Tuesday, July 06, 2021

Musk'd

The way Tesla sets things up is: tell everyone the car drives itself, tell drivers they're ultimately responsible, disengage the automation an instant before anything happens to say the driver was actually in control.

Benjamin Maldonado and his teenage son were driving back from a soccer tournament on a California freeway in August 2019 when a truck in front of them slowed. Mr. Maldonado flicked his turn signal and moved right. Within seconds, his Ford Explorer pickup was hit by a Tesla Model 3 that was traveling about 60 miles per hour on Autopilot.

A six-second video captured by the Tesla and data it recorded show that neither Autopilot — Tesla’s much-vaunted system that can steer, brake and accelerate a car on its own — nor the driver slowed the vehicle until a fraction of a second before the crash. Fifteen-year-old Jovani, who had been in the front passenger seat and not wearing his seatbelt, was thrown from the Ford and died, according to a police report.

The AV promoter line was always, "sure there will be some accidents but human drivers have accidents too so these are safer!!!" but haha no they are not safer than human drivers.