> clearly was not paying attention at the time of the crash.
This is the fundamental point that I'm disagreeing with though. As far as I know, Tesla has a very crude system for determining driver attentiveness. They rely ONLY on steering wheel torque, which is an extremely unreliable indicator. They don't do any sort of head or eye tracking. So when Tesla claims a driver wasn't paying attention, all it really means is "we're not sure if their hands were on the wheel".
My car uses the same method, and I constantly get warnings to place my hands on the wheel even when they're both already on the wheel. It's possible to have your hands on the wheel without applying any torque, and that's where this system fails.
When a driver unintentionally crashes into a solid object for no particular reason, noone needs vast knowledge to realize that the driver wasn't paying attention at that time.
This is the fundamental point that I'm disagreeing with though. As far as I know, Tesla has a very crude system for determining driver attentiveness. They rely ONLY on steering wheel torque, which is an extremely unreliable indicator. They don't do any sort of head or eye tracking. So when Tesla claims a driver wasn't paying attention, all it really means is "we're not sure if their hands were on the wheel".
My car uses the same method, and I constantly get warnings to place my hands on the wheel even when they're both already on the wheel. It's possible to have your hands on the wheel without applying any torque, and that's where this system fails.