So many people have sent me this story from Forbes with a “OMG you’ve been validated” note that I have to repost it here just to acknowledge that I have seen it.

Tesla drivers are the most accident-prone, according to a LendingTree analysis of 30 car brands. It found that Tesla drivers are involved in more accidents than drivers of any other brand. Tesla drivers had 23.54 accidents per 1,000 drivers. Ram (22.76) and Subaru (20.90) were the only other brands with more than 20 accidents per 1,000 drivers for every brand.

The truth, as I’ve tried to post here for at least seven years, is finally seeing attention it deserves. In a nutshell, Tesla falsely claims a 40% reduction in crashes when their engineering actually increases crashes more than 10%, an incredibly dangerous 50 point spread!

Driving a Tesla is significantly less safe than other far better engineered brands, if not the most unsafe of them all.

A poem by me:

Electric cars were the future in 1981.
- Reagan shut it all down.
Electric cars were the future in 2001.
- Bush shut it all down.
Electric cars were the future in 2021.
- Tesla is a dumpster fire run by a killer clown.

The sad part is electric cars are far, far safer than combustion engines. There’s no question Reagan and Bush were horribly corrupt and counter-productive, delaying a safer future at the cost of untold lives from pollution and worse. How did America end up here? Why is it taking so long for the public to see the threat to society is NOT the electric vehicle, but one man behind a particular brand being horribly corrupt and counter-productive?

Consider how the Tesla CEO has been obsessed with aggressively censoring and falsely shaming all critics, spinning out egregious lies that put millions in harms way even as his toxic management culture has obviously led to the death of hundreds.

The CEO saying openly that he is ok with killing people while recklessly chasing science fiction dreams of a child is, arguably, him simply admitting he doesn’t care if he’s going to kill a lot of people. The more dead, the more I expect him to say it was worth it because… he decided killing people was the price he was willing to make others pay.

I’ve written extensively about such double-bind propaganda, that should be familiar to anyone who is aware of Elon Musk’s affinity for Nazism and Apartheid; “Autopilot” was loudly promoted on social media as passively preventing crashes even when actively disabled, despite evidence that neither having the software enabled nor disabled would prevent an alarming rise in fatal Tesla crashes because they are caused by overconfidence in Elon Musk.

It’s been a long road for those of us calling out the many, many gross and pernicious Tesla safety lies. With any luck we also might soon see some real bans on Tesla for its negligence and design failures, or even see the CEO go to jail.

“Over the course of many months, you used your considerable social media skills to tout your company in ways that were materially false,” said Judge Edgardo Ramos.

“What you said over and over on different media outlets was wrong,” the judge added.

No kidding, Judge Ramos is right. Look at the chart above of deaths from Tesla, then the quote from Elon Musk in 2021 telling the press that Autopilot is “not great”, and then this provably false advertisement.

Materially false. What Tesla said over and over was predatory, anti-competitive and wrong.

Let’s give that poem another try:

In '81, dreams 'lektrified the air,
A promise of brilliance beyond compare.
Yet Reagan's hand, a chilling storm,
Snuffed out tales, left hearts forlorn.

In 2001, hopes danced anew,
Electric whispers kissed morning dew.
But Bush's reign, a sorrowful frown,
Quelled the dreams, brought them crashing down.

Enter 2021, a scene so bright,
Electric whispers in soft twilight.
Yet Elon Musk's tale, a murky shroud,
A strange reputation, a foreboding cloud.

A jester with a sinister grin,
In this electric quest, discord within.
Nature weeps, Tesla's spirit sighs,
Racist demagogue, cruelly destroying lives.

Sage advice from a brilliant artist, published on The Red Hand Files blog:

…look to two qualities that will improve your life immeasurably.

The first is humility. Humility amounts to an understanding that the world is not divided into good and bad people, but rather it is made up of all manner of individuals, each broken in their own way, each caught up in the common human struggle and each having the capacity to do both terrible and beautiful things. If we truly comprehend and acknowledge that we are all imperfect creatures, we find that we become more tolerant and accepting of others’ shortcomings and the world appears less dissonant, less isolating, less threatening.

The other quality is curiosity. If we look with curiosity at people who do not share our values, they become interesting rather than threatening. As I’ve grown older I’ve learnt that the world and the people in it are surprisingly interesting, and that the more you look and listen, the more interesting they become. Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world. Having a conversation with someone I may disagree with is, I have come to find, a great, life embracing pleasure.

He expands the thought further in a later blog post.

…beyond disagreement, the fortifying agent in any relationship is forgiveness – the ability to expand one’s heart in order to accommodate the infractions, perceived or otherwise, of the other. …don’t be afraid to disagree, but be ready to forgive and be forgiven, and let love and understanding reach audaciously across the divide.

See also: Red Right Hand Video