So guys I have a question. Was this kid purposely going fast or did his car malfunction and go that fast? I also was a bike kid with my house key on my necklace during that age.
Always sad when a kid dies young, this happened to my friend. He was one of the cool kids who drove to school and uher popular. We played pop Warner together and he crashed and flipped his car drunk driving leaving a party. It was 2 blocks from the high school. People said they could hear him screaming when his car was on fire. You cant give your kids everything. It was a week before we graduated
From the OP I will assume that the young driver was showing off for his passengers. Massachusetts has a law that (I think) an under'18 new driver may not carry a passenger under a certain age (Not sure if it is 18 or 21) for six months after his/her new license is issued. The only exception is that he/she may carry a sibling. The Tesla is very highly rated as far as crashworthiness, but I think that a 116 mph crash is not likely to be "entirely survivable." Maybe if there's a lot of flipping and rolling, but in a sudden stop - no.
I had a choice when my oldest daughter became eligible to drive: buy her a car, give her the GN, or give her my dad's 50th anniversary corvette convertible. The GN is too near and dear to my heart and too persnickety, plus it has no airbags, no antilock brakes, etc. So she got the vette. Yes, the vette has loads of power, but it only has two seats, meaning no car full of kids egging her on or distracting her, and, ahem, no backseat hanky-panky. To be honest, the kids distracting her scared me more than the powerful engine. As I noted before, you can go fast and be dumb in any car.
All the safety systems in the world won't help in a sudden impact/stop @ 100mph plus. All the restraints/airbags etc are going to do is preserve the outside of the corpse, that kind of impact your ribcage becomes a big cheese grater for your internal organs. I do feel for the families involved but to blame the car manufacturer is wrong. Next Smith &Wesson will get sued for one of their handguns shooting someone.
I'm sorry but I don't agree with a blanket statement "loser pays". You can be completely in the right and yet still loose; I have, when a crooked cop in on an insurance scam was part of a lawsuit against me. He "happened to be in the area and was the first responder" lied/falsified accident document about where the accident took place, lied when he said I admitted to speeding and lied when he said I crossed a double yellow line (he did not witness it) based on his accomplice's story (the lady who staged the collision). I was set up and lost in court. Fortunately my insurance company did their own investigation, saw/knew it as a scam, did not charge me with the accident and raise my rates but I still paid the tickets and had them on my license for three years. The plaintiffs accepted a much reduced settlement figure after my insurance company's investigation. They said paying was cheaper than litigating so I loose! Mikey
The idea of "loser pays" is to attach a cost to litigation to discourage frivolous lawsuits. You only go to court when you know you have a good case. We all pay the price of this over litigious society we live in. Just look at the dozens of warnings you see on ladders. I joke that ladders keep getting taller to fit all the warnings.
I agree with Mickey, the loser does not necessarily pay. I posted this a while back (two cases): A New York Yankees catcher flew his Cessna Citration jet into the ground short of a runway in Ohio. His family and the New York Yankees in separate lawsuits sued his flight instructor, Cessna, the manufacturer of the Citation's engines, and just about every manufacturer who had a part on the airplane. The fault of the accident was found to be completely pilot error and that absolutely nothing was wrong with the airplane. It cost Cessna and all the others named in the lawsuits hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer's fees to defend against ...what? Part two: Piper aircraft was sued for over a million dollars over a crash of one of it's light twin-engined airplanes. As in the above case, Piper was found to be not at fault and that the accident was 100% pilot error. The president of Piper was interviewed about the case after the trial and his response was "I don't know how many cases we can afford to win at $75,000 apiece in legal fees.."
Thinking back when I was 16, something like the Tesla or any high powered car wouldn't have been a good idea for me or my friends. To irresponsible for one thing and lacked the kind of skill and judgment required. I don't suppose Tesla has any kind of disclaimer concerning inexperienced drivers, I'm no attorney but maybe that is something that could go against them! Bob H.
I’m in full agreement with most of what’s posted here, but after reading the story again, I think the suit isn’t over crashworthiness, but rather that the car went up in flames after the crash. My .02 says that no battery pack could’ve been armored enough to withstand the impact at that speed, but grief makes people think differently, and there’s always a personal injury attorney looking for their next big payday.
I do not think this is as much about greed as it is about parents who don't want to face the facts that their kid(s) was (were) stupid enough to do something that got him (them) killed. Easier to blame someone else than to accept that it was their kid'(s') fault.
That is pretty darn good reasoning in my book. The weather around here would erase all of it however.
yeah, if we lived anywhere with snow the vette would have simply been sold. My dad never drove the ol' red sled in the snow when he lived on DC, but it's fine down here in FL.
We now learn that Tesla is actually dedicating the feature to the son of a Tesla owner who died in a Model S crash due to what the police believe may have been excessive speed. Tesla owners with vehicle software version “2018.24 or above” and the latest mobile app update (Version 3.4.1) can now access a new speed limiter feature. The automaker describes the feature in the update: “Limit vehicle speed and acceleration with speed limit mode. Maximum vehicle speed can be set between 50-90 mph (80-145 km/h).” When Tesla launched the feature, we speculated that it might be aimed at parents who let their kids drive their Tesla vehicles, which are considered quite powerful vehicles to be used as first cars by teenagers.
Short story. I have a 2006 Pontiac GTO. Oldest son, Drew, used it on his Prom date when the GTO was REALLY new.. I get a call @ 2:30am from scared son saying GTO, there is something really wrong, dad,. It's "beeping" all the time now. Hearing the speed alarm going off, I calmly tell him to slow below 75 mph and the beeping will stop. Oops dad....... His father set the speed alarm @ 75 mph. Kid did not know and did not know how to reset. HAD to slow down. Alarm was really annoying.
