Nearly 400 car crashes, involving automated technology, in eleven months were reported, 273 of those being Tesla automobiles. Tesla also recalled over 500,000 cars to fix a faulty pedestrian warning sounds, and they are being investigated for two fatal crashes. While the company has doubled down claiming that their product is a driving assistant, their “Autopilot” and “full self-driving” advertising can be misleading to consumers. Tesla is already being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Uber has also already been charged for a fatal crash by their autonomous vehicle which identified the bicycle rider too late. Even though the report mentioned that there was a human driver in the vehicle who didn’t pay attention, that doesn’t excuse company liability, because when you say things like automated or anything that hints self-driving, the common assumption is that the person doesn’t need to do anything as the responsibility is outsourced to the robot driving the car. The average person will believe they can even take a nap and let the AI take the wheel.
At AI’s current stage, it is nowhere near the level it needs to be to be classified as a safe “autonomous vehicle”. More testing is needed and it must demonstrate to be able to drive in chaotic environments of human drivers. People waive at intersections, flicker their headlights, and do other nonrhythmic movements that AI can miss or misinterpret. But alas, Elon Must does not want to admit that the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be. Doing so would crash his company, but that may happen anyway due to massive lawsuits.
Billionaire Dan O’Dowd’s Dawn Project shows how the Tesla self-driving car repeatedly hits a child size mannequin –
Our new safety test of @ElonMusk’s Full Self-Driving Teslas discovered that they will indiscriminately mow down children.
Today @RealDawnProject launches a nationwide TV ad campaign demanding @NHTSAgov ban Full Self-Driving until @ElonMusk proves it won’t mow down children. pic.twitter.com/i5Jtb38GjH
— Dan O’Dowd (@RealDanODowd) August 9, 2022
New video of Master Scammer Musk’s Full Self-Driving @Tesla ruthlessly mowing down a child mannequin wearing a safety vest in a real school crosswalk. No cones. Room to swerve. Video of pedals.
Everything is real except the child, bc you know what would happen to a real child! pic.twitter.com/a3ut9bpSqG
— Dan O’Dowd (@RealDanODowd) August 15, 2022
He has also shared other videos of users experiencing dangerous quirks from the cars –
Watch this #FSD @Tesla 10.69.2.2 swerve toward a pedestrian waiting to cross the road: “Whoa whoa whoa…I don’t know what we’re going to do here!” @ElonMusk the public did not sign up to be crash test dummies for your defective software. https://t.co/g326tKfFkE
— Dan O’Dowd (@RealDanODowd) October 1, 2022
Musk sent his lawyers to send a cease and desist to Dan, ordering to take down the videos claiming it a smear campaign.
Potential of Robots
There is potential for AI cars. Should man have abandoned the automobile for fear of someone running someone over? Should the plane have been discarded for fear someone will fly it into a building? What about a kitchen knife, designed for cooking food, which some have unfortunately used to hurt others. People have used all sorts of common items for violence, but you can’t hold back progress due to a few mishaps. The problem is when tech executives like Elon Musk who mislead people into blindly believing that AI doesn’t make mistakes or crashes. It depends on how well its programming and technology is.
AI cars have shown potential – breaking for pigeons, they don’t text while driving, they don’t get bored and impatient while driving, and can have better night vision, but it is not yet ready.
Until the bugs have been worked out, AI cars are right now, at best, only potentially suitable for segregated and/or designated routes such as tourist rides at parks, shuttles, and other looped routes that are separated from human drivers and pedestrians. Having a world with all AI cars won’t necessarily end all accidents, and there is also a privacy concern as these cars rely on real time computer vision whose data is shared via WiFi. Elevators close automatically, and there have been fatal accidents, so errors can happen.
Getting rid of the automobile altogether and adopting a holistic transport system of massive rotating city structures, escalators, and high speed shuttle systems are other options, which could be done with basic narrow AI or even without it, to be explored countering Big Tech’s narrative that we must adopt AI in order to make progress.
