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Father and son incinerated after ‘self-driving’ Tesla suddenly slammed into tree
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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People trusting Tesla to successfully deliver on any of Elon’s promises after it consistently fails to is astonishing.
Self driving was supposedly going to be ready by something like 2016. 10 years later teslas can drive themselves into trees.
(rant incoming I didn't mean to direct all this at you specifically lol but here I go pressing reply anyway)
Telsas are especially ridiculous for this because they sold this "auto pilot" lie but I did a bit of a deep dive into "driver aids" and in particular the stuff that is mandated in new cars by law, and it is fucking terrifying.
Any laws mandating complex driver aid stuff are looking like regulatory capture artifacts to me now. The tech isn't ready, it isn't reliable and there are regular cars from makers you would normally trust, that have a habit of trying to swerve the cars into crash barriers.
I'm talking about the shit that's supposed to stop you from accidentally leaving your lane, or detecting a potential collision and slowing down, or braking distance maintenance stuff. Almost none of it is reliable enough to trust your life to without paying even closer attention than you need to just to drive a car normally. (Read: it becomes a distraction at best)
Euro, Asian, American, all makers from all regulatory regions have issues with one or more or all of their driver aids according to the studies I read.
I was chatting with neighbours recently and they all turn that shit off when they get in the car. if they can. the ones who can't or dont know how just drive terrified.
This stuff breaks the cybernetic loop (operator <---> machine, continuous exchange of data) of driving which we all took for granted and don't understand the value of. Its so dangerous. The way we on average have forgotten how to use computers and are "just along for the ride" as far as our personal tech devices go, is rapidly becoming true also for hurling multi ton machines down roads at high speed with us inside them.
I’ve never owned a car with the type of driver “aid” you’re talking about. It’s rare that I drive (or even get driven by something other than a bus or train), even, but I won’t deny I’ve got a dumb car that doesn’t try to steer me into trees - it’s basically all on me if I crash.
There are automotive technologies that have definitely made my driving “safer”: I’ve felt ABS kick in when I suddenly hit the brakes way too hard because I was dumb enough to think that I can devote less complete attention to my surroundings. I wouldn’t have had the muscle memory to pump the brakes myself. Being able to stop faster because a computer knew to pump the brakes for me, I have no doubt, has prevented me from an accident.
The idea that I could be so distracted as to be saved from an accident by “lane assist” technology is terrifying.
Having had plenty of cars nearly buzz me on my bike, I’m absolutely certain that when I drive I’m paying far more attention than way too many people do, though.
(again this one went off the rails. not a rant at you obviously lol. this topic gets me fired up, clearly)
Yeah the most tech I've had in a personal car is basic airbags, ABS, power steering, etc. I like more and better mechanical safety mechanisms, but I don't want to drive-by-wire and have a servo system running the steering or other important controls.
Properly functioning lane assist probably saves a lot of lives due to driver fatigue. I see people wander out of their lanes to a degree that makes me go "okay prepare for a crash" a few times a year on highways.
What concerns me perhaps more than anything is that even the most disinterested driver behind the wheel of a 20 year old car becomes a critical part of the control loop for the whole machine. This sounds scary, but the whole system tends to work pretty well so long as the driver has a good basic education in driving and the risks of distracted and fatigued driving. The human part of the system extends its senses to absorb what it reads from the car and the mind becomes to one extent or another, "tasked" with the job of becoming the eyes and brain of the whole mechanical system.
As you remove direct control and feedback from the machine the driver stops being the organic mediating part of the whole system and the various ways this starts to make everything more dangerous are not easy to quantify at least for a lay person like me.
An illustrative part of the problem though, keeping with lane assist, is that these technologies are training and conditioning drivers that there is a much larger margin of error for distraction.
If you are a fresh driver and you're driving a car that catches you and guides you back into your lane while you turn in your seat to chat to your friends on the back seat, and that is all you know, then in aggregate you are creating the conditions for more distracted driving accidents rather than reducing the severity of the existing rate of distracted driving accidents.
These assists ostensibly free up mental space so you can be an even better driver, more capable of paying attention to what matters, but since we are removing people from the machine they don't re-allocate their attention to other aspects of managing the vehicle, they use it to do stupid human shit.
That same fresh driver also hasn't learned to notice other people being inattentive. It becomes a social problem too.
Suddenly you find yourself in the driver's seat of the car. You don't even have to reach over to grab the wheel and avert disaster. Instead you watch the car drive you and your son into a tree. Because you are just along for the ride. You aren't really responsible anymore on a basic mechanical level.
I imagine you've noticed the little lights on wing mirrors now that show whether the car has detected a vehicle alongside or in their blindspot? I doubt they work as well for bikes as they do other cars.
Even if they do, a driver who has grown up expecting them to work isn't going to also perform shoulder and mirror checks before merging.
You already know how many people never bothered checking even when it was just an act of faith that they were clear to move over. Now you've got people looking at a little light or relying on a buzz in the steering wheel or whatever, instead of turning their fucking head.
What happens when there's bird shit on the light or on the sensor? All they had to do was turn their fucking head and now they've killed someone. Thanks for the driver assistance.
People blame covid and pandemic measures for the current state of driver ability etc but personally I think its this shit I'm describing.
The US navy has studied cybernetics for a really long time, thats the thing with a person becoming a part of the mechanical system. There's no good rational excuse for us to be making this massive error as a society, but we won't avoid it thanks to mechanisms like regulatory capture. It is unavoidable that this will get worse.
Passengers should be in the passenger seat and/or on public transport not behind the wheel. ;-;
Even without the disclaimers, I don’t think I’d have taken either of these as directed at me, though I’m sure I’ve misinterpreted people in that way. S’all good.
Haha, holy shit, I’ve briefly had a car without power steering. Fucking nightmare. Shit’s not safe. Having my rear brakes low level leaking brake fluid was better than that, and that was incredibly bad.
On the one hand, I’m sure it has prevented accidents, but this really just reinforces my terror - if someone can’t recognize when they’re so fatigued that they’re relying on lane assist technology to keep them from crashing, they’re way beyond the point where it’s unsafe to be driving.
I thought those were a positive development previously, even if they aren’t something I regularly “benefit” from. Thanks for scaring me out of that train of thought.
Repeatedly.
I'm sure in a vacuum and sufficiently engineered they are a generally positive development in the short term at least. I don't remember specifically reading horror stories about them or anything, though it sounds like you can attest to them being insufficient to avoid wiping out bikes so I figure they're questionable at best.
They're just sort of emblematic of a broader issue where tech-first "solutions" for increasingly marginal problems are probably leading to a dangerous infantilization of the population, with questionable benefits, especially in the long run, given how unreliable our regulators are and our system's propensity to only optimise for the short term.
Yea I don't remember you ever misinterpreting me like that but it happens pretty regularly in general when I don't clarify my intent or w/e, which is understandable.
Honestly, I don’t notice how new the car is. I just see them getting way too close and wondering if they saw me at all or not.
It’s definitely something I do at times. And yet I also am far too often a sarcastic asshole who lets other people misinterpret me even if I understand that’s happening.
I literally was discussing this with some relatives a day or so ago. I had to pull over on a highway twice when driving my mum's car. Once to turn off the auto high-beams and once to turn off the lane assist that tried to steer me into roadworks (it followed the solid line not the dotted line)
I'm glad you survived the machines' assassination attempt on you. It's ridiculous.
Eventually, my car from 2010 is going to bite the dust and I'm going to have to get a newer one and I'm preemptively pissed about it. I've got an ebike and use it when I can, but I live somewhere that it isn't practical to use for all transportation and I need a car, unfortunately. 2008-2014 or so is the technological sweet spot for me: my car has power windows, remote start for when it's 15° outside, and Bluetooth for my music. It also has no screens, no "assistive technology," all analog controls, and can be worked on by a normal mechanic without special software. It sucks so much that all this shitty tech that makes cars less safe to drive and harder to use/work on is now mandatory.
Oh and of course mostly these accidents get swept under the rug.
Sometimes I feel like Tesla has become the defacto whipping boy for this stuff.
I suspect there will be a massive industry changing scandal related to this in the next handful of years, probably not even in America and probably not even Tesla related.