What Elon Bought

According to an article published by Reuters the other day, Tesla – Elon Musk’s electric car grift – wants the incoming Trump administration to end a federal requirement that crashes involving self-driving vehicles be publicly reported.

So that people aren’t aware they’re happening.

Probably because just so happens that most of the crashes – some 1,500 of them to date – that have been reported involve Tesla’s self-driving cars. Because Tesla’s self-driving cars constitute the majority of self-driving cars in circulation. According to the Reuters piece, an “analysis of the NHTSA crash data shows Tesla accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported to NHTSA through Oct. 15.”

It also just so happens that Musk sluiced more than a quarter of a billion dollars to the Trump 2024 presidential campaign.

And it appears he’d like a return on his investment.

Tesla was the first to mass-market what is styled “self driving” technology. Only a couple of other car companies even offer it and those that do – e.g., GM’s SuperCruise and Ford’s BlueCruise – are set up for limited use on compatible highways only. Tesla’s Autopilot system is the only one available that allows what is styled “full” self-driving – though with the lawyerly admonition that the driver be “ready to intervene” at all times, just in case.

The word “driver” is italicized to point out the paradox or perhaps Catch-22 is better.

A driver is the person who is driving the car. But if the driver turns over the driving to a self-driving car then he isn’t actually driving; he is more of an observer.

On the other hand, he is supposed to be prepared to take over driving the car when he observes that it is necessary – as when the self-driving tech isn’t noticing something important, such as that kid who just ran into the street.

But if the observer is expected to be ready to drive at any time during the (cough) self-drive, then he is still responsible for being the driver. Yet he is obviously encouraged not to be by the self-driving tech. It is the whole point of the tech, though this cannot be said out loud – for more or less the same reason the manufacturers of catalytic converter “test pipes” could not say out loud what everyone who bought one understood what they were buying one for.

Which wasn’t to “test” anything.

Just the same, everyone who buys Tesla’s self-driving tech does not want to drive their car when the system is engaged. They want to b e able to take a nap or check email or do anything but drive.

This risible business about being “ready to intervene” at any time is exactly that.

Risible.

Of course people with self-driving cars are not going to be “ready to intervene” at all times. They are going to take a nap. Or check their email. Or read a book. The last thing they’re going to do is be “ready to intervene” at all times. Everyone just winks and nods and pretends they will be.

Click “I agree.”

But self-driving tech is imperfect – just like the humans who programmed it and designed it. There will inevitably be situations when the person sitting behind the wheel had better be “ready to intervene” – and immediately – in order to avoid the car running into something or over someone.

The software/programming can’t be ready for everything. Sensors glitch. Things go awry.

Of course, humans run into – and over – things, too. But the distinction – vs. self-driving cars that run into something or over someone – is that when a human-driven car runs into something or over someone, the fault (and thus, responsibility) lies very clearly with the human. Who is responsible when no one is driving the car? Is it the manufacturer of the self-driving tech? Well, no – at least not legally speaking. Remember that bit about the person behind the wheel being “ready to intervene” at all times.

You clicked “I agree,” probably.

And so now it’s on you – the person behind the wheel (and paying the insurance premiums and possibly the civil damages imposed by a court) when your self-driving car ran into something or over someone because you weren’t “ready to intervene.” Because you were taking a nap or checking email.

As an aside, why do self-driving cars even have steering wheels? If they are truly self-driving, that is? Of course, they’re not. Keep in mind that “ready to intervene” business.”

Catch meet 22.

But Tesla wants very much to have its self-driving tech and eat it, too. More finely, it wants to be able to sell its tech as actually “self driving” without any unpleasant reporting about its fallibilities and the attendant necessity to be “ready to intervene” at all times. Because that might result  in people understanding that they take a nap behind the wheel at their own – and others’ – peril.

Thus Tesla’s desire to suppress the reporting about crashes involving self-driving cars – which (again) involves mostly Tesla’s cars. Of course. Naturally. It is in Tesla’s self-interest to not want such facts published. It could be bad for business.

Of a piece with Elon Musk’s opportunistic reversal of his position on federal subsidization of electric cars. Now that Tesla has become the dominant player in the “market” for battery-powered devices, Musk wants the other players to not have the benefit of the same subsidization.

And he knows just the man to help with that.

. . .

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