An open letter to the Tesla fan who wants to run over a kid to prove a point

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

There is a person who wants to run over a kid.

Andy and I are transportation editors. I saw on social media that you were going to run over a kid to prove a point. It's a bad place to show a car running over a kid-sized dummy in a test, and you want to prove that the tests are not legit, so you're going to try to run over a kid.

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? I promise I won't run them over... (will disengage if needed)



(this is a serious request)

— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) August 9, 2022

I was going to write you a letter and say this.

Don't, that's not right.

Don't do that

I don't think I would do that. Don't force a kid to walk in front of a 2,000 pound metal box just to prove a point to someone who posted a thing and got you all confused up.

Don't put a child's life in danger to win a fight.

You seem to have a good relationship with Musk on the social networking site. That is very pleasant. You have good friends on the internet. You seem to have a large amount of them. The number of followers is 129,000. It is more than me. It's good to win.

Your test may go well. The people you were trying to prove wrong are so embarrassed that they turn into corncobs if the kid lives. I am worried that some of your followers will think you are crazy if you run over a kid with your car to prove a point. Maybe their tests don't work out. And then there are dead children.

You like Full Self-Driving because it doesn't require the driver to stay vigilant, but that's not true. Even though safety experts and consumer advocates say it isn't safe, you want to prove that it's safe. I'm happy you like your car. It isn't a big deal in a car. The kids are much better. They laugh at dumb jokes and can be cute at times. The kids should not be involved in the social media fight.

I understand that you want to prove to your followers that Full Self-Driving is safe, and that's why you're doing it, but it seems to me that it's true. I think you are confusing your own anecdotal evidence with statistical evidence. People do this all the time.

The safety tests should be left to the experts. Thousands of tests and drives are performed by companies working on driver assist and self-drive tech. There are better ways to get noticed. There are a lot of weed jokes. The guy is not locked up. You wrote a manual for how to get someone to reply to you on social media.

I don't know if you're serious about running over a child, but online threats have a way of making real-life disasters happen, and I would hate myself if I didn't say anything at all. The number of children dying in car crashes is going down. Keep it that way.

Thank you so much. Please, it's pretty. Run over the child.

A guy who saw you want to run over a kid to prove a point thought that was a bad idea.