A California Highway Patrol investigation of a multi-component Thanksgiving Day crash on the Bay Bridge East of the Los Alamos Coastguard Bridge
CNN Business obtained the report from the public records requests on Wednesday. The California Highway Patrol studied videos that showed the vehicle slowing to a stop.
There was a crash on the freeway east of the Bay Bridge that caused traffic to jam up for 90 minutes, as more than half a thousand people traveled to holiday events. There were four ambulances on the scene.
NHTSA told CNN Business a few days after the Thanksgiving Day crash that it was gathering addition information from Tesla and law enforcement about the crash.
The two adults and two children who were in the car were not seriously injured after they plummeted off the cliff near the Pacific Coast Highway onto a rocky beach.
“We were very shocked” to discover that people in the car had survived the crash, said Brian Pottenger, battalion chief with Cal Fire’s Coastside Fire Protection District.
Accidents on that cliff are not rare. He told CNN that they respond to a lot of cars on that cliff. It is uncommon for us to get a lot of survivors in accidents.
The cause of the spring, Texas, electric vehicle collision injures a man and a girl, a driver and two children, one of whom was killed
A male and female, as well as a boy and girl, were in the car. The children were secured in seats that were still in place, he said.
Officials said the four-door, white sedan was travelling south on Highway 1 near the Tom Lantos tunnel when it fell into the water. They did not point out a reason for the crash.
Pottenger said that they could see the movement of the front seat through the driver’s window. “So we knew that we had at least one person that was alive.”
The car’s people were trapped inside. Pottenger said that all four were conscious when they were taken to the hospital.
Crews freed the two children and used a rope to lift them up the cliff in baskets. Later a California Highway Patrol helicopter hoisted the two adults to safety.
The California Highway Patrol posted a video of a helicopter lowering a rescuer onto a cable in order to get to the crash site.
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the Spring, Texas, electric vehicle crash was the driver’s excessive speed and failure to control his car, due to impairment from alcohol intoxication in combination with the effects of two sedating antihistamines, resulting in a roadway departure, tree impact, and postcrash fire.
On an earnings call later that month, Tesla’s VP of vehicle engineering Lars Moravy said company representatives who inspected the crash determined the steering wheel was “deformed.” There was a finding that contradicted local authorities’ accounts, because the steering wheel showed that there was an occupant in the driver’s seat when the Model S struck the tree.
The event data recorder in the Model S had more information that was used in the report. Five seconds before impacting the tree, the Model S had accelerated from 39 to 67mph in two seconds and traveled 57mph before a full-stop. The seatbelts had their pretensions activated, and the airbags were deployed, which was determined by it. Damage to the front of the battery module was the cause of the fire.
While there are ways to trick Autopilot into activating without someone in the drivers seat, it seems that wasn’t the case in this crash. Additionally, the owner of the Tesla did not have the more advanced Full Self Driving package installed.