‘Let's Go Hit This Kid:’ Tesla Stans Find Actual Child to Try and Prove Teslas Don't Run Over Kids
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k7bzxm/lets-go-hit-this-kid-tesla-stans-find-actual-child-to-try-and-prove-teslas-dont-run-over-kids
Last week, Twitter user and prominent Elon Musk supporter Omar Qazi, who runs the blog Whole Mars Catalog, tweeted: “Is there anyone in the Bay Area with a child who can run in front of my car on Full Self-Driving Beta to make a point?” Qazi's goal was to debunk a viral safety PSA showing a Tesla in FSD mode running over a child-shaped mannequin. He stuck to his word and on Sunday he posted a YouTube video titled, “Does Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta Really Run Over Kids?” featuring an actual child.
The video starts out with someone driving a Tesla, saying: “Let’s go hit this kid,” and then quickly cuts to an image of The Dawn Project founder and U.S. Senate candidate Dan O’Dowd—who created the video to be debunked—Photoshopped to look like a clown. Qazi narrates the motive of his video: to debunk O’Dowd’s PSA that showcased a Tesla in FSD mode repeatedly mowing down a child-sized mannequin. Whereas O’Dowd insists that Tesla’s FSD mode should be banned completely and that it is a “demonstrable danger to human life,” Qazi believes that Tesla’s FSD “appears to be quite good at detecting pedestrians including elederly people and kids.”