I last posted about the frustrations with the dashcam not automatically saving footage to a separate file when in an accident, and not requiring any human input within the first 10 minutes of the crash (since it's simply not a thing most normal people will remember to do). I wanted to give you all a bit of an update in how we were able to get the dashcam footage, and the runaround required.

Firstly in terms of the damage, we're looking at around $40k in damage for both the front and rear end since we were hit from behind and pushed into an SUV in front of us. After looking at the footage, it's a bit hard to see but there's a chance the driver who rear-ended us wasn't paying attention until the very last second, and because she hit us as a relatively higher than normal rate of speed when one is slowing down, the damage to the rear was more extensive than originally thought. Good times.

Anyway, getting the footage was a bit of a headache, but we managed to do it and I wanted to pass along to all of you how it happened and the restrictions in place.

So if you're in a position like us where you didn't capture the footage, like others have commented that footage is sent to the Tesla cloud (about 12 seconds leading up to and including the collision event). However there are only two ways to get it.

The first way is going through Tesla's website and submitting a data request. You have to select your vin, and the dates of when you'd like the data delivered to you.

The second way is getting a $1200 EDR cable. Yeah, no. I did ask the body shop where it's at to see if they could pull some of the data too so I have as much info as possible, but that's still pending.

I went the first route. I made the initial request after calling Tesla's customer service line and having them tell me I was outside of the 72 hour window of when they could get it to us. This is important because this piece of info isn't readily available unless you either call or do some digging (or post on Reddit in my case). The rep told me to submit the request, and the next day I was met with this email:

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lovely

Here's the rub: I'm a California resident. I bought the car in Chicago, had an accident in Georgia, and was on my way to Florida. But at the end of the day I'm a CA resident. The problem is that they don't give you an option to declare this and submit proof of residency when making this request. I went back to Tesla and chatted with a rep over web and made my case. She wasn't quite understanding the issue with how this was a violation of the CCPA, and had a supervisor call me. To Tesla's credit, the supe that did call me was very helpful and understood that they were required by CCPA to submit this to me. I also sent an email to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) (the group that handles these data requests) and reaffirmed my residency, etc. This was yesterday.

This morning I woke up to this email:

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sweet!

I downloaded a lovely little zip file and voila! Footage of the crash:

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all angles

Here's the video of us getting hit:

ouch

We're in the process right now if determining whether or not the lady who hit us wasn't paying attention (on her phone or distracted) as well finding out some info on the car which caused the entire pileup.

I wanted to say thanks to all of you for the help and suggestions on how to pursue this. The next step will be cleaning up the footage to get some more insight into what the lady who hit us was doing, and the plates on the Chevy that caused the whole pileup and sped off on I-75S.