and occasionally publishes it... people just like to get freaked out when there is an accident. Sure, someone died doing something dumb with autopilot... but what, 50 people died doing something dumb in a normal car in the time it took them to put out the fire? Why are we even having this conversation? it's ridiculous.
I think his main argument is that if it's measurably safer than a person, that's good enough.
Dunno where the sweet spot is. My fear is that anything that isn't 100.00000% safe won't be allowed autonomy, it's easier to make a thing not happen than to make it happen.
I expect that at this point it's all about data acquisition. Keep pushing out new releases as you learn something, hopefully the system needs less and less driver input. Crashes are probably pretty interesting to the engineers.
If you turn on the autopilot in an airplane no one sane believes you can hop in the back seat and take a nap, and they don’t have eye tracking or control sensors. It’s not reasonable to blame Elon for someone who jumped into the back seat of a moving car.
So what you are saying is that Tesla should require certification with practice sessions with an instructor and a written test for all users of Autopilot? Or do you mean that Tesla should assign a controller to each car to keep it 1km away from other cars?
Article says it’s unconfirmed whether the car was in auto-drive. Part of me (without any knowledge) thinks someone was showing off the auto-drive and turned it off accidentally. But more details will come out I hope.
One thing in particular sticks out as concerning: the fire service did not know how to deal with the fire.
That’s not something specific to Tesla, Tesla does not make all battery powered cars, the fire service should know how to suppress electrical fires.
> “[Investigators] are 100-percent certain that no one was in the driver seat driving that vehicle at the time of impact,” Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said. “They are positive.”
This would only be possible if they were using the autopilot feature.
> the fire service did not know how to deal with the fire.
Tesla's advice is "let it burn":
> Tesla’s guidance suggests it’s better to let the fire burn out than continuing to try to put it out.
> This would only be possible if they were using the autopilot feature.
I thought autopilot had a safety feature to prevent no-driver operation, though there is a “SmartSummon” feature intended for parking lots which does not (but requires continuous press of a fob button.) So, there’s no way this should be possible, absent a major malfunction to even allow self-driving in the reported condition.
According to multiple Tesla owners in another thread, Autopilot will continue to drive as long as the seatbelt is buckled. There doesn't need to be weight in the driver's seat.
Auto pilot immediately switches off if it doesn’t sense pressure in the seat, which would result it tons of beeping and the car slowing down and moving to side of road.
I once unhooked my belt to take off my jacket while on autopilot. It immediately started screaming at me, disabled autopilot and started slowing down gradually.
I've also heard it uses the seat sensor to do the same. Unless they've found a way to bypass multiple safety features, then the car wasn't in autopilot.
I'm not sure what you mean. I was dangerous to myself, yes. So then the car pulled over and started to gradually stop on the shoulder. And then it would not let me re-enable the autopilot because I couldn't be trusted.
Not sure where endangering other people comes in. If there was someone standing on the shoulder of the highway it would avoid them obviously.
It stops applying power to the wheels automatically if you unbuckle or lift yourself off the seat, once AutoPilot goes into the “Take over immediately” state.
Of course the human who is actually driving can re-apply power at any time.
The car will not pull over unless you leave it in the full-on alarm state for a significant amount of time. The alarm is pretty loud. It’s not a state a driver would leave the car in unless they were incapacitated or doing it intentionally.
Lithium-ion fires are hard to extinguish, especially with thermal runaways. There are flame retardant products that can extinguish lithium-ion fires, Class D extinguishers can be used.
I would guess the fire crews that responded were not equipped with this type of extinguisher.
Hanging out in a Tesla online community, I've noticed there are two types of Tesla fans (and investors even).
The first are those that believe that EVs are the future and love the cars Tesla is producing.
The other are robotaxi/FSD evangelists and believe Tesla will usher in the age of autonomous cars sooner rather than later. These people genuinely believe we'll have fully road legal autonomous cars (as in, requiring zero human input) by 2025 and that human driven cars will be outright banned in many developed countries by 2035 or even 2030. Some of them actually want Tesla to stop selling cars to the public in favor of stocking them for the robotaxi fleet which they are absolutely sure will be widely deployed in a matter of a few years.
There are two types of people: those who divide people into groups and those that don't.
Seriously though: there are many more Tesla fans, there are also those that hope the company succeeds but that wished that that self driving feature had been postponed until it actually worked because in the longer term this is bad for the brand and bad for electrics as a whole.
Don't get me wrong - I too am a Tesla fan, and my next car will most likely be one too. And disclaimer: I also own stock.
But yeah, I wish both Elon and the rabid FSD evangelists would quiet down and stop hyping FSD and robotaxi. I agree that hyping it right here and now today is going to hurt the brand more than help.
The bad attention is already happening. You hear about any other company making incremental advances in autonomous vehicle tech, and it's generally met positively. News about greater, more significant, advances from Tesla, are met with second guessing, doubts, and worries about how many people will get hurt.
> These people genuinely believe we'll have fully road legal autonomous cars (as in, requiring zero human input) by 2025 and that human driven cars will be outright banned by 2035 or even 2030.
I'm not a Tesla fan, but I think that's going to happen eventually. Probably much closer to 2100 though.
Unless we've discovered how to teleport from place to place, I think people in 2100 will prefer private cars to public transport, as they have done ever since the car was invented.
Do they, for all types of trips? Personally, I much prefer trains for every trip over two hours.
Being able to stretch my legs, get coffee and food, and comfortably work are worth it.
Cars are very nice for when there is no (direct) train connection available to where I want to go, as well as for shorter trips, but they don‘t scale well at all in terms of density of traffic as well as efficiency.
Distance is definitely a factor, as is frequency. I'd prefer public transportation systems (trains, buses, planes, etc.) if it's a longer and occasional trip.
For short, regular, frequent travel, i.e. a commute? Give me a personal car anyday.
But my opinion is jaded from the awful urban public transportation systems we have in the US. Give me something like what Tokyo, Seoul, etc. have, and I might prefer public transit for commuting too.
Something in this story doesn’t add up. There is no implementation of AutoPilot on Tesla cars that doesn’t require intervention by the driver every 15 seconds. Perhaps the driver undid their seat belt and reached behind to get something and was then thrown from his seat elsewhere?
> The company’s cars only check that attention with a sensor that measures torque in the steering wheel, though, leaving room for misuse
So they could have held the steering wheel from the passanger seat.
> Tesla CEO Elon Musk has rejected calls from Tesla engineers to add better safety monitoring when a vehicle is in Autopilot, such as eye-tracking cameras or additional sensors on the steering wheel, saying the tech is “ineffective.”
In my country there was recently an event where a Tesla on Autopilot crashed out with the driver fast asleep behind the wheel. I'd say regulation to make it mandatory to install fool proof safety tech ensuring the driver is actively observing the traffic is needed, and fast. And this tech is trivial compared to even semi-autonomous driving, no matter what Musk is claiming.
> So they could have held the steering wheel from the passanger seat.
We don’t have the diagnostic information that indicates AP was engaged. So, which is more likely: driver error and no seatbelt, or driver sitting in the passenger seat? I contend the latter is extremely unlikely, since there would be basically no benefit to doing this given the requirements of AP currently.
It’s possible the driver was pulling a stunt. In which case, the deaths are attributable to deliberate misuse, no different than “ghost riding the whip”
I live in this area, which is highly wooded and full of curvy roads. It would be a cinch to crash into a tree here in 2 or 3 seconds. It wouldn't take 15.
> Authorities tried to contact Tesla for advice on putting out the fire; it’s not clear whether they received any response.
This will become a massive issue in the years to come unless we find a way not only to drastically reduce the number of crashes but also massively improve reliability.
High voltage battery fires are probably the worst kind of fire a regular emergency responder would have to deal with, between the hard to put out fire and the risk of electric shock. It also causes some massive damage to the surroundings (the actual road surface, surrounding cars, or any garage unfortunate to house the car at that time).
Today very few emergency responders are even trained to properly deal with such a fire, and it's a topic really lagging behind everywhere compared to the rate EVs are popping up on the streets.
I'm not really seeing a scenario where an out-of-control car fire has worse results in a garage for gasoline vs. lithium ion.
In both cases it's an absolutely massive thermal conflagration, with no hope of putting it out using anything a homeowner has on hand, and it will proceed so rapidly that the house is going to be totaled by the time the fire department shows up.
I have to figure this is just bias toward the familiar. I will grant you that I don't refill an ICE car inside my own garage, so maybe charging genuinely makes the electric more dangerous. But it probably doesn't do so in fact, I would guess in both cases the biggest risk is something like leaving rags soaked in linseed oil and getting spontaneous combustion.
I haven't heard of any ICE engines spontaneously combusting. I have heard of many lithium batteries, primarily in phones, combusting. We're better at keeping gasoline safe than charged electrical energy.
So crashes are a relatively rare cause. They also break it down by the area the fire started:
- 63% engine area, running gear, or wheel area
- 11% passenger/operator area
- 5% cargo/trunk
- 3% exterior
- 2% fuel tank or line
Interpolating between those numbers, you might guess that between 20% and 40% of fires could be described as "engine spontaneously combusting." That would be 45,000 - 90,000 per year in the US.
So despite you never having heard of it, it does happen.
Thanks for finding that data. That's interesting. I'm amazed that that happens, because absent people bringing it up when talking about Tesla I've never really heard that before.
Most interesting is that the first part of an ICE to catch on fire is most frequently the electrical wiring. And even if it is a flammable liquid (the second most likely cause), it's only a 42% chance that liquid was gasoline!
FWIW, a friend's Aston Martin V8 Vantage spontaneously combusted in front of his house a few years ago. Car was a total loss and took the insurance and manufacturer months to sort out who was liable for damages (fortunately, just replacement of the car - no other cars were parked nearby, and friend kept it in the street).
My friends house burned down due to a car fire inside his garage. The engine didn't spontaneously combust (any more than the Tesla power-ask in the article), but having a car in a garage does pose some risk.
I had a friend whose block heater shorted out while the car was in his garage. He was alerted by a smoke detector, went out in his PJ's, opened the garage door, and pushed the car outside, whereupon it burst into a pillar of flame.
He noticed significant tingling in his feet while pushing the car out. This was in the days before GFCIs. He's lucky he wasn't electrocuted.
You've never heard of any ICE car spontaneously combusting? You must not follow any car recalls, tons of cars have been recalled in the past due to fire risks.
ICE vehicles can have strange failure modes leaking flammable fluids places where they should go where its really hot. Sometimes this gets mixed with a spark from a bad electrical connector, sometimes it drips on something hot.
This is not common by any stretch. I have never seen a residential home with automatic sprinklers, only commercial real estate and apartments. The cost is prohibitive, and in many climates (where freezing is a norm) would be useless in garages.
Massachusetts only requires them in townhomes and houses over 14K square feet. In other words mansions. NY only requires them in three story buildings, otherwise it's up to the buyer. So these are nonsense arguments. Considering how many existing houses are exempt from all of this, I would estimate that less than 10% of the homes in CA have them, and less than 2% in these other four states.
The cost is absolutely not prohibitive, it's about $1-2/sq ft in a new home or $5-6/sq ft if you're retrofitting an old home[1]. For a new 2000 sq ft house that would be around $4000 dollars. Probably <1% of the overall house value given recent housing prices.
This would depend on house prices. Where I live, you can buy a 2000 sq ft house for $300K or less. That's 1.3% increase in price to add sprinklers, and I would wager that 99% of homeowners would prefer not to spend $4K on this.
I don't believe EV cars are anymore likely to catch fire than gasoline cars. Either way, if a car catches fire in your garage you are in for a bad time.
It's definitely good to spread the awareness that many fire extinguishers are not suitable to put out lithium fires, though.
> fire extinguishers are not suitable to put out lithium fires
Only Class D fire extinguishers can put out lithium metal fires. But lithium-ion batteries do not contain lithium metal. Lithium metal batteries do so, but no EV uses lithium metal batteries because they're too dangerous. Class B fire extinguishers work just fine on lithium-ion battery fires. The difficulty with lithium-ion EV fires is that they tend to re-light, but water is still the tool of choice for putting them out.
I have literally never heard of a Tesla bursting into flames while parked in a garage. Have you?
I mean that’s fine if this is the hill you want to die on, but right now I think it’s just as likely your gas car fireball explodes like a Hollywood movie while parked in your garage.
Many promising alternatives to lithium ion batteries are being experimented with now, so saying you don't ever want an EV parked inside your garage based on problems with lithium ion batteries may not be entirely reasonable.
I interpreted it as "I would never want an EV with the current tech in my garage". Considering he probably keeps his ICE car with a 12volt lead battery in his garage.
Everybody else keeps trying to tell you ICE cars store more energy, or could spontaneously combust just as easily, and they're not wrong.
But when I'm filling up my car with a jerry can, I'm literally holding it. I know to have some sense of caution, and I can see spills. I do not leave it to slowly trickle fill overnight, like one would with an EV; not only am I not there in that scenario, but odds are I'm not even awake.
The odds are minuscule, and you're more likely to die in many other ways. But the fix is so easy - assuming it's not going to hit -30, just keep it outside. And the risk (probability multiplied by chances for it to happen) is going to get so great when everyone has an EV, that I can at least see your point.
I don't agree, and were I able to afford a house with a garage and a Tesla to park in it, I probably would. Doubly so as it hits -50 with wind chill here. But to dismiss your concerns outright doesn't feel quite right to me.
Well, you're not going to park a Tesla outside because you need to charge it overnight. And many people have to park their ICE cars in a garage not because it gets too cold, but because they live in a place (like San Francisco) where cars out on the street will all get broken into, vandalized, or stripped.
Probably not a major concern in your garage. These battery packs are built with fairly well-isolated cells that even if one fails should not result in a domino effect.
The reason you see issues in cases like this is because the wreck totally decimated that isolation with mechanical force and so you get runaway effects.
Tesla's and other electric cars have been around for a decade now. It's completely reasonable to expect fire departments to have trained their staff to deal with EV crashes.
You can train all you want but unless you have a burning EV right in front of you, all training is only theoretical. Practice makes perfect and no fire department will set a Li-Ion car battery on fire just to demonstrate what happens.
This is really not good safety culture. I'm sure it's not the same experience when a pilot practices emergency procedures in a simulator vs in a real emergency, but it's still helpful.
Your point is maybe that the simulation is bad. But I think it can be helpful nonetheless. Even if the simulation is "you have a battery fire in front of you. Tell me what you would do?"
> This is really not good safety culture. I'm sure it's not the same experience when a pilot practices emergency procedures in a simulator vs in a real emergency, but it's still helpful.
If this is really a priority, then make it a priority. Start paying firefighters like cops are paid, and fund the fire department like the police department is funded.
In many places, fire departments are entirely voluntary while police departments are funded to the tune of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
In several places I've lived, the only way fire departments would get that training is if someone donated a bunch of EV batteries to be destroyed by them.
EVs have represented a relatively small fleet of new and mostly high end cars so far. Which means that they haven't posed much of a problem so far. The budgets for most fire departments are pretty limited and they focus on priorities. EVs are hardly a priority for most of them even now as the fleet is growing exponentially and perhaps more critically, it's aging thus increasing the risk of fires.
I think it certainly raises questions about the extent to which it's reasonable for public utilities to pick up the slack for negative externalities caused by profitable companies. Of course it's a hard thing to price because of course fossil-fuel vehicles have a laundry list of negative externalities of their own.
Does it? This is the same issue it's always been: things catch on fire sometimes, we've decided that the best people to handle this are firemen, paid for by the local government.
But what previous thing is most analogous to batteries on cars? Cellphones and hoverboards are so much tinier. Maybe this isn't the same issue specifically, and some scale of government can require a tax to fund e.g. more education or training.
So batteries on cars is analogous to cars? I mean, could be. Maybe the EV battery is just like a gasoline tank, but something suggests that there are important differences.
I freely admit this is a pedantic point, but it's extraordinarily doubtful that any road car reaches 2000 ignitions per second (the threshold for "thousands").
In a 4-stroke engine each cylinder ignites once every two revolutions, so even a 12-cylinder engine wouldn't reach 2000 ignitions per second until 20,000 RPM.
A more typical case - say, a 6 cylinder engine hitting the redline at 7,000RPM is experiencing 350 ignitions per second - so, hundreds rather than thousands.
I'm confused why something needs to be equivalent to batteries in cars?
Do you know what's not equivalent to an electric car? A fertilizer plant catching on fire. And you guessed it, that's also handled by the fire department.
Does it? That sounds like the kind of thing that gets some sort of higher tier involvement. Is there not higher jurisdiction for managing larger fires that require more than the local crew?
Another reminder that we have a hybrid socialist free-market system, without even mentioning Tesla subsidies or how much of the science was publicly funded or "borrowed" from history without payment to the past.
I generally agree, companies should pay for their externalies.
The efficient way to do that is to tax companies and use the tax dollars to fund public services like fire departments. Expecting Tesla to send in their own firefighters when a Tesla catches fire would be ridiculous. Public services are good, and the method for funding them is well established.
If we want to have additional levies for safety regarding lithium batteries, hopefully we are making sure to do the same for oil too...
The problem is the equipment to fight a petrol / diesel fire is already covered by most fire departments. Oil fires are common in commercial and industrial areas. Levying those users of petrochemicals would likely result in a fairly insignificant cost per user, such that the bureaucracy cost to collect would end up costing more. Thus it makes sense to pay for this from general government funds. The same if we extended it to wood and paper.
Large Lithium fires are fairly uncommon right now, they don't behave like most other classes of fires that firefighters are dealing with. Personal device fires are more common, but total heat / damage is less and the fire is frequently able to be controlled outside of confined areas (aircraft).
With a relatively low volume of large lithium battery packs, and the difficulty in containing them, it could make sense for a targeted levy to cover the cost. Lithium car fires are currently dealt with by trying to isolate the burning vehicle and overwhelming the fire with water (removing Oxygen and temp), however this is very inefficient. I have heard of a former fire chief arguing that to deal with the growth of large battery packs will require either massively increasing the number of appliances (fire engines) or defaulting fire appliances to using special foams as opposed to water. The foams will increase the cost to fight ALL fires, as many engines typically have to be ready pre-mixed before dispatch.
It has also been suggested that density limits, and battery packs be designed to include fire suppression and make this mandatory to allow vehicles on the road. This would create massive packaging issues for every EV company, add significant cost while reducing performance. All in all I think we need to consider if we charge the EV / household battery pack companies for this or we all bare it in general taxes for the environmental benefits. I think bearing it out of general funds is completely reasonable, however I wonder if we are going to get safer batteries if we pass on the cost and let the rate go down as the number and severity of fires decrease. The might be some marginal improvements that quickly get implemented in that case.
Would a good solution be to test battery designs in crash tests and tax more flammable designs more? Try and incentivize companies to come up with innovative fire suppression designs
How are 3 out of 3 replies discussing what the fire-department should do from a training and policy perspective and nobody commenting on the science/engineering of dealing with a EV fire.
I think you may be overestimating the resources fire departments have. Many are woefully underfunded as is, particularly the ones that are 100% volunteer. There are probably dozens of things (equipment and training) that departments could spend money on that would benefit the community they serve more than training for ev accidents.
This is the conversation that needs to be had. Re-allocation of city resources towards non-violent, non-militarized civil society groups. Unfortunately, in our soundbite driven world, we got "Defund the police", which kills the conversation dead.
Some opinion article from a social justice warrior doesn't indicate that the vast majority of people who say "defend the police" are not saying "abolish the police." That kind of black and white thinking undermines the conversation.
What really undermines the conversation is twisting the meaning of words, saying what you (supposedly) don’t really mean, and then blaming people for interpreting them correctly.
Again, if you're actively searching for abolitionists, you can find them, but the vast majority of the use of the term, from a count of the first 20 articles on any search engine of "What does defund the police mean," means reduce funding.
And, indeed, your first article actually uses the term exactly as we're using it.
While the author is arguing for abolition, and the first and only time she uses the word "defund" it is to say
> Defunding the police is one step on a broad stairway toward abolition. Cities can reduce the size and scope of police...
The author does not speak for the Black Lives Matter movement, nor for the vast majority of people who use that phrase. The use of "we" in the title is egoising.
A quick search of "what does 'Defund the Police' mean" will find that the vast majority of proponents, and of articles written about them in almost all newspapers and magazines, interpret it as reducing the budget of the police and redirecting that budget into non-violent community aid.
And I agree with him, if you have to add ", and by this phrase I mean a b c d e f" or "please search the Internet and click a good URL (not Breitbart, but also not Mariame Kaba) to see what we mean by this phrase", do you think people wouldn't just think you're an extremist after the snappy phrase and stop listening?
The self-sabotage (and then people like you defending the phrase) is so mind-boggingly dumb. Do you want change, or do you want to alienate people?
But eh, on the topic of alienating people, I've seen enough "online activists" snap at supporting voices that I thought "I wouldn't be surprised if that supporter stopped sympathizing with them.". Then you have supporters turn to quiet "Fuck it, I'll just shut my mouth" or worse, be opponents.
The paid fire and ems people hate the volunteer departments, the fire-only departments turn their nose down at EMS, and the police are good at swooping in and taking over stuff like paramedics.
Volunteer departments are often big political power bases too. In some states, that results in volunteer departments getting lavish firehouses and fancy gear. I live next door to a city firehouse, their “new” pumper is an 8 year old, $800k (new) truck that saw 70-80 calls a month. It’s new owner doubled the mileage in 90 days.
The dysfunction and stupidity is only bounded by the populace's tolerance for it and money to indulge in it.
Poor cities and rural counties might have underfunded services but they don't generally have the dysfunction you're describing because the money to support the dysfunction simply isn't there.
> I live next door to a city firehouse, their “new” pumper is an 8 year old, $800k (new) truck that saw 70-80 calls a month. It’s new owner doubled the mileage in 90 days.
What does this mean to imply? They bought an old truck, gently used, and then used it a lot more...
Is the new mileage because they need to use it? Is that bad? Is 800k a lot for a fire truck?
I believe they're implying that a volunteer department had a very high end truck and didn't really use it much, and it was later inherited by a non-volunteer department.
One of the things that has never failed to amaze me is why are police and fire departments locally run in the US vs. run by the state with federal checks and balances. It's almost a given that smaller places either cannot afford the right training and equipment OR they'll turn corrupt with the monopoly on violence such services give.
Its basically the _only_ way to put them out. I doubt the average firetruck will have tools to put out a recently started EV fire for a couple of decades.
You know beaches have been know to get stolen and sand is a finite resource on the shore? Having a dump truck with sand waiting at each firestation doesnt seem like a solution.
I’m pretty sure they were being sarcastic. There is no practical way to get close to a fiery auto crash and attach a bunch of fans to a currently on fire battery.
I mentioned this elsewhere, but our fire engine is only 2000 gallons, the tender is 3000. That means it needs an entire tender's worth of water for the battery alone.
A tesla car fire on a highway or rural area will immediately require far more apparatus support than normal.
Anecdotally from a good friend of mine who's a fire chief at a local station, when they finally extinguish electric vehicle fires they have to park the burned car at least 50 metres away from other vehicles in their holding yards, because of the risk of re-ignition. They often put out an EV fire and then have the thing catch on fire again days later.
There's a public set of first responder guides with detailed diagrams for every make and model available. While I'm not sure they have a hotline, Tesla has always tried very hard to provide accurate information how to douse flames, which cables to cut to render the HV system disabled, and how to take care to ensure the car doesn't reignite. See: https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders (e.g., a specific guide: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Mod...)
Interesting information! "...can take approximately 3,000 gallons (11,356 liters) of water, applied directly
to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire"
11 cubic meters seems like a fairly small amount of water for a car fire. That's less than the capacity of a typical water truck.
What, "applied directly to the battery," means raises questions in my mind. Is this a calculation based on the exothermic potential of the entire battery pack?
As someone who has actually put out numerous car fires I would say that this estimate wildly depends on the time at which the fire occurs for ICE engines. These days most ICE based cars are pretty easy to deal with and if you arrive early enough to the scene you may even be able to put the fire out with as little as 1 11L Compressed Air Foam Backpack. In fact good car models can keep the spread of the fire contained to just the bonnet for quite a long time. I suspect with electric cars the challenge is that the flammable material is directly beneath the passengers and adding water may actually make the situation worse initially. I highly do8ubt a single fire engine will be able to carry enough water to combat the fire. At least electric cars are better than CNG cars which are a one way ticket to permanent retirement for firefighters.
Dumb question ... but do "inflatable swimmingpools" exist for firefighters? Something that you can roll up compactly but unrolls around e.g. a car and forms a more or less watertight seal so you can literally drown the battery in water?
An inflatable swimming pool relies on the watertight bottom to hold shape. Without a sealed bottom you're building a flood barrier. You need something that both molds to the shape of the surface, and is heavy enough to provide the downward force to prevent water from going under it. Inflatable flood barriers exist and are filled with water.
I guess you wouldn't really need it to be extremelly watertight, just tight enough that the hose puts more water into it. Seems like it would pay for itself with 30k gallons needed
That is more than an entire fire engine's water capacity for the battery alone. This means any tesla car fires on a highway or other places away from available hydrants will need a tender or multiple engines.
What is it with US tech companies and refusing to provide basic information like this? How does that even benefit them?!? With GPUs and radios there's the nebulous "it helps protect trade secrets" bullshit but I can't imagine how refusing to tell a firefighter how to extinguish your burning crap does that.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 341 ms ] thread“Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told KPRC 2 that the investigation showed “no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla when the accident happened. There was a person in the passenger seat of the front of the car and in the rear passenger seat of the car.”
> Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water over four hours to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.
Here's what FEMA has to say (https://www.usfa.fema.gov/training/coffee_break/061819.html)
Secure a large, continuous and sustainable water supply — one or more fire hydrants or multiple water tenders. Use a large volume of water such as master stream, 2 1/2-inch or multiple 1 3/4-inch fire lines to suppress and cool the fire and the battery.
The fire department plays from a different rule book.
https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders
Lithium-ion is different than lithium…
(my other comment is a question because I haven't seen any information about what procedures they did follow)
1. firefighters should know this already
2. if they didn't they could have googled it like you just did instead of having to wait around to get in touch with someone from Tesla
Water is used on electric car fires, because you need to cool the thing down and water is the best for that.
And class D: https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/safety_concerns_...
Looks like B for batteries and D for lithium metal
eta: Even hot water still has a high latent heat of vaporization.
https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders
> USE WATER TO FIGHT A HIGH VOLTAGE BATTERY FIRE. If the battery catches fire, is exposed to high heat, or is generating heat or gases, use large amounts of water to cool the battery. It can take approximately 3,000 gallons (11,356 liters) of water, applied directly to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire; always establish or request an additional water supply. If water is not immediately available, use dry chemicals, CO2, foam, or another typical fire-extinguishing agent to fight the fire until water is available.
> Battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish. Consider allowing the battery to burn while protecting exposures.
In March: https://efahrer.chip.de/news/warum-die-feuerwehr-diesen-bmw-...
Recommendation to firefighters (in German): https://publikationen.dguv.de/widgets/pdf/download/article/3...
This whole "we couldn't put out the fire" nonsense is click bait. Battery fires burn longer, and that's important to know and requires different techniques to manage. But objectively they are safer than gas fires. Period. There is no serious debate on that point.
Going full-on didactic on you: Vehicles have huge energy requirements to move them around. To meet those requirement they need to store energy on-board in some manner. This creates known failure modes where damage to the vehicle releases that energy in an uncontrolled way. That's bad. But it's completely unavoidable given the constraints of the system.
You seem to want Tesla to do the impossible and invent batteries that don't burn. Which seems ridiculous, given e.g. Ford's nearly-century-long failure to invent gasoline that doesn't burn.
The question you should be asking is "Are battery fires safer than gasoline fires?". And... duh. Yes, they are. And it's not even close.
Just as the environmental externalities of fossil fuels need to be internalized, so do the public safety externalities of the kinds of batteries in use, here. If its going to be a “price of doing business”, the right parties ought to pay the price.
Then, whether or not it is sensible to mitigate in manufacturing will be handled by the properly-aligned incentives.
How is that a bad thing? What are you asking for battery or car manufacturers to do that they aren't already doing simply by replacing existing more-dangerous technology?
I'm simply arguing from first principles: car batteries store less energy than fuel tanks and release that energy slower and over a longer period of time in a fire. Ergo, they are safer for pretty obvious reasons.
If gasoline is spilled, foam works well to extinguish it and keep it from igniting.
Once a gasoline fire is out and cool, it is going to stay that way,
Lithium-ion battery fires are self-sustaining thermal runaways. You cannot put out such a battery fire by smothering it; it does not need oxygen from the air. All you can do is try to keep it cool by running water on it.
Even after such a fire seems cool, it can reignite unexpectedly.
The actual gross volume of energy is not necessarily what makes fighting a fire dangerous or not; it's the unpredictability. Firefighters may be more worried about compressed gas-strut explosions (from hatches, hoods etc) than they are about the gas tank exploding.
I don't know if they could have done more with their batteries to prevent damage from causing thermal runaway. Maybe they could isolate modules from each other better, or use the built-in liquid cooling system in clever ways. (Maybe use the coolant to boil a reservoir of water, so all the excess heat gets used to make steam?) Maybe add heat shielding between the battery and the rest of the car. Maybe design the battery to detach from the car if it gets too hot.
At any rate, I don't think cars can be made to be perfectly safe, and a modern Tesla is reasonable, especially compared to a gas-powered car. However, the possibility always remains of improving upon Tesla's current design along every desirable vehicle attribute, including safety.
The people will pay for it because it's necessary and times have changed.
[1]https://www.npr.org/2018/10/05/654670146/its-been-25-years-s...
I understand why they're not raising it, though.
Water 1c change is 4184 J/kg (1 kcal)
Water to steam 2260 kJ/kg.
So 25c cooler is 25 * 4.184 kJ extra, which is:
25 * 4184 / (2260k + 75 * 4184) = 104600 / 2573800 => 4% more energy than 25c to steam.
And then you need a refrigerator to cool tons of water, instead of just carrying more water.
First of all, there are actually parts of the car that are on fire (plastics, fabrics, etc.) and may spread fire to the surrounding environment. You need to extinguish those.
Secondly, the battery system is not "on fire" in the classical sense. It's undergoing a self-sustaining thermal runaway. You pour as much water as you can on it to remove heat and break the chain reaction.
...For long enough to remove the immediate danger of the fire to the surrounding people. Such a damaged fully charged battery will probably undergo thermal runaway and reignite repeatedly as soon as it stops being cooled. The best bet is to just keep the fire under control and not let it expand while it burns itself out.
We're talking about $50 worth of water. Negligible compared to the overall costs.
That assumes household consumption. It could be as high $420 if the highest marginal rate applies.
Still fairly inconsequential overall.
According to Tesla's information, battery fires can be extinguished by using a lot of water. So, it is possible to do with an ordinary fire truck (and self-contained breathing apparatuses so firefighters can get near a burning car without breathing the fumes), but it might actually be a rare case where putting the fire out is consequential to the outcome for the occupants: I'd imagine in most cases they either got out in time or it was already too late by the time putting the fire out is a plausible option. Maybe I'm wrong about that, though.
My comment is more addressed to people such as myself whose natural inclination is to regard a burning car as a bad situation that the fire department aught to be able to quickly remedy, and to suggest that most of the time putting out the fire may be a low priority.
I could imagine the fire department dousing a car if it was already too hot to get people out of safely, but I'm not a fire fighter and I don't know what they'd normally do in that situation.
This one sounds like an ID10T error.
To Tesla’s credit, they have reportedly recently started using gaze tracking on cars equipped with a passenger-facing cam, which is much harder to circumvent. If you look at literally every other public sale automaker doing self driving, they use gaze tracking.
It's like pulling high negative G in a Cessna 172 and then blaming the manufacturer when the wings fall off.
The driver deliberately set out to sabotage mechanisms which are there to protect you.
A more apt comparison would be if the pilot disabled the stall warning on the aircraft. Then attempted to do low flying maneuvers at the threshold of the aircraft's stall speed.
If someone deliberately disables safety features, they hold the bag.
but to honest, when left to its own devices the car drove at high speed into a tree. Its not a subtle obstacle. If the car can't figure out what is going on in this senario, thats not a good look.
Diving autonomously is hard, but not running into static obstacles seems one of the more basic things.
Was it "left to its own devices" though?
You can't put the car in drive from the back seat.
Autosteer is limited to 5MPH over the speed limit unless you are on a divided highway.
The car seems to have accelerated faster than it normally accelerates under autopilot.
Something doesn't add up here.
The big thing I have to wonder about is how on earth did they get the car going so fast on residential streets? Autopilot is hard-coded to limit you to 5MPH over the speed limit. I know you can push the gas down with a brick or something stupid like that, but doing that disables the car's ability to slow down or stop automatically which is a pretty fundamental part of what Autopilot does and how it operates.
So many people look at this as if the driver pushed a simple bypass button to get around a safety feature, but getting a Tesla going fast enough to wrap itself around a tree on a residential street is not simple at all.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/QCKJ-Steering-Autopilot-Assisted-Auxi...
and then purposely burned to death to really sell the story? that's dedication!
Full Self Driving’s marketing has been criminal. Tesla is trying to solve self driving without lidar, which it’s competitors are using. Waymo is way ahead of Tesla, but they create the illusion of being ahead by releasing features that are clearly extremely dangerous.
This video is a little over the top but highlights the abuses of FSD marketing better than anything else I’ve seen: https://twitter.com/FinanceLancelot/status/13752898727562731...
Frankly I agree with other posters here that the most likely scenario is that there was a human driver in the seemingly-undamaged drivers' seat who fled the scene. Absent that, you'd have to play games with launch mode or some kind of device to press the accellerator. You just can't do this with autopilot as I see it.
“Herman said authorities believe no one else was in the car and that it burst into flames immediately. He said it he believes it wasn’t being driven by a human. Harris County Constable Precinct 4 deputies said the vehicle was traveling at a high speed when it failed to negotiate a cul-de-sac turn, ran off the road and hit the tree.”
To be glib: if you could get the car to drive itself at 60mph+ on a residential street, that shit would be all over youtube.
Do they hold contests for the most complicated roof building, in this area?
So, yes, sort of.
https://mcmansionhell.com/
Trying to imagine how it was going fast enough to cause this, well after a right turn, with nobody in the driver's seat...isn't easy. Occam's razor is hard to apply, because I don't see a simple explanation.
Occam's razor cuts out unlikely explanations. It doesn't help you find a likely explanation, but at least it helps you avoid wasting time in considering unlikely ones.
Also, the modern interpretation of Occam's Razor, that "the simplest explanation is usually the right one" (see wikipedia) doesn't mean that the most likely explanation should be simple. For example, it can equivalently be restated as "the least complex explanation is usually the right one", which clarifies that the most likely explanation need not be simple, just less complex than others.
The problem is that I haven't seen any explanation for how else the car got up to that speed. Without a actual competing explanation, you can't use occam's razor at to rule out unlikely explanations.
What where the actions of the two people in the car that caused the crash? That we can't know yet because we don't have enough information. So in that case, Billy Occam would say "sit tight and wait until you know more".
Otherwise you are mis-applying occam's razor. Occam's razor isn't a rule of logic, it is a heuristic to help you navigate complicated epistemic situations.
Is that what you mean?
There are plenty of other epistemic tools to evaluate the likihood of various incomplete explanations with different levels of explanatory power.
Edit: Occam's Razor is like a tie breaker after you have brought out all your other epistemic tools and failed to break the tie. You are nowhere near that point.
Is it? The Razor says "entities should not be multiplied without necessity" (see wikipedia). Assuming a third person is "multiplying entities without necessity". Any explanation that assumes a third person is "multiplying entities without necessity". So it should be cut by the Razor, meaning we don't need to consider it. It doesn't matter if there is no better explanation yet. Any explanation that doesn't assume a third person in the car will always be better than any explanation that assumes a third person in the car. So the Razor can indeed help us distinguish between likely explanations even when we haven't yet formulated those explanations.
Also, I'm curious- do you really think that if we don't have a good explanation then we're free to imagine anything we want? That's an obvious error of reasoning that you would have tried to avoid if you were aware of it, yet it really seems to me that this is what you're doing. Would you like to go over that for a bit?
Edit: I've edited this comment repeatedly to make it less contentious, like HN guidelines advice. I suggest we refrain from discussion of technicalities and avoid veering off into technical language, otherwise we'll just make this conversation even more tedious than it already is.
If you would like a more detailed understanding of why the Razor is limited to this use, you'll have to out more effort into learning epistemology than perusing wikipedia. It is an interesting topic and worth your time and attention.
The sort version is that this is the only way to use the razor that increases the reliability of your epistemic process.
You suggest I lack a detailed understanding of why the Razor is limited to a particular use. I pointed to wikipedia because it's a resource that is easy to access. According to wikipedia, then, the Razor says:
"Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".
Do you disagree that this is the Razor?
You do lack an understanding of Occam's Razor and I encourage you to go learn more about it. It simply cannot be used to rule out explanations like you are saying. It only provides a heuristic preference between explanations that make identical predictions.
Occam's Razor is an epistemic guideline that was originally formulated in the terms you specify, it is however a concept that has been widely discussed and refined beyond that original formulation.
If you aren't interested in going past reading on wikipedia, the article there does touch on the Razor's limitations even if it doesn't delve deeply into the reasoning behind them.
Edit: You're sort of glossing over that "nobody in the driver's seat" is unusual by itself. All explanations I can think of for how this happened are unlikely.
That means you can't think of an explanation for it, not that there isn't one.
Again as I said in other comments, if you find yourself thinking "I can't think of a better explanation", that's a sign you need to sit down and think of a better explanation.
That's the whole point of Occam's Razor: "simpler" (or any other adjective we might use there) requires a comparison.
Clearly, assuming a third person was in the car is "multiplying entities without necessity". Note also that the original formulation of the Razor makes no mention of hypotheses, competing or otherwise, or of any requirement for comparisons.
Even going by the more modern interpetation of (stated informally) "prefer the simplest hypothesis", a comparison can be made "on the fly": any hypothesis that needs a third person in the car is less simple than a hypothesis that doesn't need a third person in the car. So we can prune away the entire branch of the hypothesis search tree that begins with "suppose there was a third person in the car" without wasting any time considering those hypotheses even if we don't yet have any competing hypotheses.
And, btw, we sure do: there were two people in the car and they caused the crash. That's a competing hypothesis. I don't know why people keep saying "there's no competing hypothesis". That you don't like that hypothesis makes no difference.
You'll notice also that the more modern interpretation ends up agreeing with the original: any hypothesis that needs a third person in the car is "multiplying entities without necessity" (the entities being the people in the car), whereas any hypothesis that doesn't need a third person is leaving the number of entities (at least people in the car) well enough alone.
_____________
[1] No, please, really do see wikipedia. I think it will help clarify much confusion about what the Razor is. For instance, there are five or six different formulations of the Razor, each with its own, multiple, interpretations. But I can't see any one that "requires a comparison". That sounds to me more like a Calvinball rule. If you want to say I'm "using it wrong", then start by clarifying which formulation and what interpetation of it you are using, as I have done throughout this thread.
> Note also that the original formulation of the Razor makes no mention of hypotheses, competing or otherwise, or of any requirement for comparisons.
Well, the Wikipedia article states, in the very first line:
> ...or more simply, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.
and further down it defines what a "razor" even is:
> The term razor refers to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar conclusions.
So both of these do seem to directly relate to comparisons. It's not simply a misunderstanding of the term to say that Occam's Razor involves comparisons of competing hypotheses.
> any hypothesis that needs a third person in the car is less simple than a hypothesis that doesn't need a third person in the car.
The trouble is you need to define what you mean by "entities." Obviously this does not need to literally refer to bodies. It means facets and complications of the hypothesis.
So we need to decide which hypothesis requires more entities: one that supposes the possibility of a third person, or one that supposes the possibility of people tricking an autopilot to do what no one believes it ought to be able to do.
The point is, we need something beyond what we have been told. If it were simply "drunk man crashes into tree," we need no further explanations, no further entities. That story explains itself. But if the initial story isn't by itself sufficient -- "autopilot drove itself at high speed in a narrow cul-de-sac with no one in the driver's seat, against all programing and prior experience of Tesla cars" -- then we must hypothesize additional entities. Wonky programming. Hacked system. 160 lb weight on the driver's seat and fake hands on the steering wheel. Third person.
I don't know that the third person hypothesis is, in fact, simpler. But I don't think you can say that Occam's Razor suggests that that should not be a rational hypothesis. I don't know how many additional entities would be required to get a Tesla to do what was suggested in the article.
>> The trouble is you need to define what you mean by "entities."
I think this is splitting hairs. A person in the car is clearly an "entity". Assuming a third person in the car is "multiplying entities".
>> Wonky programming. Hacked system. 160 lb weight on the driver's seat and fake hands on the steering wheel. Third person.
... or a 160 lb bag of stones. Or three giant rabbits. Or a pair of labradors. Or... etc.
We really don't need to assume any of this. The two people in the car and sufficed to have caused an accident. Assuming more people, or anything else, is multiplying entities without necessity.
Stop with the condescension. The wikipedia article literally defines "razor" as "distinguishing between two hypotheses." If you disagree with that, edit the article, but don't tell me to read the article ("No, please, really do") and then dispute it.
> The two people in the car and sufficed to have caused an accident.
You keep saying that. I don't know it's true. Do you know it's true?
Like others have said said, this would go against every prior experience with Teslas, and our understanding of how the system works. It would be the first Tesla, ever, to have gotten into an accident on a narrow residential road with no one in the driver's seat.
You need something else in the explanation, even just "the system actually works in some other way." That is also multiplying entities. That was my point, which you missed.
You can't simply state, ipso facto, that the description given "sufficed to have caused an accident," when numerous people have disagreed with that.
Besides which, as I said before, there do exist many hypotheses that we could be making and the Razor is useful in prunning many of them away before we have to waste our time formulating them and exploring them in detail. For example, all the hypotheses that start with "Suppose there was a third person in the car" need not be considered because "there was a third person in the car" is "multiplying entities without necessity", and so hypotheses that make such an assumption are less likely to be true than hypotheses that do not.
The misunderstanding I'm pointing out and that I advised you to read wikipedia to clear up, is that you seem to understand the Razor as requiring at least two competing hypotheses to be fully formed to the point that they could be written down, perhaps even in a formal language. There is no such requirement. That's your Calvinball rule, made up on the spot and for the sole purpose of winning the internet argument. Or, perhaps, only for the purpose of forcing me to waste my time by considering all the unnecessary hypotheses that start with "suppose there was a third person in the car".
And, again, from what everyone understands of how cars and Teslas work, the initial description doesn't have enough elements to be a complete story.
This is honestly what this whole conversation sounds like to me: Suppose we find a baby stuck high up in a tree.
Me: "How do you suppose it got there?
You: "No idea. All I know is that there's a baby in a tree. The baby got there."
"Perhaps someone put him there?"
"Occam's Razor states you shouldn't multiply entities unnecessarily. Another person would be another entity."
"Ok... I mean, maybe there was a flood and-"
"And maybe a flying pig put him there! What don't you get about Occam's Razor???"
"So how do you think he got there?"
"I have no idea."
"Ok... So, I think that someone putting him there is the most likely -"
"How do you not understand that Occam's Razor doesn't require comparisons!"
"WTF?"
At this point, I don't give a damn about what Mr Occam said. This nitpicking over the original formulation is completely irrelevant. All I've been trying to think from the beginning is what the most likely explanation is.
A third person may well NOT be the most likely, or simplest explanation, but since you haven't provided one this conversation has been pretty useless.
Occam's Razor says you shouldn't multiply entities unnecessarily. That last word, "unnecessarily," I realize in retrospect, is the one I've been focussing on this entire time, while you've been talking about "entities."
If the initial story isn't sufficient -- and the fact that this would be the first Tesla ever to drive at high speed in a narrow cul-de-sac with no one in the driver's seat suggests it isn't -- them we MUST multiply entities. Bugs, trickery, GPS malfunction, whatever. We can then argue about which entities are reasonable and which aren't, if we like, but that's separate from the fact that we need to multiply them.
(And, indeed, it is this word "unnecessarily" in the original formulation that does require simplER hypotheses, which is why that wikipedia article that you told me to read all the way through is chock-full of reference to "simpler" or "competing hypotheses." Without another explanation, you have no idea if the additional entities are necessary or not. All explanations require at least one "entity," except perhaps the Big Bang. The particulars of the case determine how many entities are necessary and sufficient.)
There are many competing hypotheses to choose from in this case. They include all the hypotheses that assume there was a third person in the car; and all the hypotheses that do not assume there was a third person in the car. Any hypothesis that does not assume there was a third person in the car is "simplER" than any hypothesis that assumes there was a third person in the car. Assuming there was a third person in the car is to multiply entities beyond necessity, i.e. as you say "unnecessarily".
You can check my comments in this thread to verify that I've said this many times. The comments that wonder about what "entity" means are yours, not mine.
Nonsense.
A hypothesis that there was a third person in the car is simpler than a hypothesis that there were only two people in the car and an advanced animatronic ice sculpture in the driver's seat which melted after the crash. (I remember my minute-mystery solutions.)
A hypothesis that there was a third person in the car is simpler than a hypothesis that there was a rare combination of a bug in the software, a GPS malfunction, a solar flare, and a paint spill that looked like a painted lane marker.
There are an infinite number of hypotheses that don't contain a third person that are more complex than the hypothesis that there was a third person.
> You say that there needs to be a comparison between at least two hypotheses and then the Razor will help us choose one if it's simpler than the other.
If you think that was my point, you didn't read my comment above at all. That was not my point. It was that, IF the known facts of a story aren't sufficient cause to result in its conclusion, then there is required to be at least one more cause than has been explained.
Yes! You're right, and I'm very excited now because you seem to understand how it works.
Note that all those hypotheses that you bring up also "multiply entities beyond necessity" - so they are "more complex" than any hypotheses that don't, and we don't need to examine them, we can just prune them out without even having to state them.
So to correct what I've been saying above that was indeed too general, "any hypothesis that does not assume there was something else in the car is simpler than any hypothesis that assumes there was something else in the car" ("something else" meaning "something besides what was actually found in the car"). Please correct me again if you think I'm still wrong.
I think we're getting to something we can agree on now, yes?
If the initial known facts of a story aren't sufficient to describe an event (a baby in a tree, a car doing something it never has before) then the actual cause must involve additional entities, whether a person or a solar flare.
This is not the central premise of all your posts. For most of our interaction the central premise of your posts was that I'm misunderstanding the intended use of Occam's Razor. In recent posts you concluded that the reason I misunderstand it is that I don't take into account the "necessity" part of the Razor's original formulation.
Yet, I have constantly said that we don't need to assume that there is a third person in the car because the two people we already know were in the car suffice to explain the crash and that therefore assuming a third person in the car is multiplying entities beyond necessity.
In fact, I keep repeating the "beyond necessity" part like a broken record, so how come you're now insisting that I'm missing that particular point?
I think what you are saying is that you "need" to assume a third person in the car, otherwise you can't explain what happened. Well, that is a "need" in the same way that "I don't have an iPhone, therefore I need to get one" is a "need". It's not so much a "need" as a "want". You can't think of anything better and you want to explain what happenned, so you make up some entity that must be responsible for what happened. So you have an explanation you're happy with and your "need" for an explanation you're happy with is satisfied.
However, that's still "multiplying entities beyond necessity" because you may "need" an explanation, but you don't need a third person in the car to explain the crash.
Do we really need to imagine a third person, who left leaving behind no evidence of his or her existence, to explain this accident?
When this happens to a non-Tesla (and it does happen) the usual assumption is a drunk driver. Why is that so hard to imagine here?
If there was a third person, why not a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth? Or a dozen, or two? It would also be far from the first time that a troupe of clowns fit in a too-small car.
At this point, it's an Occam's Razor question, though different people will argue about which was simplest.
If there had been a third person who fled the scene, though, you would expect any physical evidence to have been left behind after that fire.
Or the autopilot did that by itself. I don't see why we need to assume any human trickery.
But that's not "evidence". That's just an unanswered question.
As I said recently in another comment, if you find yourself at the point where you're thinking "I can't think of a better explanation", that's not the time to say "that must be the answer"; that's the time to think harder until you find a better explanation.
In this case, if you can't find a better explanation than "there must have been a third person that we don't know was there", then it's time to sit down and think harder about how the accident could have really happened.
Because if you start assuming things we have no evidence for, you might as well assume invisible space leprechauns, for all the good it will do.
Look, all I'm saying is that if this was literally any other car, we would all see this evidence and say "Yup, looks like a drunk driver fled the scene of an accident". It would be an obvious conclusion. We wouldn't be scratching our heads saying "Well, gee whiz, maybe there's some other explanation we haven't thought of".
This is not the first time police have found a crashed car with no driver. The only difference this time is that it's a Tesla.
But you are right to suggest that the police are themselves jumping to conclusions. Just because the accident happened in a tesla, doesn't mean that self-driving was somehow involved.
I don't disagree about that. I disagree about the necessity of assuming a third person, when the two present suffice to have caused the accident and when there is nothing to indicate that a third person was involved.
Finally, assuming a third person introduces a new question: who was it?
Do you know?
"The man, ages 59 and 69, had been talking about the features on the car before they left."
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/investigators-looking-explosive-te...
Failures are failures, you can't just assume they don't happen on such a complex system.
KPRC 2 reporter Deven Clarke spoke to one man’s brother-in-law who said he was taking the car out for a spin with his best friend, so there were just two in the vehicle.
It happened entirely within the culdesac, and there were multiple witnesses.
Tesla Autopilot has killed two more people. (The entire rest of the self driving industry combined 1 pedestrian fatality at night).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Even assuming you have a good underlying point, the comment you posted was internet flamebait as well as pointing way off topic. We're trying to avoid that kind of thing here, not just because it's below the desired quality threshold but more importantly because it evokes worse from others. If you think of the value of a comment as the expected value of the subthread it will lead to, this may make more sense.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
>Musk says that autopilot is safer than human driven miles
Is there a breakdown for income with road safety? The best I could find is that poorer countries have higher road deaths / km, but I couldn't find any data on road safety within a country.
Did I read the parent post incorrectly? There was no driver in the seat.
That's the notion of driver that is meant by "driver error". e.g. the person who started the car.
"Currently neither Autopilot nor FSD Capability is an autonomous system, and currently no comprising feature, whether singularly or collectively, is autonomous or makes our vehicles autonomous"[1]
[0] https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot
[1] p30 of https://www.plainsite.org/documents/242a2g/california-dmv-te...
Every sales page related to autopilot has visible warnings regarding driver attention and do not suggest you can sit on the backseat in any form...
There was literally no one in the driver seat.
Autopilot is not an AI but marketed as such, Tesla carries full responsibility for these deaths as well as false and misleading advertising.
Waymo may not be much further away in terms of technology, but at least they don't broadcast irresponsible claims as loud as Tesla does.
Tesla has also had, since 2017, a prominent page on the website that says "The driver is only in the seat for legal purposes. The vehicle doesn't need it." (Ironic, given the circumstances of this accident).
The actual wording:
> The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.
although it looks like they may have yanked that as of today. However, plenty of sources:
https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware...
https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/mth6ti/the_perso...
https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/dtjzm9/the_perso...
> Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval. Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year.
(Hilariously, the "details of which will be released next year" was retained on the page for three years before being dropped.) The current text instead makes it more clear (although not by much) that the actual full-self driving capability of the car doesn't actually exist yet.
While those exact words may not be present in the text, the general whiplash theme of "this car can 100% drive itself!" and "you are totally required to supervise the car at all times, it cannot drive itself" was and is still present.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210405091504/https://www.tesla...
The closest I can find to it is:
"The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat."
I did find what you are referring to, however.
There is a video ( https://vimeo.com/192179726 ) embedded below "Future of Driving" section of the autopilot page. When you hit play the first message presented is:
"The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself"
That video with that statement is still on the autopilot page as of me writing this.
While a subtle nuance, I believe that wording is specific to the video demonstration ie. "what you are watching is completely automated, but if we filmed it without a person in the seat we would get in trouble" instead of "anyone can run Tesla without a driver, we just < wink wink > tell you to be in the driver's seat for legal reasons."
If you engage self driving the car pops up with a giant alert to keep your hands on the wheel and the car doesn’t allow you to use full self driving unless you wiggle the steering wheel every few minutes. There is no mystery as to what is safe.
The driver... wasn’t in the seat. Yes I would say that’s driver error.
Or maybe... lack of driver error.
> The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.
That probably gives some owners the impression that the driver is only a legal formality and climbing into the back seat is a safe stunt to pull.
https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
> Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.
> Tesla’s recommendation is to fight a Tesla Energy Product fire defensively. The fire crew should maintain a safe distance and allow the battery to burn itself out.
Presumably it would have been better to dump a few thousand pounds of sand on it but there are few sand hydrants in USA residential neighborhoods.
Wow. Have there been other electric car fires which are so difficult to put out?
But maybe it depends on how many cells ruptured. Hitting a tree dead center is going to take out a lot of cells I guess.
(In)famously the electric super car that Richard Hammond crashed.
The Rimec One Concept car is all-electric. Hammond's model was left destroyed and took five days to fully extinguish
https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/5092851/richard-hammond-cras...
Doesn't Tesla have some kind of seat or steering wheel sensor to prevent this? Could the owner have defeated the checks somehow?
Per the article this happened on a cul de sac in a residential neighborhood. My question is how on earth they managed to get the vehicle to a fatal speed in that environment (seriously: Google the address, there's almost no runway available). It seems likely they were playing with launch mode and not autopilot, or perhaps manually messing with the accelerator from the passenger seat.
This definitely doesn't smell like an "autopilot" failure, though we'll have to wait for details.
(In fact as others are pointing out based on the location of the damage: it actually seems not unlikely that there was a human driver who fled the scene.)
My passengers get irritated.
>The owner, he said, backed out of the driveway, and then may have hopped in the back seat only to crash a few hundred yards down the road. He said the owner was found in the back seat upright.
My first thought was they were making a YouTube video
(in reference to suspension of disbelief)
Well, that's one way to solve the problem.
Also they need to stop calling this thing autopilot.
I'd say there have been enough death from inattentive drivers and it's about time the legislators and licensing bodies start looking into the issue.
There is a WIP system that uses the selfie camera to monitor the driver but it's still possible to fool (image taped in front or block it with tape etc) so unlikely it can catch all cases of drivers being willfully being dangerous. https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1379928419136339969
> One of the men killed was in the front passenger seat of the car, the other was in the back seat, according to KHOU. Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told KPRC that “no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla at the time of the crash. It’s not yet clear whether the car had its Autopilot driver assist system activated.
IDK if this is even possible in Teslas or if there is a safety mechanism that prevents it.
He doesn't. Why would he, would you?
If there is a gun with an “autoshooter” feature and people think it’s something it’s not, that seems relevant.
HN disagrees you should throw digs at people you don’t know but don’t like for owning tools you are fearful of. I don’t mind. I like when people are upfront about their positions, and in many place that will definitely get you internet virtue points.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/coca-cola-vitaminwater-settl...
serving as an experimental or trial undertaking prior to full-scale operation or use
At the very least, these kind of systems must have fairly strict driver monitoring. Musk says it’s not effective because they don’t try hard enough. The wheel nag and seat weight check currently implemented are too easy to defeat. There are literally products you can buy online to overcome that. I don’t know what’s stopping them from implementing an eye tracking system using cameras the way GM Super Cruise does. It’s a much more effective solution IMO.
Dunno where the sweet spot is. My fear is that anything that isn't 100.00000% safe won't be allowed autonomy, it's easier to make a thing not happen than to make it happen.
I expect that at this point it's all about data acquisition. Keep pushing out new releases as you learn something, hopefully the system needs less and less driver input. Crashes are probably pretty interesting to the engineers.
As far as I am aware, neither Uber, nor Google/Waymo, nor Tesla has released data showing these systems are safer than people.
Blaming the user for a failure of a product is tacky.
This is a "hold my beer and watch this" accident.
One thing in particular sticks out as concerning: the fire service did not know how to deal with the fire.
That’s not something specific to Tesla, Tesla does not make all battery powered cars, the fire service should know how to suppress electrical fires.
This would only be possible if they were using the autopilot feature.
> the fire service did not know how to deal with the fire.
Tesla's advice is "let it burn":
> Tesla’s guidance suggests it’s better to let the fire burn out than continuing to try to put it out.
I thought autopilot had a safety feature to prevent no-driver operation, though there is a “SmartSummon” feature intended for parking lots which does not (but requires continuous press of a fob button.) So, there’s no way this should be possible, absent a major malfunction to even allow self-driving in the reported condition.
I've also heard it uses the seat sensor to do the same. Unless they've found a way to bypass multiple safety features, then the car wasn't in autopilot.
Not sure where endangering other people comes in. If there was someone standing on the shoulder of the highway it would avoid them obviously.
Of course the human who is actually driving can re-apply power at any time.
The car will not pull over unless you leave it in the full-on alarm state for a significant amount of time. The alarm is pretty loud. It’s not a state a driver would leave the car in unless they were incapacitated or doing it intentionally.
Breaking hard for no apparent reason is dangerous, slowing down slowly to a stop is not.
I would guess the fire crews that responded were not equipped with this type of extinguisher.
To put out a Tesla fire, you just use water. Lots and lots of water. Which is exactly what these guys did.
The first are those that believe that EVs are the future and love the cars Tesla is producing.
The other are robotaxi/FSD evangelists and believe Tesla will usher in the age of autonomous cars sooner rather than later. These people genuinely believe we'll have fully road legal autonomous cars (as in, requiring zero human input) by 2025 and that human driven cars will be outright banned in many developed countries by 2035 or even 2030. Some of them actually want Tesla to stop selling cars to the public in favor of stocking them for the robotaxi fleet which they are absolutely sure will be widely deployed in a matter of a few years.
Seriously though: there are many more Tesla fans, there are also those that hope the company succeeds but that wished that that self driving feature had been postponed until it actually worked because in the longer term this is bad for the brand and bad for electrics as a whole.
But yeah, I wish both Elon and the rabid FSD evangelists would quiet down and stop hyping FSD and robotaxi. I agree that hyping it right here and now today is going to hurt the brand more than help.
The bad attention is already happening. You hear about any other company making incremental advances in autonomous vehicle tech, and it's generally met positively. News about greater, more significant, advances from Tesla, are met with second guessing, doubts, and worries about how many people will get hurt.
[1] https://troll.tv/videos/watch/54bc7bd0-8691-4359-aa7d-dc5148...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26810351
I'm not a Tesla fan, but I think that's going to happen eventually. Probably much closer to 2100 though.
Being able to stretch my legs, get coffee and food, and comfortably work are worth it.
Cars are very nice for when there is no (direct) train connection available to where I want to go, as well as for shorter trips, but they don‘t scale well at all in terms of density of traffic as well as efficiency.
For short, regular, frequent travel, i.e. a commute? Give me a personal car anyday.
But my opinion is jaded from the awful urban public transportation systems we have in the US. Give me something like what Tokyo, Seoul, etc. have, and I might prefer public transit for commuting too.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26519357
> The company’s cars only check that attention with a sensor that measures torque in the steering wheel, though, leaving room for misuse
So they could have held the steering wheel from the passanger seat.
> Tesla CEO Elon Musk has rejected calls from Tesla engineers to add better safety monitoring when a vehicle is in Autopilot, such as eye-tracking cameras or additional sensors on the steering wheel, saying the tech is “ineffective.”
In my country there was recently an event where a Tesla on Autopilot crashed out with the driver fast asleep behind the wheel. I'd say regulation to make it mandatory to install fool proof safety tech ensuring the driver is actively observing the traffic is needed, and fast. And this tech is trivial compared to even semi-autonomous driving, no matter what Musk is claiming.
We don’t have the diagnostic information that indicates AP was engaged. So, which is more likely: driver error and no seatbelt, or driver sitting in the passenger seat? I contend the latter is extremely unlikely, since there would be basically no benefit to doing this given the requirements of AP currently.
It’s possible the driver was pulling a stunt. In which case, the deaths are attributable to deliberate misuse, no different than “ghost riding the whip”
This will become a massive issue in the years to come unless we find a way not only to drastically reduce the number of crashes but also massively improve reliability.
High voltage battery fires are probably the worst kind of fire a regular emergency responder would have to deal with, between the hard to put out fire and the risk of electric shock. It also causes some massive damage to the surroundings (the actual road surface, surrounding cars, or any garage unfortunate to house the car at that time).
Today very few emergency responders are even trained to properly deal with such a fire, and it's a topic really lagging behind everywhere compared to the rate EVs are popping up on the streets.
In both cases it's an absolutely massive thermal conflagration, with no hope of putting it out using anything a homeowner has on hand, and it will proceed so rapidly that the house is going to be totaled by the time the fire department shows up.
I have to figure this is just bias toward the familiar. I will grant you that I don't refill an ICE car inside my own garage, so maybe charging genuinely makes the electric more dangerous. But it probably doesn't do so in fact, I would guess in both cases the biggest risk is something like leaving rags soaked in linseed oil and getting spontaneous combustion.
It'd been parked for an hour or two, and the trigger was something electrical in the engine cavity.
- 47% mechanical
- 21% electrical
- 7% intentional
- 6% exposure
- 4% crash, overturn, run-over
- 2% smoking
So crashes are a relatively rare cause. They also break it down by the area the fire started:
- 63% engine area, running gear, or wheel area
- 11% passenger/operator area
- 5% cargo/trunk
- 3% exterior
- 2% fuel tank or line
Interpolating between those numbers, you might guess that between 20% and 40% of fires could be described as "engine spontaneously combusting." That would be 45,000 - 90,000 per year in the US.
So despite you never having heard of it, it does happen.
[0] https://www.nfpa.org/vehiclefires, numbers above from report table 8 & 9
Most interesting is that the first part of an ICE to catch on fire is most frequently the electrical wiring. And even if it is a flammable liquid (the second most likely cause), it's only a 42% chance that liquid was gasoline!
Thanks again, it's interesting reading.
He noticed significant tingling in his feet while pushing the car out. This was in the days before GFCIs. He's lucky he wasn't electrocuted.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35782883/kia-cadenza-spor...
https://www.autosafety.org/ford-ignition-switch-fires/
https://www.mlive.com/news/2021/03/2021-ram-truck-owner-enco...
https://www.industryweek.com/operations/safety/article/21963...
https://www.auto123.com/en/news/gm-recall-risk-of-fire/61360...
ICE vehicles can have strange failure modes leaking flammable fluids places where they should go where its really hot. Sometimes this gets mixed with a spark from a bad electrical connector, sometimes it drips on something hot.
A sprinkler system running on regular water supply pressure is not going to put out a lithium ion fire.
https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/advocacy/docs/top-prioriti...
Partial Mandate: NY, Mass Full Mandate: CA, Maryland
Those are 2 big states in there. By population the four are ~73 million, or a fifth of America.
[1] https://www.bobvila.com/articles/465-residential-sprinkler-s...
I mean, it's also true that water will not put out a gasoline fire, only spread it around and make it worse.
But what you said is true also.
It's definitely good to spread the awareness that many fire extinguishers are not suitable to put out lithium fires, though.
Only Class D fire extinguishers can put out lithium metal fires. But lithium-ion batteries do not contain lithium metal. Lithium metal batteries do so, but no EV uses lithium metal batteries because they're too dangerous. Class B fire extinguishers work just fine on lithium-ion battery fires. The difficulty with lithium-ion EV fires is that they tend to re-light, but water is still the tool of choice for putting them out.
I mean that’s fine if this is the hill you want to die on, but right now I think it’s just as likely your gas car fireball explodes like a Hollywood movie while parked in your garage.
Maybe a quick search would help you find the answer for yourself before making such comment.
See for instance this article compiling a couple examples: https://www.thedrive.com/news/28420/parked-teslas-keep-catch...
Some of the occurrences are while the vehicle is being charged, some are simply when the car is parked.
Now you have.
But when I'm filling up my car with a jerry can, I'm literally holding it. I know to have some sense of caution, and I can see spills. I do not leave it to slowly trickle fill overnight, like one would with an EV; not only am I not there in that scenario, but odds are I'm not even awake.
The odds are minuscule, and you're more likely to die in many other ways. But the fix is so easy - assuming it's not going to hit -30, just keep it outside. And the risk (probability multiplied by chances for it to happen) is going to get so great when everyone has an EV, that I can at least see your point.
I don't agree, and were I able to afford a house with a garage and a Tesla to park in it, I probably would. Doubly so as it hits -50 with wind chill here. But to dismiss your concerns outright doesn't feel quite right to me.
This is true, but you can't see the static electrical charge on the can that's going to discharge with a spark when it touches the filler tube...
The reason you see issues in cases like this is because the wreck totally decimated that isolation with mechanical force and so you get runaway effects.
There's not that much lithium and there is lots and lots of heat.
Your point is maybe that the simulation is bad. But I think it can be helpful nonetheless. Even if the simulation is "you have a battery fire in front of you. Tell me what you would do?"
If this is really a priority, then make it a priority. Start paying firefighters like cops are paid, and fund the fire department like the police department is funded.
In many places, fire departments are entirely voluntary while police departments are funded to the tune of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
In several places I've lived, the only way fire departments would get that training is if someone donated a bunch of EV batteries to be destroyed by them.
Why not? That's exactly what they do with ICBs and houses to train here.
In a 4-stroke engine each cylinder ignites once every two revolutions, so even a 12-cylinder engine wouldn't reach 2000 ignitions per second until 20,000 RPM.
A more typical case - say, a 6 cylinder engine hitting the redline at 7,000RPM is experiencing 350 ignitions per second - so, hundreds rather than thousands.
Do you know what's not equivalent to an electric car? A fertilizer plant catching on fire. And you guessed it, that's also handled by the fire department.
It’s not unreasonable for firemen to put out fires. It’s just a novel path that requires training.
Large tanks of volatile, flammable, potentially-explosive liquid in proximity to ignition sources in the car?
The efficient way to do that is to tax companies and use the tax dollars to fund public services like fire departments. Expecting Tesla to send in their own firefighters when a Tesla catches fire would be ridiculous. Public services are good, and the method for funding them is well established.
If we want to have additional levies for safety regarding lithium batteries, hopefully we are making sure to do the same for oil too...
Large Lithium fires are fairly uncommon right now, they don't behave like most other classes of fires that firefighters are dealing with. Personal device fires are more common, but total heat / damage is less and the fire is frequently able to be controlled outside of confined areas (aircraft).
With a relatively low volume of large lithium battery packs, and the difficulty in containing them, it could make sense for a targeted levy to cover the cost. Lithium car fires are currently dealt with by trying to isolate the burning vehicle and overwhelming the fire with water (removing Oxygen and temp), however this is very inefficient. I have heard of a former fire chief arguing that to deal with the growth of large battery packs will require either massively increasing the number of appliances (fire engines) or defaulting fire appliances to using special foams as opposed to water. The foams will increase the cost to fight ALL fires, as many engines typically have to be ready pre-mixed before dispatch.
It has also been suggested that density limits, and battery packs be designed to include fire suppression and make this mandatory to allow vehicles on the road. This would create massive packaging issues for every EV company, add significant cost while reducing performance. All in all I think we need to consider if we charge the EV / household battery pack companies for this or we all bare it in general taxes for the environmental benefits. I think bearing it out of general funds is completely reasonable, however I wonder if we are going to get safer batteries if we pass on the cost and let the rate go down as the number and severity of fires decrease. The might be some marginal improvements that quickly get implemented in that case.
Now that there's a global shared effort to make everybody able to work safely around these issues should be mandatory.
Any company H&S rep will know this
In contrast, 60+% of the budget goes towards making sure police officers can make over $200,000 a year with overtime.
When we say "Governor X defunded public schools," no one takes that to mean that they removed every single penny from the schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
Here are more examples:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-i-beca...
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2021/02/12/We-Actually-Mean-Aboli...
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/the-abolition-mov...
And, indeed, your first article actually uses the term exactly as we're using it.
While the author is arguing for abolition, and the first and only time she uses the word "defund" it is to say
> Defunding the police is one step on a broad stairway toward abolition. Cities can reduce the size and scope of police...
A quick search of "what does 'Defund the Police' mean" will find that the vast majority of proponents, and of articles written about them in almost all newspapers and magazines, interpret it as reducing the budget of the police and redirecting that budget into non-violent community aid.
Here are more examples:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-i-beca...
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2021/02/12/We-Actually-Mean-Aboli...
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/the-abolition-mov...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
Above article refers to this long interview: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/12/obama-urges-activist...
And I agree with him, if you have to add ", and by this phrase I mean a b c d e f" or "please search the Internet and click a good URL (not Breitbart, but also not Mariame Kaba) to see what we mean by this phrase", do you think people wouldn't just think you're an extremist after the snappy phrase and stop listening?
The self-sabotage (and then people like you defending the phrase) is so mind-boggingly dumb. Do you want change, or do you want to alienate people?
But eh, on the topic of alienating people, I've seen enough "online activists" snap at supporting voices that I thought "I wouldn't be surprised if that supporter stopped sympathizing with them.". Then you have supporters turn to quiet "Fuck it, I'll just shut my mouth" or worse, be opponents.
The paid fire and ems people hate the volunteer departments, the fire-only departments turn their nose down at EMS, and the police are good at swooping in and taking over stuff like paramedics.
Volunteer departments are often big political power bases too. In some states, that results in volunteer departments getting lavish firehouses and fancy gear. I live next door to a city firehouse, their “new” pumper is an 8 year old, $800k (new) truck that saw 70-80 calls a month. It’s new owner doubled the mileage in 90 days.
Poor cities and rural counties might have underfunded services but they don't generally have the dysfunction you're describing because the money to support the dysfunction simply isn't there.
What does this mean to imply? They bought an old truck, gently used, and then used it a lot more...
Is the new mileage because they need to use it? Is that bad? Is 800k a lot for a fire truck?
Its basically the _only_ way to put them out. I doubt the average firetruck will have tools to put out a recently started EV fire for a couple of decades.
Submerge them in a container filled with water, [1].
[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2019/03/firefighters-dropped-a-bur...
https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/52154/lithium-...
- what about draining the cells through the main charging port ?
- would that worsen the situation ?
A tesla car fire on a highway or rural area will immediately require far more apparatus support than normal.
In a lab. With rats.
In Houston. With People:
[1] https://www.khou.com/mobile/article/news/local/tesla-spring-...