Douchebag Drivers
My commute isn't daily anymore, but the roads are chock full of douchbag drivers, now predominately behind the wheel of Tesla Model 3's and Model Y's
Back when I commuted daily by car, I had an annual post on the cars that were driven by the biggest douchebags. The early winners (circa 2000’s) were almost exclusively BMW’s, but in the 2010’s that shifted to Audi drivers.
In 2016, I joined a company (Cisco) where I could ride the light rail to get to the office, so I was temporarily spared the chaos of d-bag drivers on the local highways.
Fast forward to 2023, and I now mostly work from home, and only drive in one day a week, but that one day is enough to recognize that there is a new King of the Hill that the D-Bags are driving, and it will not surprise you that the top marquee is Tesla.
And it is not even close.
And it is not just observed when on the highway. Twice now, while walking my dog in the morning a Tesla has almost run me down. All on surface streets, in neighborhoods of single family homes, low speed, and clearly the driver was either distracted by the instrument cluster (a fucking iPad in the middle of the dash) or just clueless, assuming that the Autopilot will “handle” it.
Twice I have almost been killed just for daring to walk around the neighborhood, and that has prompted me to wear a visibility vest on my walks.
But, the reason why I am writing this, is that today, in the WaPo, there is an article1 about how many ‘Autopilot’ accidents there are, and how many more there are than other companies driver aids (Tesla had the most – by far – at 736, compared to the second most – Subaru – at 23).
Sadly, it takes no effort to find oodles of videos of the Autopilot and FSD in action on YouTube, videos of Tesla’s trying to turn into the protected light rail tracks on S. First Street here in San Jose (the same route that I took when riding the train!)
One particularly good section from the article linked in the footnote is:
Since the reporting requirements were introduced, the vast majority of the 807 automation-related crashes have involved Tesla, the data show. Tesla — which has experimented more aggressively with automation than other automakers — also is linked to almost all of the deaths.
Subaru ranks second with 23 reported crashes since 2019.
Yowsa. Clearly, Musk hype aside, Autopilot and FSD are really not that great.
Nope, the domain that was once dominated by Beemer and Audi drivers is not 100% dominated by Tesla drivers.
The trend shows no signs of abating!