Did Musk Just Try To Kill My Family?

I was driving on the freeway I17 going west of San Jose, a couple of miles from the Santa Cruz mountains, in the heart of the beautiful Silicon Valley. Clear blue sky, 9am. I was in the right, slowest lane, but still at nearly 80 mph, in a 4 wheel drive SUV, with my spouse by my side, my daughter in the back, two empty lanes on the left, and a wide emergency shoulder on the right, which was constricting ahead, as represented in the accompanying photo, taken two miles further on the same road, going the same direction.

I just noticed the constriction, and was thinking of going left, as I prefer space around my vehicle. The freeway was wide, and clear. Generally I am aware of traffic behind me (I check the mirrors and always do before switching lanes).

Suddenly, out of nowhere. with a huge noise a white mammoth, a Tesla Model X going at an infernal pace, surged on my right, swerving violently to avoid the freeway constriction. It was going at least 120 mph (close to 200 km/h). My spouse estimated 150 mph, but that was probably too high. The car passed within inches of ours. This is the first time in my life I get passed furiously, and in the emergency lane! All the more stunning as my part of freeway was empty of cars.

I was so stunned, I said:”I didn’t know Teslas could make that sound.” the horrible and very loud sound in question was the Tesla going over the security grating on the side. After wobbling in the middle of the freeway, fading fast, after a thousand feet or so, the mad Tesla approached a jam of cars and the driver apparently took command, putting the car at less than 60 mph. We came to his level. He was a Chinese looking slightly overweight guy in his fifties or more. He looked stunned, was holding himself ramrod straight, staring ahead with bulging eyes, as if facing the devil, and somebody had put a stake up his wazooo. I didn’t stop for an inquiry as I was meeting family in Santa Cruz and that mountain freeway is the most dangerous in the USA. The Tesla killer made no eye contact.

What happened? Clearly the Tesla was in automatic driving mode, and for some reason accelerated to ungodly speed, and then tried to pass me on the right, in the emergency lane, going around twice the speed limit. 

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[Notice the constriction on the right side. The Tesla SUV passed to my right… Thirty feet from a similar constriction two miles to the east, same freeway!]

Simplicius: Why do you think the US government enabled Musk to provide millions with his fake and incomplete automatic driving system?

Tyranosopher: To develop AI.

Simplicius: They did not say that.

Tyranosopher: What they say is that, once fully safe and operational automatic driving systems will save lives. ABS braking is a primitive form of automated driving and saves lives.  As it is, though, the entire family nearly died because of Musk’s insistence that his “autopilot” is ready. It’s not authorized in Europe. Although some European cars have reached level 3 of driving automation, higher than Tesla. 

Musk said the greater value of Tesla came from automated driving. However, more and more people realize that it doesn’t work. So Tesla has lost roughly half of its market value…

Simplicius: I thought you continually advocate to take greater risks for the long term greater good of all? So you nearly died a martyr to the cause you defend.

Tyranosopher: I am 100% for automatic driving. As it is (ABS), it saves lives. I like to have a car which automatically corrects and keep me in a lane on a curving road. I drove for months two cars recently which put themselves back into the lane on their own… in Europe (and another in the US). However those systems sometimes fail. The fraud has been to try to make people believe such systems work 100% of the time… As ABS does. It’s definitively criminal to present something that works most of the time into something that works 100% of the time, and the difference is dead people.

We, common people, are not astronauts who signed up for a career advancing, but potentially deadly mission. If automatic driving is not ready for deployment in public, it should not be deployed. Besides the physical accident, there is the psychological injury of a near death experience and being treated like a piece of meat in the way of share prices by a multi billionaire.

Simplicius: Aren’t those arguably criminal characters who lead the world?

Tyranosopher: They are, and this is why this is potentially the worst of all possible worlds.

Patrice Ayme

Nota bene: Obama used to go to the Silicon Valley all the time to get advice. I am thoroughly familiar with the mentality there… It’s at the origin of much of the phone culture we can now contemplate…

Addendum, next day: The incident above was close in location to the one who killed an engineer piloting the same vehicle, a Tesla Model X luxury SUV. By coincidence (?????) Tesla settled precipitously the next day that lawsuit….(My essay was posted on April 7 in California, using a GMT time stamp…)

From New York Times:

April 8, 2024

Tesla on Monday settled a lawsuit that blamed the automaker’s driver-assistance software for the death of a California man in 2018, averting a trial that would have focused attention on the company’s technology several months before it plans to unveil a self-driving taxi.

The trial stemming from the death of Wei Lun Huang, an Apple software engineer who went by Walter, was scheduled to start Monday with jury selection. The case was one of the most prominent involving Tesla’s Autopilot software, attracting significant public attention and prompting an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Terms of the settlement with Mr. Huang’s children and other members of his family were not disclosed, and Tesla filed court documents seeking to prevent them from being made public.

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Tags: Automatic Driving, Elon Musk, Silicon Valley, Tesla