[They all chose poorly, and it cost her, her life. The New York Post said she was heading back to the main ranch house from the guesthouse, as her 3 year old son was sleeping there. I’ve been a mother for 58 years, and never once, especially when my children were young, did I ever drink and drive because I had the responsibility of being there for them 24/7. The only reason I can think of that she willingly chose to get inebriated is because she had the luxury of a babysitter or nanny to care for the child.]
She didn’t accidentally drink all that alcohol, and as I said in a previous comment, she had a 3 year old son asleep at the house she was going to. The fact that Angela was 50 with a son that young, and not 20, makes a big difference. She should have known better. She didn’t. Ever heard of the Darwin Awards. She’s a shoo-in. Do stupid things, win stupid prizes, or lose your life.
They all chose poorly, and it cost her, her life…… I’ve been a mother for 58 years, and never once, especially when my children were young, did I ever drink and drive because I had the responsibility of being there for them 24/7. The only reason I can think of that she willingly chose to get inebriated is because she had the luxury of a babysitter or nanny to care for the child.
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Really? Choosing poorly? See if you can make that case….
As has been pointed out here already, she was on her own private property and was only driving 300 yards to get to the main ranch house. I’m not saying that as any form of justification but at least it explains a few things. I’m sure there is no one amongst us who hasn’t done things on our own properties that we would never think of doing when off our property. I suppose being ‘drunk’ could be classified as one of those things.
As for ‘being responsible for them 24/7’, there were paid fulltime staff at the ranch at all times. Apparently within minutes of the call from Chao to her friend, at least one of the ranch staff showed up within minutes to try to get her out. Again, the fact she had fulltime staff is not ‘justification’ for getting drunk but one could argue that she was still being responsible by ‘passing the responsibility on to others’ while she partied. Beyond saying that, everything else is an assumption….
Here’s my problem with all this… I think there are some very hard and seriously inconvenient questions that are now almost certainly going to get completely dismissed and whitewashed out of further investigation… and it will happen under the guise of saying “this entire thing happened because Chao was drunk.” The insinuation of that is that it never would have happened if she was sober. Go ahead and see if you can make that case…..
Let’s think about this……. Chao apparently made the mistake of putting the car in reverse when she thought it was in forward. Did that happen only because she was drunk? Others have also reported that the design of the forward-reverse selector on the Tesla is actually somewhat confusing and they too have made that mistake. Was everyone else who has made that mistake also drunk? Assuming that this can be categorized as a design flaw, how people will die by being run over before that is fixed?
Then there is the big question of ‘why couldn’t she get out of the car’? She was on the phone for over 8 minutes and she might have been drunk but she was highly cognizant as she described to her friend that she was trapped and couldn’t open the doors and windows. Can anyone say that a sober person would have gotten out? I highly doubt it since lots of others have also lost their lives in submerged vehicles.... but if all we hear is bleating that “well after all, she was drunk”, that question will never even be examined. And if these cars really are the death traps that they appear to be, that just means that more people will lose their lives before something is done about it….
The whole issue of drowning in a vehicle may sound like it is highly unlikely but even 10 or so years ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was estimating that 600 people die yearly in immersed vehicles…. Some of those were people who were already unconscious when they hit the water but some were cases of simply being trapped and unable to get out. What are the statistics today? I am willing to bet that they are higher (and likely much higher).... In this case, did the windows simply not work once the vehicle was in the water? They are supposed to work for at least a while…. Did they not work because the water completely disabled them immediately? I think I’d like to know if that is unique to Tesla, this vehicle or to other car manufacturers as well. Opening a door would have been almost impossible underwater but regardless, they would automatically have been locked the moment the car was put into motion. In fact, some cars like Corvettes and Caddies don’t have door handles either on the inside or the outside… it’s a button. What role did all the complicated security measures built into the car play in all this? We know one thing for sure, the emergency folks had a serious problem breaking into the car…. If nothing else, when you build a car with glass that is so tough that crooks can’t easily break in, that adds a formidable layer of difficulty to emergency people trying to conduct a rescue.
Angela Chao might have been ‘legally drunk’… but that doesn’t mean the issues of vehicles being death trips should be dismissed. I’m not what one could call a ‘vehicle specialist’ per se but there are several related issues that I’ve been on about for a long time.... My big beef is the fact that all new vehicles are nothing more than computers on wheels that conduct high level surveillance and all what used to be ‘mechanical functions’ have been replaced with ‘electrical functions’ that can only be fixed by the manufacturer. The death of Angela Chao is directly related to all these issues....and I don’t think it has anything to do with alcohol.