A woman protesting on the roof of a Tesla car at Auto Shanghai 2021 in China received a lot of attention with screams that the brakes of her car in which her father had an accident were faulty. However, driving data shows that the car's brakes were working properly and the driver exceeded the permissible driving speed in the local areas, which resulted in the accident.
On March 19, many videos from the Auto Shanghai 2021 Show in China appeared online, in which a woman climbed onto the roof of a Model 3, exclaiming "Tesla brake failed me." This protest led to the woman being detained for five days. Nevertheless, all the data indicate that the driver itself became the culprit of the accident and did not agree to any compromises that Tesla offered her.
Police found the driver guilty after the father of a protesting woman crashed into two cars in February and injured two people in a Tesla Model 3. He was driving at 118.5 km/h (73 mph) in the local areas, well above the limit. In addition, the driver did not keep a safe distance from other vehicles, which also caused the accident. Nevertheless, despite the police report and information from Tesla, the woman continued to claim that the car had a brake system failure.
Despite the unsubstantiated statements, Tesla fully cooperated in the police investigation and also offered the client a car repair. The owner refused to have the car repaired and demanded a full refund and compensated for her loss of wages. The client also refused to have the expertise performed by a third-party company. In March, she already organized a picket, accusing Tesla. Local authorities also mediated the settlement, but the client refused to make any compromises.
With the client continuing to blame Tesla, the company expressed its willingness to fully cooperate and provide the raw vehicle data half an hour before the incident to a third-party appraisal agency or technical oversight department designated by the government or consumers.
Tesla's employee in charge of resolving the accident told a reporter for China Market Supervision News that the company had already sent the data to the customer's email to the address she specified when purchasing the car. However, she didn't answer phone calls or emails. In order to finally clarify the situation, Tesla allowed the publication to publish the vehicle data.
Source: China Market Supervision News
When the driver pressed the brake pedal for the last time before the accident, the data showed that the vehicle's speed was 118.5 km/h (73 mph). Within 2.7 seconds after the driver pressed the brake pedal, the maximum pressure in the brake master cylinder was only 45.9 bar. After that, the driver increased the pressure on the brake pedal, and the pressure in the brake master cylinder reached 92.7 bar. Frontal collision warning and automatic emergency braking (AEB) was activated, resulting in a maximum pressure in the master cylinder of 140.7 bar, which played a role in reducing the amplitude of the collision. 1.8 seconds after activating AEB, the system detected a collision. After the driver pressed the brake pedal, the speed of the car continued to decrease, and before the collision, the speed of the car dropped to 48.5 km/h (30mph).
Thus, the car was moving at high speed, but the driver pressed the brake pedal with little force, for some time, which led to the fact that the vehicle did not stop before crashing into another vehicle. Only when the automatic emergency braking function was activated, the car began to decelerate rapidly, trying to avoid a collision. Despite the fact that the collision did occur, the force of the impact was much less than it would have been had the automatic braking system not activated. And also, it is apparent that the force of the impact would have been less if the driver had initially pressed the brake pedal harder.
Tesla's spokesman also said that 30 minutes before the incident, the brake system of the vehicle worked perfectly. The log has over 40 brake pedal records showing that the vehicle had stopped repeatedly after driving over 100 km/h (60 mph).
.@Tesla released the data log from most recent FUD crash in China, which was recently publicized after driver protested $TSLA at the Shanghai Auto Show
— 2X Mil Mile Battery ~ Ryan (@MilMileBattery) April 22, 2021
AEB system worked appropriately to avoid much worse collision at the high speeds being traveled @CNBChttps://t.co/4FyITg4Ltm pic.twitter.com/MqII5cr9do
© 2021, Eva Fox. All rights reserved.
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Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter
About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
