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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Arwa Mahdawi

Why are Tesla fanatics putting their children in the path of moving cars?

Elon Musk at a Tesla factory in Germany
The California Department of Motor Vehicles says Tesla’s descriptions of its Autopilot and ‘full self-driving’ features are ‘deceptive’. Photograph: Action Press/Shutterstock

I’ve been a mum for a relatively short time; I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to this whole parenting thing. Still, there is one piece of advice I can confidently dole out: don’t instruct your child to run in front of a moving vehicle so that you can win an argument with strangers on the internet. Elon Musk obsessives, I’m looking at you.

This month, a software CEO called Dan O’Dowd, who is hellbent on trying to ban Tesla’s “full self-driving” programme, launched an ad campaign claiming that if you put a Tesla in this mode it will mow down children. He based this assertion on a test he ran using a child-sized mannequin dressed in a safety vest, which came to a sticky end in the middle of a road in California.

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