Dangers of the Electronic Car

  One more reason NOT to go electric. One reason you want to be in charge of the car is to be able to do "something" when things go wrong. Being stuck in the car with no control whatsoever? Is there a worse way to die?

Guest Post by Eric Peters

You may have heard about the death of the woman who was killed by her Tesla when she inadvertently backed it into a pond and then discovered – as it slowly sank into the pond – that she could not open the door to get out.

She eventually drowned.

The woman – who happened to be the billionaire sister-in-law of Mitch “dirty turtle” McConnell, the glitching front-man for the other half of the Uniparty in the Senate – made the mistake of buying an electronically controlled car. Her Tesla did not have mechanical door pulls; instead, the doors are opened and closed by push-button electric actuators and computers that require electricity to operate. Computer-controlled electronics don’t work very well when immersed; try it with your smartphone and see.

So, when Agenla Chao – the now-dead woman – backed up her car into the pond, the water shorted out the door controls and they could not be unlocked or opened. This resulted in her slow death-by drowning, as it took a while for the Tesla to go totally under. In the meanwhile, she reportedly had time to call/text for help – which came in plenty of time – to watch her drown. Had she backed up into that pond with just about any other car, the people who came to her aid would have had plenty of time to get a door open – and get her out.

But they weren’t able to, because it was a Tesla.

These electronically controlled devices also don’t work very well when dry.

Apparently, the accident itself occurred as a result of Chao’s inadvertently tapping Reverse when she wanted Drive. Italicized to draw attention to the fact that – in Chao’s Tesla – there is no gear selector in the usual/physical sense of a lever that moves back-and-forth from Park through Reverse, then Neutral and Drive, etc. Instead, there is an icon on the touchscreen that the user – to call this person a driver is as silly as calling the person who rides an amusement park carousel horse an equestrian – taps to select forward and backward and so on.

It’s easy to make a mistake because there is no feel – other than the sensation of tapping the screen. It is not like pulling a lever backward – and past Reverse to Drive, which has a definite feel to it – though less so in most modern cars because the selector is now also an electronic  control. Still, there’s a higher degree of physicality. Much more so than the tapping of what amount to apps. When you are tapping your smartphone’s screen, how often do you make a mistake?

Chao’s was fatal.