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Tesla driver who blamed crash on autopilot pressed accelerator 100%, NTSB finds (arstechnica.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/electricvehicles@slrpnk.net
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[+] -9 points 3 months ago* (8 children)

Do you think the company that created the logging system doesn't have the capability to remotely manipulate the logs?

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Actually yes. Event data recorders are highly regulated components, and Teslas especially are quite frequently tested for compliance (because nobody trusts them. They're fascists). As far as I am aware (and to be clear I've looked into this rather extensively) there has never been any indication that Tesla has the ability to manipulate information stored in the EDR system, and if indications of it were found it would likely result in the temporary suspension of road certification for all affected models while the issue was investigated - the NTSB's nuclear option.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Capability, sure. Do you think they actually did, though? That's a positive assertion that I would want to see some kind of actual evidence for beyond an assertion by some random commenter on the Internet.

    I suspect you don't have any evidence because if there was I think that would probably be by far the bigger story here. Which is why I expect Tesla would refrain from taking the risk of tampering with logs in situations like this.

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  • [–] -4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    I'm not making a positive assertion, just expressing a heaping amount of skepticism. I don't have any evidence beyond the fact that the evidence NHTSA is using comes from a prolific liar and conman and taking the most logical and rational position accordingly. I wouldn't accept the logs as proof.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    While I respect skepticism as in this case it's especially warranted, I do want to point out that you've gotten the investigatory body wrong - the NHTSA is not the NTSB. The NTSB preliminary report itself is really very straightforward and does not at all exculpate Tesla in this incident - a likely reason for that is highlighted in the Ars article:

    For example, a Tesla defect known as “Sudden Unintended Acceleration” can occur when “components of the vehicle require additional power” and the draw on the battery causes “significant spikes in the system,” their lawsuit explained. If that happened to Butler’s car, the inverter may “incorrectly interpret that the accelerator pedal has been pressed” and rapidly advance to dangerous speeds.

    It is fairly clear in the above NTSB release that they do not have proof positive that the accelerator was physically depressed, just that the logs indicate that is what happened. That ambiguity/uncertainty is likely the reason they have opened a special investigation into this incident, and given the vast horizons of potential biases in reporting about this tragedy I agree that best practice will be to look primarily at what the source has said, and treat speculation (both for or against Tesla) with a healthy degree of skepticism.

    Edit: Further, the NTSB is likely pulling this data directly from the EDR itself - a device that must adhere to some extremely strict federal standards on retrieval and data integrity. Teslas do automatically report this information out to Tesla's servers in the event of a crash, but there has never been any indication I have been able to find that Tesla has even the capability to edit the information stored on the device itself - and the EDR is a system component frequently audited by numerous independent bodies for compliance, including that most reliable of compliance tester: open source enthusiasts.

    Edit 2: clarity

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