Tesla full-self-driving tackles the bikes, pedestrians, and general chaos of Cambridge

My April trip to Maskachusetts included a couple of trips within Cambridge in a new Tesla Y with FSD (see The Trump- and Elon-hater leases a Tesla Model Y). After lunch at Happy Lamb Hot Pot in Central Square, the owner, a mutual friend (pilot, $5 million townhouse owner), and I piled into the miracle vehicle for a trip to Micro Center, an Ohio-based chain that is one of the things I miss about Cambridge (the closest store to Jupiter is in Miami, which is to say… not close). The Tesla was almost immediately faced with the challenge of a one-lane one-way road with parked cars on both sides and a cyclist on a non-e-bike. An impatient human might have squeezed past the bicycle, but the Tesla wisely waited until there was a gap in the parked cars on the right and the cyclist moved over.

The Tesla navigated around a couple of delivery trucks that were stopped in right lanes.

The car navigated to a bizarrely back corner entrance to the Micro Center parking lot, drove behind the Trade Joe’s, and then found itself a parking space with empty spots on either side. Thus ensued the apparently mandatory 2-minute denunciation of Elon Musk as a person, e.g., for allowing non-compliant speech on X, tempered with praise for the engineering achievement of FSD.

On the way to my old condo, the Tesla got flummoxed by an SUV that was parked almost in the middle of the (standard Maskachusetts practice). There actually was enough space to squeeze by in the opposite-direction lane, but the owner had to take the wheel and press on the accelerator. Tesla’s software had dealt beautifully with pedestrians in crosswalks, but trying to turn right from Harvard St. there was a confusing situation. A guy in a wheelchair was waiting to cross the side street. The Tesla, just like a human, was waiting for him to cross. I envisioned the Tesla and the wheelchair attendant getting tired of standing still at the same time and a collision enusing. The attendant waved us through and the Tesla FSD seemed to undestand the hand gesture (not my imagination, apparently). The car tried to park in the driveway to the right of the condo, which has three unmarked angle parking spots. That seemed like a recipe for disaster so the owner selected a curbside dropoff instead.

Overall impression: very impressive, but also rather terrifying not knowing whether the machine was going to run over the wheelchair user. Maybe there needs to be a soothing voice repeating “trust the process”?

Speaking of what happens when our AI overlords meet the Boston-area roads… a friend here who drives a late-model Kia gets frequent alerts from the car about his drunkenness. When he swerves around the numerous potholes, the car thinks that he’s impaired. Google AI:

A 2021 federal law (HALT Drunk Driving Act) mandates that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) require new passenger vehicles to be equipped with advanced, passive drunk and impaired driving prevention technology by roughly 2027–2028. The technology will detect impairment—via alcohol sensors or behavioral monitoring—and prevent vehicle operation, though the final rule is delayed due to technology readiness, privacy, and accuracy concerns

Kia is ahead of the mandate!

In other driving news, I broke into my neighbor’s apartment and took the keys to her 2014 Mini, which she leaves sitting for months at a time while she’s in California. The car has 90,000 miles on it and won’t die, though many important systems have failed and the check engine light was lit. BMW’s engineering is rather impressive in that the car is virtually impossible to stall no matter how incompetent one is at driving a manual transmission. Backup cameras became mandatory in the U.S. in 2018 and it was alarming not to have one in the Mini. As compensation for this tech loss, I was treated to a continuous diet of NPR news while driving the car. What did I learn?

• high gas prices have reduced consumer sentiment to the lowest it has ever been since 1952. This was a 20-minute segment on the ills of high gasoline prices without a single mention of how the end-of-April prices are actually lower in both real and nominal dollars than what Americans were paying in 2022 and no mention of NPR’s previous climate change alarmist and calls for carbon taxation to make fossil fuels more expensive. (Separately, are the University of Michigan geniuses behind the poll confident that, from a consumer perspective, things are worse than after the 2008 collapse? Than during the 22 percent misery index (inflation+unemployment) during the Jimmy Carter administration?)
• when Democrats are back in power they need to force companies to continue to pay health insurance when workers go on strike. But really we need universal health care and universal taxpayer-funded child care so that union workers can strike for months or years if necessary to get what they’re owed as a consequence of AI.
• there is an important a PBS series about the “often-overlooked history of Muslims in the United States” (“19 young Muslims went out for plane rides in beautiful weather on September 11, 2001”?)
• Trump wasn’t being attacked for political reasons at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, but rather because there has been a rise in the amount of “gun violence” overall in the U.S.; Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to resort to violence, but the Democrats are generally shooting while the Republicans have subjected Democrats to “verbal violence”.
• climate change is bad, but the muscular intelligent government of Maskachusetts is ready, e.g., with doors that will seal off the Blue Line MBTA tunnel from the airport (“If the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 were to happen today, AccuWeather experts estimate the total damage and economic loss would reach $440 billion”; maybe this is why my friend with the townhouse pays $20,000 per year for insurance and rates are yet much higher on Cape Cod?)
• Michael Tilson Thomas, a symphony conductor who had just died, was a “pioneer in the gay rights movement” because, after moving to San Francisco, he was open about having a male partner (Thomas moved to San Francisco in 1995)

[What were gas prices at the time of the NPR Boston broadcast vs. in 2022? CBS: “The current average in the state is $4.16 for a gallon of regular gas, AAA said on Thursday. … The record high for Massachusetts is $5.05 back in June of 2022”. What if we adjust $5.05 June 2022 dollars to today’s mini-dollars? Gas cost about $5.95 April 2026 dollars in Maskachusetts during the Paradise Years (TM) of the Biden-Harris administration.]

With the withdrawal of federal tax dollars and substitution of money from rich progressive Democrats (example), the content of NPR seems exactly the same!

Loosely related… what if you hate Elon Musk and Donald Trump so much that you’re willing to drive yourself (“manually”!) while saving the planet via purchasing an EV of epic expense? A friend in Cambridge did just that. His Lucid Gravity has some nice features, but it can’t be parked next to a standard-height Maskachusetts curb without severe door damage on opening. Every time he parks and someone in sitting on the right side, he must use the touch screen to tell the car to jack itself up to maximum suspension height. After that, a door will just barely clear the curb:

I assume the idea is that those who save the planet are so elite that they never have to park on the street.