The TL;DR in one quote:
Job cuts at the US traffic safety regulator instigated by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency disproportionately hit staff assessing self-driving risks, hampering oversight of technology on which the world’s richest man has staked the future of Tesla.
An interesting quote from a Tesla manager:
“Letting Doge fire those in the autonomous division is sheer madness—we should be lobbying to add people to NHTSA,” said one manager at Tesla. They “need to be developing a national framework for AVs, otherwise Tesla doesn’t have a prayer for scale in FSD or robotaxis.”
Cars aren’t safe anymore by standards and tests, they are now safe by declaration.
And Us American declarations are the best declarations in the whole world.
Therefore all the world is going to trust in Us American cars, finally.
And they are so much safer now than European cars, because Us American declarations are so superior to European safety standards and tests.
It’s been going on a long time, look at how cozy Boeing was with regulators
Man, idk. If I buy a foreign car, say a Hyundai Ionique (the new sexy one) how do I know it’s manufactured to other international standards and not specifically American standards?
how do I know it’s manufactured to other international standards and not specifically American standards?
Well, you don’t need to know anymore now :)
But if you are in Europe, the standards are still in force. No cars may be sold that do not meet these requirements. The manufacturer must declare the conformity for each model, and in addition they are tested by independent organisations sometimes.
They say regulations are written in blood.
Elaine Chao is a conservative government official who is famous for not enforcing safety rules or following up on safety complaints and may have violated ethics laws while Secretary of Transportation under Trump’s first regime. While in that role, she rubber stamped a sketchy driver control system implemented by Tesla that later helped kill her own sister (in addition to drunk driving).
Can the lightning bolt of consequences strike twice?
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sheer madness
I would expect nothing less! We elected a mad king on purpose. Thus, I fully expect the finest anti-intellectualism Elon can buy.
In case you need another reason not to buy a Tesla.
To be completely fair the American government currently does this with inflation, among other things. Actually inflationary item? Whoops we removed it from the calculation. All good here, boss. Sweeping something you don’t want to account for “under the rug” is practically normalized in this government. It isn’t right- obviously… but this isn’t really shocking either.
The elephant? Where? In this room?! We don’t talk about that.
Tbh this is really frustrating. As many car crashes I ran in my 15 years in EMS, NHTSA has probably saved more lives in the last twenty years than the Dept of Public Health, especially once you consider how for much of America, there really is no alternative to driving.
Plot twist: NHTSA are the only people that approve new designs, so Tesla can’t sell any more cars.
Well we can dream.
It’s almost as if the fascist apartheid baby has an agenda behind all of this.
Ahh, the sole reason I can stomach the way auto prices have inflated over the past 20 years.
