Lorraine Explains: Billionaires need rules and regulations

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“At the point of which you believe that adding autonomy reduces injury and death, I think you have a moral obligation to deploy it even though you’re going to get sued and blamed by a lot of people…Because the people whose lives you saved don’t know that their lives were saved. And the people who do occasionally die or get injured, they definitely know — or their state does.” – Elon Musk

“I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed…Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.” – Stockton Rush (1962-2023) 

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Houston, we have a pattern

There is no way to compare the outcomes of one very rich man who tested out his regulation-skirting theories on a handful of people who knowingly paid for the opportunity to trust him, with another who unleashes his tech on all of us, every day, without our knowledge. The CEO of the Titan submersible endangered a few people at a time until the breathtaking, horrific conclusion that was unleashed on the world last month. 

But before most of us had even known there was a privately made and owned submersible regularly visiting the gravesite of The Titanic with paying passengers on board, we had been made aware that The Washington Post, doing a deep dive into the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) numbers, revealed a previously unreported fact: Tesla crashes involving those vehicles being in Autopilot was far higher than previously reported: since 2019, 736 crashes had resulted in 17 fatalities and five serious injuries. 

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These are the people that Tesla owner and head cheerleader Musk declares that somehow, while occasionally dead, they “know.” Know what? If I can thread through that alphabet soup of that opening statement, I think he means when his systems are working — those systems now under intense investigation by NHTSA among others — we are all the unwitting, perhaps ungrateful, beneficiaries of his omnipotent talents. And those who are caught in his spokes, well, those we get to count because their bodies get left behind. I think they might have a comment about his ‘moral obligation’ if they could still speak. His argument is always that autonomous cars — which are not something a consumer can purchase today — will save everyone. He’s sure enough of it to be willing to risk your life on it.

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The NHTSA-Musk cage match is hardly new. The safety body has come at Tesla dozens of times but is always faced with the same thing: “Musk screamed and threatened to sue when the agency told Tesla it was launching an investigation into the carmaker in 2016. The investigation came after a Tesla that was on Autopilot crashed into a tractor-trailer and killed the driver,” reported Business Insider. 

“Former officials said Tesla’s high value, as well as Musk’s status as the wealthiest man in the world, made it more difficult to incentivize the carmaker with fines. Multiple former safety officials at the NHTSA told The Post that the regulator has done anything from flatter to threaten Tesla and Musk in order to get the carmaker to comply with recalls.” Flattery and threats to cajole someone who is above the law to operate within it. Uber-rich men who act like pre-schoolers, and are treated accordingly. Just kidding! They’re handled with kid gloves as they do things like dismissing traffic fatalities as a cost of working out the bugs or running for president.

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A pre-schooler will grow out of it. And if a pre-schooler comes running at you with a pair of scissors, you’re likely to see it happen. A car on not-really Autopilot? That’s just another car on the road, piloted by someone who believes the fine print — driver must at all times be in control — is for other people. That, you won’t see coming.

Red tape — regulation to many of us — is the result of governments responding to the multitudes of occurrences that have killed and injured its citizens over the years. Food inspection, water standards, building codes, emergency response, drug oversight, transportation safety: you feel safe getting in that plane or ordering in that restaurant or taking that drug your doctor prescribed because of regulatory bodies that some people think get in the way. They do get in the way because otherwise there would be nothing between you and salmonella or your home collapsing on you. Maybe if I were incredibly rich or believed myself to be incomparably smart, I too, would prefer not to have my innovation reined in by regulations. I still wouldn’t have the right to kill others.  

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I would never have been in that submersible, nor would most of us. Instead, a select group of 1 per centers are dead because they trusted a dude who thought “safety just is pure waste”. This article explains why such exploits don’t have to go the way they do. “Mr. Rush was perpetuating a myth — one that is particularly popular in Silicon Valley and among technology start-ups — that governments are just an obstacle and that innovation comes from bold trailblazers moving fast and breaking things. That story is often wrong, and it was 100 percent wrong in this case.”

I don’t think Tesla should be allowed to move fast and break things when those things are road users who have no idea they are about to get broken by an innovator who doesn’t like the rules.