Dutch forensic scientists have successfully broken open electric carmaker Tesla’s closely guarded driver data storage system, discovering information that could be used to investigate serious accidents.
The Netherlands Forensic Institute on Thursday said it was the first institute to succeed in reading, translating and publishing the coded driving data that Tesla stores in its cars.
It said it was making its results public so road accident analysts around the world can also benefit from the information. “It helps finding the truth after accidents,” it said on its website.
It was already known that Tesla cars store data from accidents, but the NFI said it had discovered far more data than investigators had previously been aware.
The NFI said the decrypted data showed Tesla vehicles stored information about the operation of its driver assistance system, known as Autopilot. The vehicles also record speed, accelerator pedal position, steering wheel angle and brake usage, and depending on how the vehicle is used, that data can be stored for more than a year.
"These data contain a wealth of information for forensic investigators and traffic accident analysts and can help with a criminal investigation after a fatal traffic accident or an accident with injury," Francis Hoogendijk, a digital investigator at the NFI, said.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Dutch lab said that rather than seek the data from Tesla, it had "reverse engineered" data logs – a process where software is deconstructed to extract information – present in Tesla vehicles "to objectively investigate them".
The NFI described which information can be found in the different types of Tesla vehicle and how to access this data.
It also found that speed measurements were very accurate.
“We carried out tests with a Tesla Model S, so that we could record the accuracy of the registered measurements,” says Hoogendijk.
“Having this kind of data allows for a more detailed investigation of accidents, especially into the role of driver assistance systems,” Mr Hoogendijk said.
“In a Dutch case it showed how a driver got too much confidence in the Autopilot. The driver did not notice that he was only activating the adaptive cruise control and not the lane keeping assistant and then became distracted for too long. This caused the Tesla to end up in the other lane, resulting in a fatal crash.”
With the data it is also possible to reconstruct the route to a certain extent, even though the logs do not contain GPS information, Mr Hoogendijk said: “If one knows a location and course in time, it is possible to calculate the speed of the use the vehicle and the position of the steering wheel.”
The NFI also investigated a collision involving a Tesla driver using Autopilot and a car in front of it that suddenly braked hard.
The investigation showed the Tesla driver reacted within the expected response time to a warning to resume control of the car, but the collision occurred because the Tesla was following the other vehicle too closely in busy traffic.
"That makes it interesting, because who is responsible for the following distance: the car or the driver?" said NFI investigator Aart Spek.
The NFI said Tesla encrypts its coded driving data to keep its technology secure from other manufacturers and protect driver privacy. Car owners can request their data, including camera footage, in the event of an accident.
You cannot claim what you do not know, so it's helpful that we now know what else is being stored
This year, Tesla said it had established a site in China to store car data locally, as carmakers came under growing scrutiny over how they handle information collected by vehicle cameras and sensors.
The NFI found that Tesla had complied with data requests from the Dutch authorities, but left out a lot of information that could have proven useful.
"Tesla however only supplies a specific subset of signals, only the ones requested, for a specific timeframe, whereas the log files contain all the recorded signals," the NFI's report said.
By decrypting Tesla's code, the NFI now knows more about what kind of data the carmaker is storing and for how long, allowing for more detailed data requests, Mr Hoogendijk said.
"You cannot claim what you do not know, so it's helpful that we now know what else is being stored," he said.
Mr Hoogendijk said this also applies to other carmakers, as investigators simply do not know how much and what kind of data that manufacturers store or for how long.
Tesla has remote access to the data, the lab said, which is periodically uploaded from cars and used by the company for product improvements or to fix malfunctions.
The NFI said it had obtained data from Tesla models S, Y, X and the mass-market Model 3 and shared the results at a conference of the European Association for Accident Research so that other accident analysts can use it.
In August, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a formal safety probe into Tesla's Autopilot system in 765,000 vehicles after a series of crashes involving Tesla models and emergency vehicles.
To date, NHTSA has identified 12 crashes that involved Tesla vehicles using the advanced driver-assistance systems and emergency vehicles. NHTSA said most of the incidents took place after dark.
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Terror attacks in Paris, November 13, 2015
- At 9.16pm, three suicide attackers killed one person outside the Atade de France during a foootball match between France and Germany
- At 9.25pm, three attackers opened fire on restaurants and cafes over 20 minutes, killing 39 people
- Shortly after 9.40pm, three other attackers launched a three-hour raid on the Bataclan, in which 1,500 people had gathered to watch a rock concert. In total, 90 people were killed
- Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the terrorists, did not directly participate in the attacks, thought to be due to a technical glitch in his suicide vest
- He fled to Belgium and was involved in attacks on Brussels in March 2016. He is serving a life sentence in France
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
What sanctions would be reimposed?
Under ‘snapback’, measures imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council in six resolutions would be restored, including:
- An arms embargo
- A ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing
- A ban on launches and other activities with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, as well as ballistic missile technology transfer and technical assistance
- A targeted global asset freeze and travel ban on Iranian individuals and entities
- Authorisation for countries to inspect Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines cargoes for banned goods
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Labour dispute
The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.
- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law
Profile of RentSher
Started: October 2015 in India, November 2016 in UAE
Founders: Harsh Dhand; Vaibhav and Purvashi Doshi
Based: Bangalore, India and Dubai, UAE
Sector: Online rental marketplace
Size: 40 employees
Investment: $2 million
EA Sports FC 26
Publisher: EA Sports
Consoles: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S
Rating: 3/5
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
