Live data from Hacker News

Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

consumeraffairs.com

21–30 of 298 posts

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#22
Danso, by no means I wanted to "stalk" you but I noticed you posted at least 5 negative/harsh articles about Tesla last month, which is fine to me as HN has a lot of Musk fanboys to counterbalance, anyways, I was wondering if you have any customer story to share about Tesla that affected you, i.e. did you own one and it was a bad car or did you lost money investing in them? I am genuinely interested in that background so if it may read offensive to you please let me know so maybe I can rephrase it! PS: I would like to buy a Tesla myself but I can't because of where I live, so I can only read people's account about them

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#23
post #4

I imagine this policy would have to be different for those in the UK, right? I thought I had read that the Data Protection Act (of 1998) forced companies to send data in situations they would not for other countries: https://www.gov.uk/respond-data-protection-request > Under data protection law, anyone can ask if your organisation holds personal information about them - you must respond to their request as soon as po…

Crash data is not necessarily Personally Identifiable Information

police reports of accidents are public record, you should be able to pretty easily go from crash data to personal identity based on public records. Sounds like PII to me.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#24
post #18
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that law gets passed, you'll no longer "own" the device you bought that collects that data, but will be granted a license to use it.

When computers were new, IBM would not sell computers to customers, but rent them out. Since most people nowadays seem to pay for cell phones, tablets, etc. in monthly installments and “need” to get a new model as soon as the one they have is fully paid off, I’m sure a jump to leasing/renting devices is a very small one in practice.

You already are renting/paying a monthly use license fee if you "buy" a phone from your carrier with a monthly payment and the ability to upgrade after x months.

I did this by accident when I "bought" an iPhone a few years ago and was told I couldn't keep it after I water damaged it and got a replacement. I started buying devices outright after that.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#26
Since there is clearly an interface to obtain the data, used at least by third-party vendor 'Crash Data Group', it seems it'd be possible to develop an external logger to plug in while driving.

Such data loggers are commonly used in racecars, using either their own sensors, or in stock versions, also tied into the OBDII ports. It looks at everyghing from driver inputs, to engine performance, 6-axis G loads, etc.

Seems it'd be pretty nice to get the data anyway to help manage your own driving (or check the habits of someone borrowing your car, like your kid), and in case of an incident, your own log of the events so you don't have to pester/subpoena Tesla.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#27
post #13

What use would this type of data be to the average consumer? Outside of the obvious question of ownership and argument of who owns the data - isn't this otherwise very similar to being in a plane crash and demanding the black box data? Surely the data, itself, isn't very helpful compared to the analysis of the data? Note: My question is in no way trying to argue against the consumer owning the data. I'm just wonderin…

Without access to the data we don't know how useful it is full stop.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#28

Serious question, Can you get data from any other car manufacturer? I know ICE cars collect information but do you have access to it?

At least the local data can be accessed with OBD interfaces [1] most of the time. I don't know about stuff like theft prevention where the GPS location of the car is being constantly transmitted over GSM/UMTS/LTE, though.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#29
post #13

What use would this type of data be to the average consumer? Outside of the obvious question of ownership and argument of who owns the data - isn't this otherwise very similar to being in a plane crash and demanding the black box data? Surely the data, itself, isn't very helpful compared to the analysis of the data? Note: My question is in no way trying to argue against the consumer owning the data. I'm just wonderin…

> What use would this type of data be to the average consumer?

We can also reverse this question: why would Tesla hide this type of data from their customers so intensely?

One reason that comes to mind on both questions, is that customer's (or someone on their behalf) are able to review if the crash is due to software malfunction.

> isn't this otherwise very similar to being in a plane crash and demanding the black box data

Most people don't buy (hence own) a plane but buy a ticket with an airplane company instead. The airline company actually does get to access the black box data in case of a crash. So do the authorities.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#30

Danso, by no means I wanted to "stalk" you but I noticed you posted at least 5 negative/harsh articles about Tesla last month, which is fine to me as HN has a lot of Musk fanboys to counterbalance, anyways, I was wondering if you have any customer story to share about Tesla that affected you, i.e. did you own one and it was a bad car or did you lost money investing in them? I am genuinely interested in that backgroun…

Doing it perhaps for the click-bait karma?

Edit: I'm one of those people that believe in what Elon is doing and while I don't consider myself a fan-boy, I get plenty frustrated by all of the biased negativity I somehow feel the need to inject some balance by saying something. That may come across as only ever defending, but the amount of negative fluff articles is astonishing.

Post reply on HN