Life with a Tesla Part 2 - The Accident
Driving a Tesla is VERY different from an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) car, and it times it can be dangerous!
The Tesla, like other EVs, drives using one-pedal driving. This means you use the accelerator for both accelerating and for braking. If you press the accelerator, the car moves. If you take your foot off the accelerator the car will brake very quickly without even using the brakes. Even if you just lighten the pressure on the accelerator, the car will slow down. The Tesla does have a brake pedal, but once you get use to one-pedal driving you rarely use it. The rims on my Tesla are still very clean as they don't really get any brake dust on them because I rarely need to use the brakes.
This type of one-pedal driving can be dangerous at first when you are still learning to drive it as you end up jerking up the road, with sudden, unexpected stops. It can take some time to get the hang of this kind of driving. I was scared to drive on the highway with my Tesla for a while because I was worried I'd make these sudden stops and the car behind me would plow into me, causing an accident. I also kept my old ICE car for several months after I bought the Tesla so I was frequently switching between one-pedal driving and standard driving. This made it more difficult for me to adapt to one-pedal driving. I finally ended up selling my old ICE car recently, so now I'm driving the Tesla full time. I've become a lot more comfortable driving it since then. Given the initial difficulties learning one-pedal driving, if you see a Tesla on the highway, give it lots of room as the person driving it may be new to this type of driving. You should also avoid driving the Tesla on the highway for a while, if possible, while you get used to this new way of driving.
That said, once you get used to one-pedal driving, it is a much better way of driving. It even feels like you have more control over the car because you can easily accelerate and slow down without moving your foot constantly back and forth between the accelerator and the brake. Now that I've gotten used to it, I rarely need the brakes, and I can easily slow to a stop at a traffic light with no brakes. In fact, I often find myself stopping way before the line at the traffic light because the 'braking' is so good.
The acceleration on the Tesla is phenomenal. My 2022 Tesla Model Y Long Range has the equivalent of 425 horsepower, and this is on a SUV that weighs over two tons! I used to have a 300 HP Camaro Z28 that was incredibly fast. That car would be across the intersection when the traffic light goes green before any other cars even start crossing the intersection. The same goes with the Tesla. That said, the acceleration feels very weird compared to an ICE car because it is silent and perfectly smooth. You hit the accelerator and the car just takes off. There's no hesitation, there's no roar of the engine, and there's no 'jerking' as the car rapidly shifts gears. A friend of mine described it as 'a roller coaster launch' and this is true. It just goes from 0 to speed in seconds without you even feeling it. It's a wild experience. The car accelerates very fast, but you don't feel like it is accelerating at all. If you don't watch the speedometer, it's easy to go 80+ MPH without realizing it. I like it!
The Tesla has a series of cameras that have a view of all 4 sides of the car, and even the interior. These cameras, plus the large screen, plus the onscreen guides, makes backing into a parking space trivial. I've always been nervous about backing into parking spaces, because I can't judge distances well. With the Tesla, it's easy to back into any parking space. Heck, it's almost easier to back into a parking space then to drive forward into a parking space. The rear visibility out the back window though, is practically non-existent. Thankfully, the cameras more than make up for this deficiency.
The cameras on the Tesla are always watching the road on all four sides. The computer inside the car is able to identify where other cars are relative to itself and it displays this on the screen. This means, you can easily see if cars are coming up on either side, even if they are in your blind spot. This awareness of other cars also means that the car is very good about warning you if you are about to change lanes and hit the car next to you. If you are doing this and it thinks you are going to hit the car next to you, the car on the screen will turn red and the car will beep loudly at you to warn you. I believe it also will try to avoid crashes by stopping you from changing lanes, but I've thankfully never had to test this.
While the Tesla can detect multiple cars in the lanes to your left and right, it is a bit more limited in what it can detect in the lane in front of you or behind you. Because the front cameras look straight ahead, and are at roughly eye level, they can only see the car directly in front of you. This means that even if there are multiple cars in front of you, it can only really see the one directly in front of you and not the car in front of that. The same goes for behind you. At best, it can see 1 or 2 cars in front or behind you. I don't think this is a serious problem, but it's something to be aware of.
The Tesla has the ability to mostly drive itself to your destination. This is not a standard feature and costs an additional $15,000 currently. The car has all the hardware needed to do this. If you purchase this feature, it's simply a software upgrade. That said, this feature has been beta for a long time, and so I don't trust it. Besides, why would I pay $15K to test a beta product? I did not purchase this feature on my Tesla and I have no plan to any time soon.
The built in navigation system is pretty good. It will route you to whatever place you want to go. It's not perfect though, and sometimes routes you on weird paths that don't make sense. Once, while in Orlando, I told it to route me to the Epcot parking lot. It kept trying to route me to drive into the parking lot of a fire station, rather than the regular parking entrance! I suspect this fire station might have some kind of special access road that goes to the Epcot parking lot, but that's obviously not something that the average driver can use.
My biggest complaint about the Tesla is the feel of the ride. It is very rough. You feel every bump in the road as you are driving. On bad roads, you get bounced all over the place. I'm used to driving sedans where the ride is very smooth. This Tesla is my first SUV, so maybe this is typical of SUVs, but I have to say, I'm not happy with this.
]]>Five days after I got my brand new Tesla, I got rear ended on the highway.
I have been working from home for the last couple of years at my job. However, my mom was recovering from surgery so instead of working from home, I spent most days for several months commuting to my mom's house to work from there to help her if need be as she recovered from surgery.
I was making my morning commute to mom's house down the highway in morning rush hour traffic. I had only had the car for a few days, so driving on the highway in rush hour makes me very nervous. I was in the middle lane when suddenly I felt a bump from the rear. I knew instantly what it was.
I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the car behind me swerving wildly on the highway. Clearly this was the car that just hit me. I pulled over on the side of the road (on the wrong side, stupidly). The woman driving the car that had rear ended me lost control after hitting me briefly. She swerved for a bit but eventually got her car under control. Unfortunately when she started swerving the car behind her plowed right into her. It ended up being a three car accident with me at the front, the car that caused the accident in the middle and another car in the rear.
I stupidly pulled over to the left side of the road as it was the first place I could find to pull over. The other two cars pulled over to the right side of the road. Of course this was on a busy highway so I had no way to get myself or the car across to the right side of the road. The highway patrol ended up having to stop all traffic on the highway for a few minutes so that I could pull my car back onto the highway and move back to the right side. Of course by this point, I was a good half mile or so down the road from the other two cars. The officer insisted that I back my car up on the side of the road so all 3 cars were together. The Tesla has terrible rear visibility and this made me very nervous to be going backwards on the side of the road with cars right next to me coming straight at me. This backing up job didn't go well. I backed up slowly but ended up grazing the railing on the side of the road as I backed up causing additional damage to the right rear of my car. The woman who had hit me had hit the left rear side of the car, so now I had damage to both the left rear and right rear of my brand new, five day old car.
The drivers of the 3 cars all got out and talked to the traffic officer. He got everyone's stories. The woman in the middle admitted to hitting me. She was trying to pass me on the left, but was too close and so grazed the side of my car. The damage to my car didn't look that bad and the car was perfectly drivable, but it was damaged. Her car had some damage but was also drivable. The poor guy in the back plowed head on into her car. The front of his car caved in and that car was probably totaled. After a good hour of this, the traffic office took all out information, issued the woman in the middle a ticket and we all went on our ways.
She was clearly at fault. The traffic officer gave all 3 of us a paper containing contact information for all 3 people involved in the accident as well as their car insurance information. Later that day I called her insurance to report the accident. Of course her insurance company said they had to investigate to determine who was at fault. Um, the police already determined that your customer was at fault. Fix my car! It took her insurance company a week to do their 'investigation' but ultimately they admitted fault. I was told to find a body shop, give them the information and the insurance company would take care of the costs for repair and a car rental.
I found a good body shop that specialized in Tesla repairs in the area. I took my car there and they inspected the car. They made an estimate of what needed to be repaired. Unfortunately, since this is a Tesla, the only parts they can order are from Tesla, so it would take 3 weeks to order the parts. Contracts were signed, and parts were ordered. I drove my brand new, dented Tesla home.
Three weeks later I brought the Tesla back to the body shop to fix it. By this point, I'd had a brand new Tesla that I drove for 5 days and a dented brand new Tesla that I drove for a month! Most of the time I'd been driving my Tesla, it was a dented, ugly thing. The repairs were estimated at $11,000 dollars. It took an additional 3 weeks to fix the car. In the meantime, they gave me a rental Toyota Camry to drive. It was a decent car, but only had 4 cylinders, so it was nowhere equal to the Tesla, which has amazing acceleration. Oh well. Yes, I still had my old gas-powered Lexus that I could have driven in the meantime, but that was a 10 year old car and dammit, she wrecked my car, so I'm going to make her pay for a rental too! :)
Three and a half weeks later, I finally get my fixed Tesla back. It looked great. The body shop did an excellent job fixing it. Unfortunately since I had caused the damage on the right side of the car grazing the railing when backing up on the side of the road, the insurance didn't pay for that so I had to pay almost $1,000 out of pocket to fix that. The other $11,000 in repairs was paid for by her insurance.
I had been checking in on my car while it was in the body shop. The Tesla app shows you on a map exactly where your car is located at all times, and even has a way to view the cameras on the car remotely. I thought I would be able to spy on the repair shop as they fixed my car. That turned out not to be true. When a Tesla is being repaired, it is put in Service Mode. This limits the speed the car can be driven at, and also disables most of the functionality in the Tesla app. All I could do was see where the car was on a map, how much charge it had, and which doors, hood etc. were open.
I had dropped off the car with a mostly full charge, but when I picked it up the large was very low. I complained that the car should have been recharged before I picked it up. The body shop explained that normally they do, but their EV charger stations were not working due to some repairs. They offered to drive my car to a nearby Supercharger and charge it for me for free. I agreed. It turns out that if you use a Tesla Supercharger, it's not free. It charges your credit card for the cost of the charging. This was about $20 worth of a charge. They offered to discount my repair by that $20 to offset the charge that was on my credit card. I agreed. They ended up taking $30 off the cost for that $20 charge, so I even saved a bit there. All in all, I was very happy with the work of the body shop. I had to go back the next day to the body shop to get a few minor things fixed, but they did that right away, no problem.
A few months ago, I got a subpoena to appear in court as a witness for the traffic ticket for the lady who caused the accident. Of course this court date ended up being the same day as Hurricane Ian was due to hit the area, so that court date got cancelled.
The court date got rescheduled to a month or so later. I went to the traffic court appointment. If you've ever been to traffic court, you know how it is. It's a big court room with dozens of people in it and a lot of police officers. They then run through dozens of traffic ticket cases at once. Each ticket lasts maybe a minute or two in front of the judge. The police officer who gives the ticket also has to show up to give their side of the story. After an hour of sitting, watching other cases go through, they called my name. I was the only one involved in the accident to show up. The police officer never showed up, and neither of the other two people in the accident showed up. The judge asked me a few questions regarding the accident which I answered. The woman who hit me ended up with a $175 fine. I was a bit annoyed with this considering the damage she caused to my car, and the money it ended up costing me out of pocket, but that's it. I think had I NOT shown up the case would have been thrown out, so by my appearing, at least she had to pay $175. That's better than nothing I suppose.
]]>There's very little you have to do to take delivery of a Tesla. Nearly everything is done online through their Tesla app. The only thing I really had to do was show up, pay them, and then drive off. That said, it was a simple buying experience, but by no means a perfect delivery.
I had my brother give me a ride to the Tesla location to pick up the car. I had decided to keep my old car for the time being, so I didn't have a car to trade, so I couldn't just drive in with one car and drive off with another. When I arrived, my car was sitting in the parking lot, all washed and ready to go with my name on it.
Unfortunately the car was locked. I asked to inspect the inside of the car before I took delivery and they outright refused. They basically said, take it or leave it. This made me angry. It was basically, "F*ck you. Take delivery now or we'll give it to someone else. We don't care." I was NOT happy with this, but then buying a car is NEVER a fun process, so I took delivery. The car has a warranty anyway, so anything that is wrong can be fixed under warranty. They remotely unlocked the car, assigned it to my Tesla app and that was it.
I walked out and got in the car. It already had a new license plate installed, complete with Tesla license plate frame. On the dash was all the paper work and the two keycards for the car. The Tesla uses NFC cards as the 'keys' and not regular car keys. You then use these keys to pair your Tesla app on your phone to the car. Once you do this, you no longer need the keys to get in or out. You just walk up to the car, it recognizes your phone and unlocks for you. Of course you should always keep one of those cards in your wallet in case there are issues with the Tesla app unlocking the car (which I have had since).
Everything in the car looked good barring a few very minor details. Tesla gives you 100 miles to report any issues with the car on delivery. My brother got in his car and left and I drove off the lot. The camera system in the Tesla needs calibrating when you first get it, so all the features don't work right away. This calibration usually requires around 20 miles of driving. Since it was a good 20 miles from the Tesla location to my home, that was done on the drive home. I drove it VERY carefully home.
So far so good. Things would go downhill soon though, through no fault of Tesla...
]]>And yes, I backed up the database and the website this time! :)
]]>Thankfully, the Internet Archive has a full backup of my site, so I've been going through recreating all the old blog posts and updating any outdated links along the way.
And if you are wondering what the title means...
]]>I was in my local Wal-Mart this past Sunday afternoon picking up some quarantine supplies. While in there, I happed to go by the LEGO aisle. I always check this aisle because sometimes you can find sets on clearance at a good discount. I didn't find any good discounts, but I happened to see this set on the shelf all by itself. I knew it was coming out in April but I didn't remember when. I was not all that interested in this model when I saw the announcement on Facebook, but I had a feeling that I might have stumbled across it on sale a few days early. I have found sets on sale early at this particular Wal-Mart before, but the last time the set was only on sale a day early and it wasn't even in their cash register system. I scanned this model using the Wal-Mart app on my phone and found out that it was listed as costing $99. Ok, I guess maybe they released it. I'll buy it.
I get home and check on the release date of this model. It isn't supposed to be released for 3 more weeks! I've never found one on sale that early! I thought it would be an interesting little find so I posted a photo on the Facebook LEGO Technic Group. It blew up! Several people claimed my photo was Photoshop as a site that checks for Photoshop fakes incorrectly identified it as fake (it was not) and that Wal-Mart's Point of Sale system should not have let me buy it that early. I wasn't planning on building it right away, as I was in the middle of building another set, but there was so much requests for more photos and more information on the set, I opened it up. After posting some more pictures, the skeptics on Facebook finally believed me that it was real. I set out to open it up and start building it so everyone else could get an early look at it. Here's what I found.
All in all, this was a pretty easy build. The numbered bags greatly reduce the number of pieces you have to search through to finish each stage of the build. I often have trouble with Technic models that contain a lot of gears, but this one did not have that many, so it was no problem. There were a couple of places where the instructions had you insert pieces into weird angles. I rarely come across sets that require these weird steps, but this one definitely had a few. There were also a couple places where the instructions don't show clearly what needs to be done, so I had to guess based on visually comparing the before and after photos. This particular problem happens way too often in LEGO instructions.
This is a fairly cheap model of a cool hot rod car. I really like the design of the engine and suspension, but I don't like the car's body. I'm not a big fan of Technic designs that looks overly 'hole-y' wit lots of gaps in them. This model definitely qualifies as one of those. The entire body is full of holes. This set would serve as a good base for a hot rod model, but toss the ugly body. I much prefer the more clean look of the non-Technic Ford Mustang model. If you like Technic models, it's a fun build, if you prefer the more clean lines of traditional LEGO models, skip this one in favor of the Ford Mustang model.
]]>The first step in reviving the blog is to bring it up to the latest versions of everything. As such, I just updated the blog to the newest version of the blogging software. It was probably over a year out of date up until now.
However, the biggest change I am happy to make is to switch the entire site to full, always on SSL, through the awesome new LetsEncrypt. LetsEncrypt is a new certificate authority that provides automatic and FREE SSL certificates to everyone! How awesome is that?
Kudos also go to my longtime webhost - Dreamhost for providing support for LetsEncrypt right on their webpanel. Well done guys!
So the blog just got a fresh coat of paint and is now fully secure. A good start to a renewed blog.
]]>Shipping fees
Comcast wanted to charge me $10 to ship the new cable box to them. I suggested they give me free shipping since I was a new customer. The sales agent agreed, but said he couldn't give me the $10 credit until AFTER I received the box. He put a note in the computer that I was offered the $10 credit and said to call back after I got the service enabled and they'd give me the credit. I did call today and they did give me the credit. However, It's stupid that they can't offer this ahead of time.
Impersonal service
Comcast sends you a box and expects you to set it up yourself. U-verse has a technician come out and set up everything for you. AT&T doesn't charge for this. Better service is always a good thing
Can't turn the Wifi on the cable modem off
I already have a very good Wifi router - a brand new Apple Airport Extreme Time Capsule. I don't need another Wifi signal in my house and an inferior one. I looked everywhere through the router setup website, read the router manual and could find no instructions for turning the Wifi off. U-verse easily allows you to do this on their router. I did some Googling about this issue, and it seems you have to call Comcast and have them shut off the Wifi on your router remotely. Um, no, I do NOT like this. I wasn't even supposed to get a router with Wifi. I told them I already had wifi and didn't need it, but they sent me one with it anyway.
They want to use the Internet service I pay for to provide 'free' Wifi to others
Recently I came across this article that explains how Comcast has been testing a new service that turns their customer's Xfinity modem into a free public Wifi hotspot. They say that this service won't effect the bandwidth of the customer, but I am very skeptical of this. Granted this service isn't active in my area yet, but I'm not happy about Comcast deciding to use my paid for service to offer free Wifi to others. I strongly suspect it WILL affect the bandwidth of my service, and I'm also concerned with the potential legal issues of allowing others to use my Wifi connection. Who's to say what type of illegal activities could be carried out over a connection that is identified with me? I won't subject myself to this.
Useless and invasive 'install' software
When I got the Comcast cable modem box, I set it up and went through the online account activation. This is a series of web pages where you enter your account information, set up a Xfinity website email account etc. At the end of this web based account setup, it gets to a final page that tells me I have to download and run an install program to finish the install. I don't recall it saying WHAT this install program would do, but I don't think it said much. I was skeptical of why I'd need this program when I saw this. It can't be required to connect to the service, because the service is simply Wifi. In addition, the service will work on any device that uses Wifi (cell phones, iPads, laptops, Windows, Macs etc.) so it didn't seem of much use. Despite that, I went ahead and downloaded the app and installed it on my Mac. It didn't seem to do much, and it was a very small download. It did tell me at the end of the install that I had to restart all my web browsers. This again raised red flags to me. Why does it need to restart my web browsers? What did it change in my web browsers that required a restart? I restarted my web browsers and noticed that suddenly the home page of my web browser had been changed to the Xfinity web site without my permission. In addition, it added a couple of links to Xfinity websites to my desktop. These 3 changes appear to be all that this install program did. So let me get this straight. I have to install this program to finish my installation? All it did was essentially give me 3 web site URLs. This is completely useless. They could have easily included a piece of paper with this information and not had to mess with my PC in order to throw links to their stuff everywhere. I especially resent the changing of my browser homepage without my permission. You do NOT do this.
Xfinity Intercepts SSL connections!
This was the last straw. This morning, I was on my Mac, using Chrome to browse eBay. I found something small I wanted to buy so I clicked on the Buy Now button on eBay. This button took me to signin.ebay.com over an HTTPS SSL connection. However, when I did this, Chrome displayed a full page warning in the browser window that a comcast.com URL was identifying itself as signin.ebay.com! This means that the Comcast system was intercepting my secure, encrypted SSL connection to signin.ebay.com and redirecting it through one of their own sites. This is what in security circles is known as a man in the middle attack. Had I not noticed this, Comcast would have been able to access anything sent over this secure connection - including credit card numbers, account names and passwords. This is unacceptable. A short time later, on the same Mac I was using iTunes and I got a warning message saying that the secure certificate on the iTunes Store was invalid. I suspect Comcast was intercepting this SSL connection as well. I suppose it's possible Comcast is doing this to do some kind of optimization of their network, but this is unacceptable. You do not intercept secure communications, Comcast. This is 'grounds for termination' with me.
I called a bit earlier and was able to get that $10 credit and cancel my account without any problems. Since I cancelled the service within the first 30 days, they said their would be no charge. We'll see if they send me a bill or not. About the only thing good I can say about their service is that it's extremely fast - 50Mb/s was giving me almost 6.7MB/sec download speeds. This is much faster than the 26Mb/sec service that U-Verse was giving me. I get at most about 2.9MB/sec download speeds on U-verse. However, I'll take this slower speed if it means I'm not dealing with an invasive, impersonal service.
This whole Xfinity experiment was a collossal failure. Back to U-verse for me.
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