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Do autonomous cars make us worse drivers?
Autonomous cars are coming. So is the first fatality associated with them. Statistically, that milestone should occur in the next 18 months. What will happen then?
On May 31, 2009, an Airbus 330 on its way from Rio de Janiero to Paris plunged from an altitude of 35,000 feet into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board. Just prior to the crash, the airplane was operating in autopilot mode. A reconstruction of the disaster revealed input from several sensors had been compromised by ice that caused them to give false readings. Updated sensors that were less susceptible to ice accumulation were waiting to be installed after the plane arrived in Paris.
Because of the false readings the autopilot system disengaged returning control to the pilots however the senior pilot was sleeping at the time. The two junior pilots were not as highly trained in high altitude flight as they might have been, partly because the use of machines to control aircraft under those conditions was the norm.
Faced with the unexpected, the pilots behaved poorly. At one point they are heard to say on the cockpit recorder, “We completely lost control of the airplane, and we don’t understand anything! We tried everything!” While they tried to rouse the sleeping senior pilot, the nose of the aircraft climbed until a stall was induced. Stall is the point at which the wings become barn doors instead of airfoils. The Airbus 330 dropped from the sky like a rock.
In his excellent story about the crash published on Vanity Fair, William Langewiesche offered this conclusion: “Automation has made it more and more unlikely that ordinary airline pilots will ever have to face a raw crisis in flight—but also more and more unlikely that they will be able to cope with such a crisis if one arises.”
The Tesla community has seen similar instances lately. The driver in Salt Lake City who accidentally activated Summon, causing his car to drive into the back of a truck. The woman on a freeway in California who rear ended a car that suddenly slowed in front of her. The man in Europe who crashed into the back of a van that had stalled in the high speed lane of a highway. He at least had the courage to admit his error. “Yes, I could have reacted sooner, but when the car slows down correctly 1,000 times, you trust it to do it the next time to. My bad.”
After each of these incidents, the tendency has been for many to defend the machine and blame the human. But in a recent article for The Guardian, author Martin Robbins says, “Combine an autopilot with a good driver, and you get an autopilot with, if not a bad driver, at least not such a good one.” He says that statistically, the time when a car operating in autonomous mode causes a fatality is rapidly approaching.
Tesla Model S owner crashes into the back of a stalled van
On average, a person is killed in a traffic accident in the United States once every 100 million miles. Elon Musk says Tesla’s Autopilot is half as likely to be involved in a collision as a human driver. That would suggest that somewhere around the 200 million mile mark someone will die as a result of an automobile driven by a machine.
Tesla has already passed the 100 million mile mark for cars driving in Autopilot mode and continues to log 2.6 million miles driven per day. Statistically speaking, the time when a self driving car kills somebody is rapidly approaching. And since most autonomous cars on the road are Teslas, the odds are excellent it will be a Tesla that is involved in that first fatality.
What will happen then? Robbins goes back in history to look for an answer to that question. In 1896, Bridgit Driscoll became the first person in England to be killed by a motor car. The reaction among the public and the press was a fatalistic acceptance that progress will have a price. Within a few years, the speed limit in England was raised from 8 mph — which is was when Ms. Driscoll was killed — to 20 mph. This despite the fact that thousands of road deaths were being recorded on English roads by then.
Regulators around the world are racing to catch up with the explosion of new autonomous driving technology. But Robbins concludes, “By the time they do, it’s likely that the technology will already be an accepted fact of life, its safety taken for granted by consumers, its failures written off as the fault of its error-prone human masters.”
The point is that injuries and fatalities will continue to occur as cars come to rely more and more on machines for routine driving chores. But in that transition period between now and the time when Level 4 autonomy becomes the norm — the day when cars come from the factory with no way for humans to control them directly — we need to accept that complacency and an inflated belief in the power of machines to protect us from harm may actually render us less competent behind the wheel.
We will need to remain vigilant, if for no other reason than telling a jury “It’s not my fault! The machine failed!” is not going to insulate us from the legal requirement to operate our private automobiles in a safe and prudent manner.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s surprise addition to the X Takeover lineup has fans talking
Elon Musk will join Saturday’s X Takeover at Giga Texas for a live virtual interview.
Elon Musk will join X Takeover at Giga Texas on Saturday for a live virtual interview, according to Sawyer Merritt, who shared the news late Thursday. Musk will not be on stage in Austin. The conversation is set to stream for free on the @teslaownersSV account on X.
Organizers had kept expectations in check. In a September update, Tesla Owners Silicon Valley said Musk had appeared at the event twice before but was not promising a third appearance, even as fans hoped he would walk the Giga Texas grounds in person. A virtual spot matches 2024, when Musk gave a surprise interview of about an hour to the crowd in San Luis Obispo, as Teslarati reported at the time.
Wasn’t expecting this 🫡
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 9, 2026
This year’s edition is a first in several ways. It is the first X Takeover held outside California and the first at a Tesla facility, with tickets selling out in eight days. Tesla provides the venue, but the event is produced independently by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley. The main event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT, followed by a drone and light show at 9 p.m. Maye Musk is the keynote speaker, Franz von Holzhausen is set for a virtual keynote, and Nicki Minaj is the special guest. Joe Tegtmeyer, whose drone footage Teslarati used to track the Optimus factory steel frame at Giga Texas, is also on the speaker list.
Musk’s interview topics have not been revealed, but the backdrop is busy. Tesla doubled its Cybercab fleet in Austin in late September, and last week Musk explained why Robotaxi hours only moved from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.. Merritt also reported Thursday that Texas DMV records now show 319 registered Cybercabs, up from 169. NHTSA’s deadline for Tesla’s sworn answers on Cybercab certification is October 30, and Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21.
Fans who cannot make it to Austin can watch the livestream on X. Musk tends to say more in unscripted settings than he does in prepared remarks, which is the reason this one is worth having open on Saturday.
News
It’s official: SpaceX takes aim at Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile
SpaceX is buying 800 MHz spectrum from Grain to turn Starlink Mobile into a carrier.
SpaceX has agreed to buy a nationwide block of low band wireless spectrum, a deal the company says will let Starlink Mobile operate as a full US carrier rather than a satellite add-on for someone else’s network.
The company announced the agreement on X on Thursday afternoon, saying it will “pave the way for @Starlink to become a major mobile carrier in the US.” The seller is Grain Management, a private investment firm that confirmed in a statement that SpaceX will acquire 100% of its nationwide 800 MHz portfolio. That covers up to 14 MHz of paired spectrum in the 817 to 824 MHz and 862 to 869 MHz bands. Neither side disclosed a price, and the deal still needs FCC approval.
We announced an agreement to acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum license portfolio that will pave the way for @Starlink to become a major mobile carrier in the US.
With this new spectrum and our Gen2 constellation, Starlink Mobile can ensure Americans have access to high-speed mobile broadband no matter where they are → https://t.co/1Uaf48v5pm
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 8, 2026
Grain only recently picked up the licenses itself. It bought the portfolio from T-Mobile in a transaction that closed in August, paying cash plus its own 600 MHz spectrum. Rival AST SpaceMobile had been testing satellites on the same bands before SpaceX stepped in.
SpaceX said its 2 GHz spectrum will handle high bandwidth capacity, while the new 800 MHz layer “ensures Starlink Mobile’s signal penetrates through obstacles, such as walls, and can provide service to customers’ devices even when they are in buildings.” The company added that most existing phones already support the band, so customers would not need new hardware to use it.
That 2 GHz spectrum came from SpaceX’s EchoStar acquisition last year, which gave the company exclusive S band rights in the US and global Mobile Satellite Service licenses. The Grain spectrum is different in an important way: it is tailored for service from ground towers, not satellites. SpaceX said that combination would make Starlink Mobile “the first network operator to deploy both satellite and terrestrial spectrum.”
The announcement also follows a key regulatory win. Earlier this week, the FCC approved SpaceX’s plan to deploy 15,000 second generation Starlink Mobile satellites, which the company has said will carry up to 100 times the data density of the current system, as Teslarati previously reported.
Shares of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile fell in extended trading after the announcement. T-Mobile is currently SpaceX’s launch partner for Starlink Mobile in the US, which makes its position the most complicated of the three.
SpaceX has not been subtle about its plans. During the company’s August earnings call, President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said she expected Starlink Mobile to win over customers from the major carriers. “I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better,” she said, pointing to dead zone coverage and resilience during disasters. Shotwell also described plans for low cost cellular base stations that could pair with existing Starlink dishes.
SpaceX has targeted 2027 for deployment of its next generation Starlink Mobile satellites, with upgraded service expected by the end of that year. The FCC review of the Grain deal now determines when the terrestrial half of that network can come online.
Elon Musk
Trump presents Elon Musk with National Medal of Science, calls him “modern-day Thomas Edison”
Trump gave Elon Musk the National Medal of Science and compared him to Thomas Edison.
Elon Musk now has the highest honor the U.S. government gives to scientists and engineers. President Donald Trump presented him with the National Medal of Science on Thursday at the White House’s “Science: A New Golden Age” summit, held at the Institute of Peace in Washington, according to the White House.
Trump called Musk a “national treasure” and “our modern-day Thomas Edison.” “Few Americans in history have done more to advance America’s national interest than Elon in one field after another,” the president said. He also described Musk as an “industrial titan, brilliant engineer and one of the greatest technology founders to ever live.”
The official citation credits Musk “for engineering achievements of extraordinary ambition and scale that have pushed the frontiers of space exploration, intelligent systems, communications, and beyond, renewing American technological leadership and opening a new chapter in American manufacturing.” Tesla is not named in it, but “intelligent systems” and “American manufacturing” cover a lot of ground that Tesla and the Terafab chip project occupy.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su received the same medal. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell were given the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. It was the first time Trump has handed out either award in his two terms. As Teslarati noted when the list was first reported on Wednesday, the National Science Foundation says 529 people have received the Medal of Science since Congress created it in 1959.
🚨 IT’S OFFICIAL: President Trump just PERSONALLY presented Elon Musk the National Medal of Science for his INCREDIBLE contributions to our nation
I can’t think of ANYONE who deserves this honor more 👏🏻
Congratulations, @elonmusk! https://t.co/GkAaVp9wb9
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 8, 2026
The ceremony closes a loop that opened in 2025, when Musk left DOGE and criticized the “Big Beautiful Bill,” sparking a public feud. Al Jazeera noted that Musk was the largest contributor to Trump’s 2024 campaign, and CNBC reported that all of the honorees have given financially to Trump or Republican causes in some form. The reconciliation has moved quickly in recent weeks. Musk sat at Trump’s left at the September 29 White House AI lunch, was named to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare, and adopted the administration’s “super intelligence” wording when he said SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI.
For Tesla and SpaceX shareholders, the practical question is what the closer relationship means for federal approvals. Tesla’s Robotaxi and Cybercab expansion depends on national autonomy rules, and SpaceX’s Starship and Starlink plans run through the FAA, FCC and NASA. Thursday’s ceremony did not change any of that directly.
Elon Musk’s surprise addition to the X Takeover lineup has fans talking
It’s official: SpaceX takes aim at Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile
Trump presents Elon Musk with National Medal of Science, calls him “modern-day Thomas Edison”
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded
