Elon Musk bashes media in aggressive Twitter rant — and vows to set up a website to score journalists and editors.
Even though I shit on this company a bunch - those cars ARE safer than humans. I know there have been a lot of high profile accidents lately. One just this weekend in an area I am familiar with. I've sort of held back commenting on these accidents because I wanted to see if this was a small cluster, or something bigger. But those cars have logged millions and millions and million of miles now. They are absolutely safer than humans despite the accidents.
You see.. I think the rate of accidents might actually go up due to the superman syndrome. And I feel this way because I tried to order an Audi that had assisted breaking. (Well I did actually order it - it just came wrong and I wound up with my nihilist Audi. I'm a notorious speeder. YES NOTORIOUS. The first thing I said is how long before you start pushing it to find out where the boundaries are? So I think the rate of accidents could temporarily rise. That doesn't mean the cars are ay less safe. Humans are just geared to push and push the boundaries. The accident this weekend was in a notorious speeding zone.
The health of his company though? We will see what that overflow lot looks like when I get back. It was looking positively eye popping just yesterday. But.. Steve Jobs had a magical way of finding ways to raise money. For most of my career his companies were on the verge of bankruptcy. I dated a guy that worked for NeXT. So I think Telsa could last a very long time.
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What Musk is doing is really no different from Carnegie or Vanderbilt hiring a flotilla of public relations men to keep his name out of scandals in the newspapers ...
ReplyDeleteOne century plus later and we're back to yellow journalism.
Remember, journalism is now all about the click traffic.
Anyway, I tend not to drive above the speed limit on roads for a few reasons, but here's the biggest one: my reaction time is incredibly fast, and so I'm able to react to things much faster than most people. (By incredibly fast, it's been measured at below 0.005 second.) This means I'm having to insert mental delays and obvious efforts to inform the people who are behind me to slow the fuck down because they are driving way too fast for my normal reaction time.
All of my accidents in the past were the result of other people slamming into the back of my vehicles, and so now I drive at or below the speed limit in a way where they can't possibly help but notice the annoying person in front of them.
I haven't had an accident in over twenty-five years since making this change, and I've never had an accident where I've slammed into anything, ever.
Basically, I just assume that most people are really fucking stupid and that this stupidity extends to their wetware's ability to process input quickly. :-)
Another reason for doing it is that I'm not buying this bullshit about people engaging in "mass civil disobedience" over the speed limit. Everyone's going 68 mph in a 55 mph zone, so it's not like the cops are going to have to do much to pull over anyone, but who do they wait around to pull?
The guy driving the Aston Martin DB9 or the guy driving a McLaren P1.
Speed limits are about "revenue enforcement" rather than safety, but we're stuck with them because Washington DC bullied all of the states into complying.
So if people want to stop bitching about speed limits and start getting them changed, I don't have a problem with that. But this passive-aggressive "mass civil disobedience" I really can't stand.
My speeding is on a private airfield these days, and a while back I considered buying a very old racetrack and rebuilding it into a racing center with a new hotel next to it. The problems were numerous: the race track didn't need resurfacing, it needed a complete tearing out and regrading, along with a complete restoration of other facilities, and as if that wasn't the end of it, there wasn't a way in which I could guarantee that most visitors would be 100% separate from my own personal and corporate liability.
After hearing from an engineer and a law firm why I should stop being so foolish, I figured I could easily walk away from this and go do my racing somewhere else ... as in a completely different country.
So if you were looking for a reason why there are very few open-to-the-public race tracks in the US, there you go. Anyone who wants to use the race tracks that aren't open to the public needs to be a competitive racer in some kind of competitive racing sport, and because they're "racing professionals", there are more protections for the track owners if these people screw up.
Actually, that's it completely ...
We have speed limits because most people can't be trusted and because the rest can't get enough political power to change the stupidity that's been written into law.
But those of us with enough money can GO SOMEWHERE ELSE where people haven't allowed this stupidity to fester and bloom.
BTW, my personal top speed in something I actually own and insure: around 180 mph ... on a private airfield.
AND I'M STILL HERE, BITCHES. :-)
Like the Airbus with perennial software problems, I would guess on a passenger mile basis or such they are doing pretty good.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's just common sense when driving to maintain a following distance and some defensive cushion. I hate people who tailgate or pull in and out of traffic. Hey, I like to drive fast to, but in some places there are plenty of country roads you can do that with likely less harm to others.
I had a '95 Buick LeSabre that had those stupid anti-lock brakes. Great when the road is icy/slippery but dangerous when dry. My old girlfriends 80 something Audi assumed the driver had some intelligence and had a button to turn the ABS on or off while driving. Too bad we are treated like idiots with our own vehicles. I can't say these driving assist software/mechanical mechanisms are a great development.