All four passengers survived (two apparently uninjured) a 250-300 foot drop done a cliff in a Tesla.
Jeff
2 Likes
Apparently the safety zone was done right, I’m surprise at the survival, and because there was no fuel to catch fire, they didn’t burn to death either, Bad Dad in any case… Imagine what they all were thinking as they fell all that way down there…
I’ve had trouble imagining if I fell off the roof while blowing out the gutters, so I don’t do it any more! And that’s maybe 10 feet, but it’s that sudden stop that gives me shivers… Did it for many years… No more…
1 Like
yeah, and amazing the car landed in that little spot. The water was the more odds on stopping place.
The news said that the car bounced off the cliff a couple of times but came to rest upright on its tires. Do you think that’s because the battery under the deck is so heavy that it righted the car (like loaded dice)?
This is a pretty great endorsement of the safety features of the Tesla. But I doubt they will use it in advertising. 
Wendy
1 Like
I don’t understand how the police concluded the intentionality of driving off the cliff. That section of road is so crooked that a driver could easily go over the edge with just a moment of inattention or loss of control. The cops look for braking and skid marks but a driver could go over the edge before they even realize it. I’m terrified of the California coast road.
Wendy
The California coast is drop dead gorgeous. But not if you drive a Tesla.
Thankfully the Tesla automobile isn’t as thin skinned as its CEO.
4 Likes
I have not seen anything explaining this, but it’s fairly likely that Tesla would have data telling them what happened with all of the car’s controls. Whether such data actually exists and has been examined I have no idea.
I think most likely is that the wife made an accusation. But that’s pure speculation on my part.
There have been many reports of people walking away from horrific crashes in Teslas. Safest car there is. And that’s not even counting the crashes it avoids entirely using its semi-autonomous capabilities. If this vehicle had been on AutoPilot, it certainly wouldn’t have driven off a cliff.
-IGU-
(And no, I’m not claiming that Tesla’s AutoPilot doesn’t have a variety of things it does wrong, but driving off cliffs isn’t one of them.)
Great comment! 
I don’t understand how the police concluded the intentionality of driving off the cliff.
They talked to the survivors…
Just how does a Tesla mar the scenery?
Puzzled in Portugal…
The Captain
For a few months at Western Electric Installation, they played games, rather than layoffs they Face Transferred us, a PT, Permanent Transfer, wanting Installers to either move or quit., and I was caught in the middle of it, at least until our Union Grievance procedure got things under control, a bit at least. I refused to move, uproot the family, etc, so I had to do a 90 mile each way commute from Sonoma County, through SF to the coast highway, to Half Moon Bay, leaving very, very early to be on the job at 7 AM, some mornings were heavy fog, rain, as I zipped down the coast, try to leave as early in the afternoon as I could, but still get stuck in the Golden Gate & Marin traffic… It’s a tad better today, more lanes at least at the North end, but it was a tough one at the time. I worked nights for a time, so less traffic, and eventually I was able to get back and work closer in Marin and Sonoma Counties, but at SF wages, so a gain in one way, covering gas at least… But it created memories of many windshield hours and crazy managers… Once the road is memorized, just enjoy the ride, know where to pick up snacks, etc… This was back in the early '80s, still an irritating game management played, many quit, some moved, but in the end it cost management a ton… History they never repeated.
Many years ago, my firm was selling a PC made by NEC called the APC (Advanced Personal Computer). I won’t bore you with its specs, but just say it was clearly far superior to the IBM PC which was its contemporary competitor (OLD-COMPUTERS.COM : The Museum, NEC APC - Advanced Personal Computer).
Anyhow, we had one delivered to us by truck and, as it was offloaded, another truck smashed into it. The PC’s casing was split open and it had been hit hard enough that the circuit boards had popped out. I filed an insurance claim and pending an adjuster coming out (took more than a month for them to tell me they weren’t sending one) I threw it on a table. A few days later I decided to plug the circuit boards in and fire it up to see how many sparks would fly - and it booted up flawlessly. From then on, I used it as a prop, pointing to it to prove how well built NEC’s PC’s were that they could stand enough abuse to crack them open as it they were an egg and still continue to work.
For geeks: The two web references to the specifications leave out an important one. While the color screen would show 640x480 pixels at a time, the PC actually had a virtual resolution of 1024x768 which means you could pan around that size image without re-drawing. While the article claims that there were few software packages around then which benefited from the high resolution, we were one of the first AutoCad dealers in the nation and that was an application at which this particular PC (with its vast speed advantage over the IBM PC as well) ruled.
Jeff
3 Likes
If you’re driving on the gorgeous California coast in a Tesla, you might do the ‘drop’ but not the ‘dead’.
Therefore it’s not drop dead gorgeous. Maybe drop live gorgeous? See, it was a pun on the phrase ‘drop dead’ and 4 survivors of a big drop.
Um, it was a joke.
3 Likes
I thought one article I read said that there was a witness in another car
Mike
Some wives be that way! 
Imagine her unbelting in the car. 