Featured Elon Musk’s big lie about Tesla is finally exposed

There is a significant selection bias on these too.

I believe the American Legion puts up those white crosses for every highway fatality in Montana, and they remain as reminders essentially forever. Or until major road rebuilds move the highway. Some years ago, I'm remembering them being absent or very sparse on a newly redone section someplace between Bozeman and West Yellowstone, but still fairly dense on the older section.

In my state, roadside memorials are generally put up by next of kin, and tolerated by the highway departments for a couple years before removal. Official policies in other states vary, and I haven't looked up their rules.

I would like to see those memorials stay in place forever, as continual safety reminders to drivers. But apparently some other people are disturbed by such reminders of death, and would rather remain ignorant of which curves and intersections are the most hazardous.

 

Gotta say, that's where Apple CarPlay really shines for me. I rent a lot of cars for work. (2023 was the first year I made it through 5 rental cars in 6 cities in 7 days)

I really like having all the navigation and music done by my phone, which goes with me from car to car. I don't have to worry about those details, and can move on to finding the defogger button and the trunk release etc. Though to be honest I'm starting to get decent muscle memory for about 10 different common rentals...

I'll split that one. I don't like roadside memorials and I assume every intersection is the most dangerous one I'll visit that day.

 

This is not the type of driver that needs the reminders.

Not in my world. Not even remotely close. On mountain highways, that is often multiple curves.

I'm still preferring the days when climate control and radio could be controlled eyes-free, tactile senses only, even without steering wheel buttons. The paper map was big and clumsy enough to require pulling off the road. I don't drink coffee -- anywhere -- and can sip most of the water or caffeinated soda from a bottle without taking eyes off the road. The last portion stays in the bottle until parked.

At least the small touch screen in my 2012 doesn't operate the climate control or any vital vehicle functions. The need to visually guide a finger to the non-tactile touch-screen buttons is certainly a negative. Nav can give instructions over audio, and everything except the most basic quick controls are locked out when moving, needing setup while parked.

My younger Subaru still has no touch screens. Audio is still the old-style physical buttons.

 

Just finished my first read of Noah Goodall's "A Methodology for Normalizing Safety Statistics of Partially Automated Vehicles." Given the limited available data, he did an excellent job of pulling in sources to make a reasonable assessment of early, up to 2021, AutoPilot. IMHO, the paper is well worth the $58 fee as an example of a quality paper.

At the same time, the Rolling Stone piece has significant errors suggesting either the Goodall paper was not read or understood. Buy the paper and learn how to do a paper right.

Bob Wilson

 

I have a friend who rolled his SUV and got his shoulder and upper arm impaled with a metal fence post that had gone right through the roof of the vehicle.

Sometimes I wish someone would take the time to show me how to use these things. I've tried Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify, I even tried their free premium version try-outs, but I just couldn't get them to tune to the types of stations I wanted. I can't get them to work even without driving at the same time, I don't know how someone would get them to work without taking their eyes off the road.

To me it's easier to just remember where my favorite FM and AM stations are and tune to those. Or just keep my hand on the tuning knob and just keep rolling it along until something that sounds good pops up.

 

I could help you with CarPlay but you're on your own with those music streamers.

I use a radio app that plays FM stations from other parts of the world. I mostly just want to hear music, and I want to make sure the advertising is in a language I don't know. Cheap adblocker.

 

Take a look at a modern race car designed for Le Mans. Must be twenty buttons on some of them. Now imagine recalling which one to press at those speeds.

My Toyota steering wheel has tactile button controls for cruise control on and speed in 1 MPH increments, following distance, lane departure alert, radio volume, radio station selection using presets, front of driver display screen selection (from at least 6 choices),

And safety. Just had two people killed down the road Sunday. Car 1 driving two fast hit a puddle and fishtailed off the road. Car 2 saw and slowed and stopped. Two guys got our (one a MD, 31 years old) and went to try and see if the driver needed help. Car 3 came along and hydroplaned right into the two Good Samaritans killing them both. 4 charges against driver of car number 3. Was he distracted or just driving to fast for conditions?

I've seen car hit a puddle just before entering a two lane bridge and suddenly pinball between the railings. Even an inch puddle can be deadly.

Measure your tread depth in 3 places across the tread on every tire. Slow down in pouring rain.Your tire can only evacuate so much before you are riding on top of the water with no traction.

 

Were driver 1 or driver 3 driving in a tesla?
.

 

This is exactly why automatic stability controls became standard on all the taller vehicles first, before becoming standard on lower passenger cars.

I'm seeming to remember that this move was so effective that for a short while, the SUV class was significantly safer overall than the passenger car class, because the later was still shipping many units without stability control. But within a few more years, all vehicles had it.

 

Right there with you.

So far the best I've found is my 2020 Mazda. It has a touchscreen, but the touch sense is disabled when the car is in gear. There's an extremely simple indexed clicky knob to manipulate the system. It is possible to memorize counted clicks to operate eyes-free.

The touch screen is not involved in any HVAC control- those have real knobs and keys below.

I didn't even realize that the touch sensor was disabled in gear until we'd owned the car a few months, mostly because the knob thing worked so well I was never tempted to try touching the screen.

Now the Kia I rented for this week. Argh. It demands that I pair the phone over bluetooth instead of just plugging in the USB, and there's no alternate to the touchscreen itself.

 

times a changin' ..... 1½ decades ago - some of us felt quite accomplished when after building a hack that would temporarily disable speed sensors - which MFD disabling was programed to do. That way we could Tap Away on the MFD screen to our hearts' content .... input GPS routing while driving solo without having to pull over.

.

 

Hacks like that are a lot cheaper and easier than developing function-complete alternate control systems.

I'd want that hack too, if I had absolutely no alternative.

 

I don't know what anyone else thinks about the billionaires of the world and what goes on with them, but sometimes I wonder how they think.
Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says | Greenhouse gas emissions | The Guardian

msn.com/en-us/news/technology/jeff-bezos-elon-musk-say-human-population-not-nearly-big-enough-if-we-had-a-trillion-humans-we-would-have-at-any-given-time-a-thousand-mozarts/ar-AA1lBgFB

 

Do note that by "richest 1%", this article means everyone making over US$140,000.

I suspect that both Bezos and Musk are thinking less about how many Mozarts and Eisteins this would produce, and more about how much personal wealth this greatly increased customer base could bring them.

 

I am appreciative of the "millionaires and billionaires" the companies, businesses, jobs and opportunities for others they create.

I admire their tenacity in a society full of entitlement mentalities that they break out and create something of their own through hard work and business acumen then share their success by creating opportunities for others.

Also especially appreciate people of wealth like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who devote tremendous amounts of the wealth they acquired to philanthropy and projects that will actually improve the quality of life for others. Not to mention funding projects like Tesla Corporation and Space X that make an effort to move the dynamic on technology and push new boundaries.
Especially appreciate the wealthy individuals who use their wealth to fund organizations like St Jude's Hospital, Cancer Research, Heart Research etc. The world is a better place thanks to them being here and their charitable contributions to medical research that help so many others who may have very dire medical conditions.

Jeff Bezos was the top philanthropist in 2020. Here's where the others ranked | Fortune
"Jeff Bezos topped the list by donating $10 billion to launch the Bezos Earth Fund. Bezos, who last week announced he was stepping down as Amazon CEO to devote more time to philanthropy and other projects, also contributed $100 million to Feeding America, the organization that supplies more than 200 food banks.

No. 2 on the list was Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who gave $5.7 billion in 2020 by asking community leaders to help identify 512 organizations for seven- and eight-figure gifts, including food banks, human-service organizations, and racial-justice charities."

Is the guy perfect - of course not! Could I even scratch the surface on making as positive impact on society as him - no- not in my wildest dreams. My impact is on the individuals I come in contact with and my interactions in my small community - he is affecting the world community in a positive big way.

 

It's so exhausting to hear blamers blame those who are more wealthy (NOW - because of carbon) for those who have much less. So much of it is victim mentality & envy. jeeez - anyone who has a job while driving 25 miles to work in their automobile emits more carbon than the homeless - so now we're gonawe judge the working class .....
.

 

i think of billionaires similarly to the way i think of myself and people who are not as well off as me.

at what threshold do we set the 'they're not like us' bar at?

 

I'm not seeing Bezos showing up much on the lists of moneys actually dispersed from their foundations yet.

Buffet, Gates, Premjii, Bloomberg, and Scott seem to be lifetime leaders.

 

Polar Opposites;
Pride ... disdain for those we look down on
Envy ... distain for those we look up at.
.

 

well .... he DID disperse 38 billion to his eX after she caught him doink'ing Lauren Sanchez.

.