I was driving home this afternoon and witnessed this:
The drivers of both vehicles appeared to be fine, the white car and trailer not so much. I called 911 to report the incident, then filled out one of these for each of the drivers:
As you know, your Tesla sees (and records) everything! So if you’re in a similar situation, tap the video record button to save the current clip which can then be provided to the police, insurance company, etc. As a Tesla owner, this is so easy to do, and could make a big difference when it comes to the question of liability and insurance claims for the parties involved.
Here are my Dashcam recording settings (Auto and On Honk):
But when I see something happen and want to record a clip without honking the horn, I just press the square camera button at the bottom of the screen, and voila, the video is saved – easy!
Really, you should do this. Accidents, and especially post-accident recall by those who were involved, can be very complicated to make sense of sometimes. Being able to provide a video recording of the incident is invaluable and you now have the tools to provide it.
PS – Having provided each driver with the ‘incident card’ shown above, my contact information was added to the police report even though I wasn’t physically present. The police called later in the evening and I told him what the video showed (which, by the way, is much more reliable than I would have been as a visual witness without the video record). I expect the next call will be from the insurance company asking for a copy of the recording, and that’s fine. Again, I’m not claiming to be a ‘reliable witness’, but instead must let the video speak for itself. The video has been saved off to my PC for safekeeping…
** update **
The next call was actually from the driver of the white car who wanted a copy of the video. It’s hard to imagine his response seeing the whole thing replayed again from a different viewpoint! This additional perspective adds a lot of information that would otherwise be lost or ‘imagined’. I’m just thankful Tesla gives us this capability by design, and that we can be a service to others as a result.