The report I found said "75-90" according to witnesses, indicating that they really don't know how fast he was going. The road in question is a 6-lane highway, so 75 wouldn't have been unusual. The black box should tell them the speed, if it survived the fire.
But it was still not a minor accident in any event.
But what happened to all the wonderful safety features, like automatic braking, that are supposed to keep the driver out of trouble? And the real question is whether he was on autopilot when it happened, and what caused the car to "swerve through 3 lanes of traffic".
And the fact remains that a fire in a Tesla (or any other similar vehicle) is extremely hard to extinguish. How long was it burning before the police arrived?
The road in question is a 6-lane highway
...
It’s six lanes, but it isn’t a highway. The speed limit is 50.
Witnesses said he went off the road and then overcorrected. There is no safety feature to override that.
“75 wouldn’t have been unusual. “
25 over the limit.
“But what happened to all the wonderful safety features, like automatic braking, that are supposed to keep the driver out of trouble? And the real question is whether he was on autopilot when it happened, and what caused the car to “swerve through 3 lanes of traffic”.”
Automatic breaking doesn’t help you when you runn off the the road at high speed.
Autopilot clue: He was 25-40 over the speed limit.
Another idiotic lawsuit!
Earlier this month, the father of 18-year-old Barrett Riley filed suit against Tesla in California, blaming his May 2018 death in Fort Lauderdale on the battery design of the 2014 Model S.
Riley and a fellow senior were killed when Riley lost control of his fathers Tesla while driving 116 mph. The car exploded into a ball of fire after smashing into a concrete wall.