Details suggest the Tesla drifted on a wide curve and then spun into oncoming traffic.

According to an Arkansas State Police preliminary fatal crash summary, 48-year-old Tourke Hooker, of Camden, was traveling south in a 2018 Tesla T3 when he negotiated a curve and lost control of the vehicle, rotating counter-clockwise and crossing the centerline into the northbound lane. The rear of the vehicle collided with a northbound 2017 Nissan Maxima driven by Ashley French, 28, of Magnolia.

[…]

Rainy conditions and wet roads were noted in the report, filed by ASP Cpl. Sequoyah Browning. Time of the accident was 7:34 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023.

Does that say a T3? They meant a Tesla Model 3, surely.

And negotiated a curve? The Tesla somehow rotated counter-clockwise on a slight bend across a double yellow and veered into oncoming traffic. Sounds like a Tesla control arm failure, a known unfixed design defect. Or worse, the Tesla was on faulty “Autopilot” and confused a double yellow divider for the right shoulder, jerking the car suddenly to the left into oncoming traffic.

Highway 79 South of Camden is only ever a very wide arc, nearly straight, if you survey where the crash was reported.

Not to mention the Camden posted speed limit of 40 mph.

Let’s be honest, Arkansas press isn’t known for its reporting integrity.

For further proof, note the two ads posted on such tragic news of those killed by a Tesla: a funeral home planner, and a grim reaper from Facebook trying to scare people into giving “$10 and 1 non-perishable food item”.

Here again is an example of reporting integrity failure in Arkansas. An ad placement of a white hand that apparently is celebrating death of a Black woman, as the end of debt.

Awful, callous, shameless.

The text of the obituary for Ashley French says she was a student of healthcare and a mother of two. She was killed by the Tesla on her way to class, in front of other commuting students.

Ashley French was enrolled in the SAU Tech LPN/Paramedic to RN Program. She was commuting from her home in Magnolia to the campus when the accident happened. French had recently completed the university’s PN Program and was actively involved in the current RN program.

The Dean asked for prayers for Ashley’s family, including her two children, and the SAU Tech community. The incident has affected the university, with students and faculty expressing their sadness. Some students, who also travel from Magnolia, saw the accident.

Ashley French was known in the university community for her kindness and smile. Her death has had a significant effect on the SAU Tech community.

The tragedy of Tesla is unlike any other vehicle on the road.

And the Arkansas press, one of the least informed and most racist in the world, needs a serious integrity audit.

The FT offers this insight.

Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s veteran sidekick, died this week. The vice-chair of investment group Berkshire Hathaway had a penchant for zingy aphorisms. The one I always remember is: “Capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.” […] Some Europeans do not get the success/failure-yin/yang thang.

To which I say, this writer is clearly a few cards short of a full deck. Their most remembered aphorism is broken with simple logic.

Religion says going to hell is punishment, whereas capitalism says repeated failure is common and even necessary to reach success. Does anyone say try going to hell a few times to get heaven? No, because then people would live without fear of failure, accept “go to hell” threats as a step to heaven.

Also, some basic wisdom about world religions poses a huge problem for the aphorism.

Taoism uses Yin/Yang to show an indivisable whole, a duality represented as parts in balance and inseparable to prove that fear of division (e.g. any moral dichotomy of good versus bad) is an unreal perception.

When you dig deeper into all this, and see what Europeans in fact DO get (e.g. quality of life balance, resistance to accelerationism), is that many (most, really) religions are practiced without any hell at all and for some perhaps obvious reasons:

• “Jesus isn’t talking about heaven [and thus doesn’t believe in a hell] because he doesn’t believe – he’s a Jew – he doesn’t believe in the separation of soul and body. He doesn’t think the soul is going to live on in heaven.”
• Hell was created by people positioning their religion to be more influential than family, community, and government. It’s a political tool, especially alluring among those seeking power and a way to undermine other effective forms of (moral) regulation.
• Hell then becomes an escape from accountability, because for those spreading the idea it “has never been anything more than a strategy for sparing themselves the unpleasant task of confronting the real implications of the beliefs they profess.”

Vengeful eternal punishment, while many self-professed capitalists claim to love such an idea, is literally the exact opposite of their actual road to success (dependent on charity and good will of others such as family and government, saving them from true or permanent loss).

In that sense capitalism — where healthy market functionality matters more than ostentatious brags by a select few about their rapid and unstoppable privilege to repeatedly fail — is just one part of a life that is better described as many failures inseparable and infused with some success.

Capitalism typically requires acceptance of failure coupled to robust systems for recovery, very unlike how some outlier religions try to manipulate sentiment (undermine other social constructs) by using a fear of some vague future (theoretical) possibility of an absolute unescapable hell.