The Tesla should not have stopped but there is a cultural problem of driving way too close to the car in front of you. There are other justified scenarios why a car would have had to slam on the brakes at that same spot and the pileup would have still occurred.
I haven't read statute, but my understanding has always been that if you run into the car in front of you, it is your fault, period. If you didn't have time to stop, you are "Following too close for conditions", regardless of what those conditions are. I agree that culturally a lot of people in such situations say "It's not my fault, they stopped right in front of me!", but as you correctly point out, there are legitimate reasons for someone to come to a sudden stop, and as a driver it is YOUR responsibility to make sure you are ready for that possibility.
This is fair, I should have been more specific. "Following too close" implies "following", doesn't include people unexpectedly pulling into a stream of traffic. In this instance the Tesla changing lanes would mitigate "Following too close" and it would likely be "Unsafe lane change". That's only true for the first vehicle though, not the rest of the pile up.
> That's only true for the first vehicle though, not the rest of the pile up.
I don't think that's right. Because safe following distance can only prevent you from slamming into the car in front of you if it breaks hard. If it hits something and stops way before the breaking distance, there's little you can do.
The stopping distance at 60mph/96kmh (~28m/s) for a typical car seems to be 133ft/40m. So you are right, it is actually significantly smaller than the recommended 3-4 seconds rule with a relatively good margin. It also amounts to ~5 car lengths at that speed, which I rarely see in practice on active highways.
> If the car in front of you hits something and comes to an extremely abrupt stop and you don't have the stopping distance to stop, you're too close.
It is physically impossible for a car to come to an instantaneous stop for no reason. It would have to e.g. drive into a concrete wall, but if there's a wall across the freeway you should've seen that from afar.
You only really need to have enough distance to be able to notice the car ahead braking and start braking yourself.
I don't know what area you're from but I cannot imagine the DMV advocates for a following distance where you know you wouldn't be able to stop in time. I'd love a citation for that.
Well "unsafe lane change" can be totally legit as well. I for once had to do no think abrupt lane change when I saw some largish object appear seemingly out of nowhere and it was flying towards my front window. Still do not know what it was. Abrupt lane change did not cause any problem in this case but in theory it could have.
While you may have had a legit reason, there's no way you can expect a driver in the lane you abruptly changed into to anticipate this behavior. If you hit another car in your abrupt change, you are still at fault even if you have a legit reason.
Of no fault of their own, the car you hit trying to avoid something means you didn't avoid them. The car you hit did nothing wrong, but you did. Insurance will place you at fault at a minimum of partial fault. You will not be blameless in your example if you do hit someone/something
Yeah, I know where you're coming from, but...when you've taken as many defensive driving classes I have from my younger days (we all know why), then some of the things they teach definitely start to stick with you. If you are forced to drive in rush hour traffic every day, there's definitely not much you can do. So, stop driving in rush hour traffic!! After that, you stop driving next to cars. You place yourself in the gaps even if that means slowing down. And that was my biggest Doh! moment was learning to accept that slowing down has so many benefits. One of the take aways form defensive driving was always leaving yourself an out. Being cognizant of not having an out for unexpected need for avoidance maneuvering will go a long way of avoiding the situations you experienced.
FWIW the defensive driving guidance in that scenario is to stay in your lane and brake -- this is most commonly encountered when you see a deer in the roadway, you will almost always do more damage to your passengers, other motorists, and your own car by swerving (and potentially risking a rollover or running off the road) than by maintaining your course and hitting the object at a lower speed
> maintaining your course and hitting the object at a lower speed
Growing up in the Midwest, I remember being taught (not sure if this was official or something I got from my father, older brother, or maybe an uncle) to quickly assess if I believed that I would hit the deer or not.
If I was going to hit the deer, regardless of my actions, I was to accelerate into it.
If I could brake and avoid it, I was to brake.
I've been in that situation a few times. In the case of a collision with a deer, I accelerated into it and only took damage to the front passenger side panel. I do believe that it helped prevent a bad situation from becoming worse.
In the other cases, I was able to avoid a collision by braking.
Later in life, I did swerve once to avoid a large animal that I mistook for a person walking on a very dark, very rural road. My car flipped and slid on it's top ~100 ft. before coming to a stop. Myself and all 3 passengers walked away without incident but I still feel fortunate that we all did these many years later. Swerving is almost always the wrong answer.
I always wondered about that recommendation to accelerate into it. It seems to me it would only end up making things worse by adding more energy into the collision than less.
Sadly it does happen. There are horror stories of live deer going through the windshield, doing a number on the occupants both with their arrival and their attempts to escape.
Animals do not fly towards you. Tires do and they kill people who brake and wait toll it hits you. Becaus all happened very fast I can not bet what the flying object was but it was most likely a tire.
The object flying towards my window was most likely a tire. Sorry but I am not suicidal. Brake and wait till it hits you is worthy of Darwin award. There are countless examples of flying tires killing people on the road.
Only for the first car, though. A lot of the impact of this story isn't the initial fender-bender-scale collision for which the Tesla driver[1] is clearly at fault, it's the horrifying stuff that happened in the resulting "8 car pile up" that surely was due to someone else going way too fast.
If the first crash were the only one, this would never have reached the level of media attention. If the same pileup was caused by a garden variety grandparent, no one would care.
[1] I'd suggest caution in attribution here. The only evidence that FSD was involved is the at-fault driver's statement to the police. I'm not going to say it wasn't operating, but I will say that I've never seen behavior like this from FSD. It's extremely cautious at lane changes, often annoyingly so. And while I've seen the same "phantom braking" everyone has, it's a pulse, not this kind of "bring the vehicle to a stop" behavior. Given the assertiveness of the controls, I'd say it's just as likely that the driver decided to swing into the left lane on their own and then hit the brakes instead of the accelerator by accident (which happens, again, all the time!).
Exactly. If a driver pulls into your lane right in front of you and then slams on their brakes then that driver is at fault. You may need eyewitnesses or dashcam evidence to prove that is what happened, though.
In Australia it's true. It doesn't matter the circumstance, if you hit a vehicle from behind, you are at fault. A friend hit a car with no brake lights and no turn signal that stopped in the driving lane. Doesn't matter.
Australian here. I was in a multi car pileup years ago. The car in front of me stopped unexpectedly on a freeway's onramp. Everyone was accelerating at the time. I slammed on the brakes. I decided I would stop in time looked in the rear view mirror to see if the guy behind me would ram me. I still remember it vividly - it was a white Commodore. Its brakes were on hard, nose almost grazing the road but it looked like it would be OK so I turned by attention forward again.
The next thing I remember is hearing an almighty crash, followed by the Commodore crashing into us, followed by another crash as we were pushed into the car in front. A moment later a motor cycle flew by the left hand side. It has evidently been unable to stop and and swerved right to a full frontal but was then off balance. The handle bars then creased the left hand panel of every car. The bike was only slightly damaged, and he drove off.
The police arrived. After a few questions, they determined it was the last car in the chain that wasn't paying enough attention and had pushed everyone else the car in front. They were taken to the station. The rest of us heard nothing more of it. The insurance companies paid out without much of a fight after getting the police report.
But that's about the limit of it as far as I can tell. In Australia, if you going though a intersection with a green light and hit someone who has run the red, your up for dangerous driving. It's not "one person made a mistake". As far as the law is concerned you both weren't paying attention.
Personally speaking, in this scenario, with an enormous stream of one way traffic on one of the few roads leading from San Francisco, I hope circumstances are taken into account.
All Teslas could do this at any moment, is my takeaway.
It’s the same in Europe. The car hitting the suddenly stopped car is at fault, every car after that is at fault as well.
You’re to maintain distance and speed that would allow you to stop in time without an accident at all times.
Same goes for potholes, if you hit a pothole and bend a rim or something, you can get a fine for driving without maintaining proper speed. Then you can use that fine to sue your local government for having a pothole there.
In my part of Europe, the lane changing car is in fault, and the cars behind (expect the first of them).
I don't know where it would be allowed to stop in the middle of a highway lane for no apparent reason, especially after a lane change that did not result in a proper distance to the car behind.
You get situations of people backing into you which looks like you ran into them. I think it's on the absence of other evidence the car with front damage is presumed guilty but if you have additional evidence like a dashcam you can challenge that presumption.
Good luck proving that without evidence. You can see a number of youtube videos of people trying to perpetuate break checks as an insurance scam. Sometimes break checking alone doesn't work so they reverse into you. Relying too hard on simple heuristics creates these problems and additional evidence such as dash cams can help.
I had a driver brake randomly and I rear ended them. They ended up admitting it and my insurance went from being mad at me to covering everything. Granted I barely tapped them but still, I think the law is a bit fuzzier than that.
In some states (perhaps even most or all) this is true. It is your legal responsibility to drive a safe enough distance to the car in front so you can avoid collision always if they stop short for any reason.
That is exactly how it is handled in Germany. Actually not keeping enough distance on the Autobahn is one of things with serious fines overhere. I know both, the "your fault to hit car in front of you" and the "please pay 200 bucls and hand over your liscense for month as you were to close and we have video" aspects of it.
You're right. The first rear-ending may have been unavoidable. However, you can see from the rear surveillance camera that subsequent vehicles could have stopped if everyone agreed to keep larger following distances. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, there is the game-theoretical issue of other drivers cutting in when large gaps form so it would take some coordination on a technology / policy / cultural level to resolve the issue.
The Tesla changed lanes and instantly became a stopped object. The car that hit it did the same, and so did every subsequent car. The follow distance to avoid a collision at that point is about 10 car lengths, or roughly the average stopping distance.
Curiously the vehicle behind the Tesla barely hit it whereas the drivers of the cars further back in the pileup seemed to have paid less attention.
There would have been multiple ways for the cars further back to prevent a pileup: Drive slower, keep more distance. If you speed, have both hands on the wheel, look at the road, and be ready to brake quickly.
It does sound like there were no severe injuries, so you could argue that people kept enough distance to avoid serious injuries.
There are lighting conditions that could play a role here since this was when people were entering the tunnel. This might also be something that freaked out the Tesla. But it is hard to know without being in the situation.
Even if all the vehicles following each had the same following distance and reaction time, each of them is going to encounter a vehicle stopping more quickly than the one in front of them did. So even if everyone performs similarly, the cars at the back are going to hit harder.
It’s really hard to tell, but to me it looks like the one behind that one managed to stop in time. But only with the tiniest margin. Action further back was much more dramatic, that’s for sure.
The Tesla looks like it slowed down 200+ feet over 4 seconds. That's far from slamming on the brakes. It's also, however, very far from expected behavior which could explain why the drivers behind didn't slow down enough in time. They weren't expecting the Tesla to come to a complete stop. I'd guess if the other car was a Tesla it probably would have stopped in time to prevent the collision because it's basing its decisions on the environment not based on prior experience driving in that particular spot.
I'd also argue that the Tesla pulling over into the left lane (merge 1 lane left vs 3 lanes to the right) is the right behavior in a situation that warrants stopping. Try to get to the side of the road so other cars can pass.
that is, in fact, slamming on the brakes. your estimate of 200+ft over 4 seconds, assuming perhaps a low highway speed of 60mph, is faster than many cars are capable of stopping, even assuming zero reaction time.
It's ok, the car may have cut people off and caused an accident, but if you look at it on the basis of the the number of fatalities/mile, cutting off and causing a minor accident is no big deal. Clearly keeping Tesla's stock price up is a bigger deal.
Coming to a full stop in the left lane is really last-resort stuff. That is the speed/passing lane (in most jurisdictions, all lands are speed/passing around the Bay Area and especially on the bridges).
I couldn't watch the video so can't comment directly on this case but it boggles the mind how close people follow others on the road.
The distance you have between you and the car in front on you is one of the only safety zones you can control on the road. People should cherish it and let it blossom into wide open space.
You often have no control over the left, right and rear. Why would you want to take away that front space as well?
Can remember there were campaigns in my country in the 90's to increase distance between cars. The rule was to count 1001 1002 1003, so basically you should have a 3 second gap to the car in front. Not sure if it worked, but apparently it made an impression on me, so I constantly count 1001 1002 1003 when driving on roads with a higher speed limit.
You basically can't, realistically, do that in dense city highway driving, which looks like what this is. Like, we still say the driver who hits the back is "at fault" in these kinds of pile-ups but it's entirely a "there, but for the grace of God, go I" situation. They were just unlucky. 99% of drivers on that road drive the same way they were, and the ones who don't are probably driving in a way that makes things less safe.
> You basically can't, realistically, do that in dense city highway driving, which looks like what this is.
Yeah you can.
The maximum carrying capacity of a single lane of highway traffic is around 1900 cars per hour (that is from real-world measurements of what human drivers can actually achieve). At 70 mph that is 194 feet per vehicle. Even assuming something like a 20 foot long F250 or something that leaves 174 feet of spacing between vehicles. Which is nearly 9 vehicle lengths and nearly 2 seconds of room. Up until you hit that point you're not impeding any traffic flow by adding more space. Almost nobody in this video is leaving that much room.
What causes traffic congestion and causes that 1900 vehicles per hour number to be that small is the people who are tailgating and when someone brakes everyone behind them has insufficient following distance and has to brake harder and harder until you've got vehicles nearly stopped on the freeway and have formed a traffic compression wave (if you haven't just created an accident and snarled traffic even worse).
No, you generally shouldn't drive that anomalously. A driver will pass you and insert themselves in front of you. You will fall back to create distance. Another driver will pass you and insert themselves in front of you. You create constant aggravation and churn around your car.
Source: I spent several months last year helping someone learn to drive in the Bay Area, and they insisted on leaving the recommended gap between cars as they prepared for their driving test.
That doesn't matter. And if you're not in the left lane usually people merging in front of you are heading for the "fast lane" (which is typically even more congested and slower) or heading for the exit lane. Just let them go on their way, into and just as rapidly out of your life.
And if you don't let yourself feel "aggravation and churn" then people will just merge into and later leave your lane and it just becomes normal driving without any ego involvements.
Source: the past 30 years of driving in Seattle traffic that I've done where I've stopped being a tailgating idiot and opened up more space and stopped caring about people "cutting me off".
100 people merging into 170 feet of space in front of you[*] is dramatically safer than 1 person trying to squeeze their way into the 20-30 feet of space you're leaving in front of you when you're tailgating.
In several countries in Europe they occasionally paint markings on the road (chevrons or dots or similar) with a sign like "Keep apart 2 chevrons". Some places have electronic speed limit signs to reduce the maximum speed in heavy traffic, which reduces risk and improves flow.
There is very heavy traffic on both sides, so it wouldn't be unusual for the actual speed to be 50mph, 40mph or even less. The second nearest car is braking, and there's a "Queues Likely" sign a little further -- I found the place:
StreetView gives a much better impression of the chevrons; the Alamy photo has an unusual choice of lens. The "M56 B 45.0" [km] milepost is way ahead of the chevron sign.
They'd have a revolt on their hands in short order, around here, and I suspect in most places. You can't handle enough traffic on the parts of our highways that go through the city, while maintaining the kinds of gaps that would be necessary to avoid these sorts of wrecks (well, the later pile-ons, anyway). Commute times would shoot up and areas that don't usually experience congestion would become intolerable around rush hour, if people really started leaving that much space, consistently.
Which is, perhaps, one of many arguments against having so many people on the roads to begin with, but that's what we have.
They taught this to me in driver's ed 15 years ago, just start counting when you go past a sign or something.
The rule actually works great where I live (a rural area) but if I wander over towards chicagoland I will be punished with constant cutoffs. Also there's too many cloverleafs over there jeeze.
When you leave adequate space (especially) in city driving, another driver will always occupy that space. You back off to create more space, another drive enters that space. Rinse, repeat. Source: Boston driver.
Source: South Bay driver. I was going to say that but was sure I will find a similar comment. I start my day by trying to be a safe driver but as they drive progresses and more and more people jumping in the free space in front of me, I eventually change the mode to not be risky but don't allow space for others.
Re not watching video: This is the most crowded road, after a downhill slope, in a major metropolitan, after a mile of bridge driving, reaching a reduced visibility tunnel, with one way traffic, and 5+ lanes.
There's too much traffic. It backs up into the streets, before this bridge + tunnel regularly. The speed is already restricted.
aside, people drive somewhat close in the bay area, but also in my experience it's so much worse in both LA and in Austin, and in TX so many of them are 6000lb Ford F150s.
In LA if you try to have distance someone will fill in the spot. I've experienced this in the Bay too. While I agree with many of these comments about people driving too close, I think it ends up being too simple and naive to real world conditions. This behavior tends to be true in any major city but not so outside.
Yeah I understand the "fill the spot" issue all too well. This is a behavior that our police/legal system is failing to address adequately. The emergent behavior is not the safe, legal, or even optimal behavior for traffic flow/reduction (afaik). But as I've observed in America, it's more about getting 1 car ahead of others than it is about having optimal outcomes across a large proportion of all traffic.
I have a hypothesis that this is another emergent pattern. I drive a lot between WA, OR, and CA. One thing I notice is that in OR I can easily pass people AND that if I'm in the left lane approaching someone there's a fairly high likelihood that they move right. Maybe 1 in 10 people don't move. But once I hit California I end up zig zagging much more, passing people who are in the left lane going below the speed limit (especially in central California). But I don't think the probability changed, but rather the population. Oregon is easier to rive in than Washington which is easier to drive in than California. I'm pretty sure this is just a small number of bad actors who are a constant percentage and their effects scale (probably also providing a feedback loop). I try to slightly combat this by calling the left most lane the "passing lane" rather than the "fast lane." A lot of people treat the left lane like kids treat lightup shoes: they think it makes them go faster.
And don't get me started on elephant racing. I frequently wonder the economic and environmental impact of just this singular type of event in central California.
"But" nothing. This is a Technology Failure. Whomever worked on this software should face consequences.
Hitting the brakes in the tunnel for no reason is a "never to this" kind of move.
"But [...] other scenarios" is not the situation here. There is no escaped pet anaconda slithering across the tunnel floor. There's no Godzilla breathing fire inside the tunnel. It's just a car with no obstructions in front of it, none visible to any other drivers, and it's choosing to hit the brakes.
There is no excuse.
It's at the bottom of a downhill slope. There's a limited view of what's up ahead because the slope starts to incline inside that tunnel. Cars start to speed up. There is typically a massive amount of traffic on the bridge.
That was absolutely not the case in this accident. The Tesla swerved in front of the car in the next lane and then suddenly slammed on the breaks. The two cars behind that one were driving several car lengths back. There was no way for this accident to involve less than 4 cars.
False. There exists a following distance and amount of paying attention that would have involved 0 cars hitting the tesla. If you look really closely at it at least 3 cars (maybe 4) stopped with next to no incident (it's not discernible if they even touched). It's the 5th or 6th car that shoves everyone into everyone else (and quite dramatically gets under the car infront of them and pops them up)
> that while conscious and not in any kind of distress?
I'd be less understanding, yes.
But at this point it's presumable that the autopilot was in "distress" (avoiding a perceived issue). And when such a thing comes up, real or false, the drivers behind need to be ready to react. And several of the cars did so quite well actually. The only reason this is a dramatic incident is because of the like 5th or 6th car that hits everyone else hard.
+1 to this, I ride motorcycle and lane split (in California) and frequently see people doing 80miles an hour looking down at the phone in their lap. This means even their peripheral vision is out of play, at least if they held the phone at 12 oclock over the steering wheel there'd be some non focused vision... smh
Honestly I think Carplay would save more lives if they allowed reading messages via infotainment screen instead of me having to tap my phone (voice messaging doesn't exist in most languages and Apple wouldn't Google to step in, lol)
It's one of those things where if you don't close the gap you'll get other cars constantly trying to jump into it. Same with not speeding, you'll get overtaken constantly. Tends to make things more dangerous for you. I'm not sure what the answer is. It'll be hard to generate a consensus without some major policing.
I'm surprised this isn't higher up. I think a lot of people retcon their safe driving behaviors to what they learned in a driving test but not to what they do in practice. Or maybe a lot of people answering haven't driven in major cities? But yeah, drive in LA and see how long you can keep 3+ car lengths in front of you. I hate driving in LA.
> It's one of those things where if you don't close the gap you'll get other cars constantly trying to jump into it.
In general I am ok with people merging in the gap, but some people are assholes about it by merging too close to me that I have to brake. I don't understand why people merge when they know the person behind in the other lane will have to slow down to let them merge.
This is a fine excuse to not maintain safe distance, until the car in front slows or stops all of a sudden and you rear end the car, then it’s your problem.
If you are driving in the "slow" lanes this is not the case. I generally cruise in the right or second to right lane with a large gap in front of me and it is certainly not more dangerous. Certainly faster traffic is passing on my left but not in a way that impacts me.
I agree with that but it seems like the Tesla basically cut off the driver to their left while changing lanes (while signaling) but also coming to a stop. Really weird behavior to see, of course, but this honestly doesn't seem like much of a "safe driving distance" thing to me.
I think if the Tesla had been avoiding a hazard, there would be a lot more gray area for FSD to hide in. It’s true that sudden braking and swerving is sometimes the least-bad thing for a driver to do, but if a human driver showed a pattern of repeatedly performing that maneuver for no reason, at some point a reasonable person would have to conclude that that driver is at least partly at fault for the inevitable crash that happens.
> shows a Tesla Model S vehicle changing lanes and then abruptly braking in the far-left lane of the San Francisco Bay Bridge
While it is true that there is a culture of following to closely, I don't think it applies here. When a car merges into your lane you should not abruptly change your speed to adjust the distance, but slowly increase it. Otherwise you get huge ripple effects and people 1km back will essentially be in stop and go mode.
The video is literally evidence of the effects of following too closely. From the back angle, there are 4 vehicles starting with the white truck in the leftmost lane that pass through within 1.5 seconds; a few are only a few hundred milliseconds apart! If you switch back to the front view you see that’s exactly the cluster that piles up onto the safety braked vehicles ahead of them, because the white truck they’ve been tailgating has swerved into a moving lane and exposed the stopped traffic.
Everyone beside perhaps the first car that had an incursion into its lane (but arguably failed to reduce speed to avoid an accident with a vehicle braking and signaling their lane) are WAY too close for the speed. Any speed reductions in those lanes would necessitate heavy braking which would cause exactly the ripple effects you’re referring to under normal conditions because there’s no buffer whatsoever to gradually reduce speed/increase distance either.
Did the driver have his hand on the the controls at the time of the accident? FSD = Faulty Self Driving or Fairly Self Driving or Fully Stopped Driving.
I did not see any emergency stopping lane on this stretch of the road. You would bump onto the narrow pedestrian walkway. So those people were wrong. We absolutely should keep more safety gap.
Drives way too fast all time, even in neighborhoods.
Drives way too aggressive.
Drives way too entitled. I’ve seen some crazy stuff from people driving a Tesla. Driving on the shoulder when traffic backs up. Zipping around people to steal parking spots.
This argument bears a lot of resemblance with victim-blaming phrases, like:
“She shouldn’t have been raped, but did you see the dress she was wearing on a dark street?”
Its not even remotely close. Women have a right to wear what they want without being raped for it. People don't have to drive dangerously too close and expect to not get in an accident.
Not my understanding of this situation ..they pulled into another occupied lane and hit the brakes...so neither generalization is so simple a case to support.
The design flaw is Tesla's fault, yes. The chain reaction is not. And it's not fair to blame the design flaw for 8 cars. At most 1, but we see that 1 behind it actually more or less stopped.
