I have turned out to be a careful and responsible, if a somewhat aggressive, driver. Except for one thing. I keep parking with the front too close to the curb and end up tearing off the bumper. I keep forgetting that the car is longer than it looks from the driver seat.
I feel ridiculous coming to the mechanic, a Frenchman called Monsieur Bonjour, with the torn out bits of the bumper yet again. And it’s the only damage I ever cause but I cause it a lot.
Well, you’re doing better than the self-driving cars that Uber is testing here in Arizona. One of them just ran over a woman in the crosswalk and killed her.
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Are you serious??? This is horrible. Oh God.
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Unfortunately, it’s true–happened in the Phoenix suburb Tempe last night, while the pedestrian was in a legal crosswalk, and the “self-driving” car had an Uber test driver supposedly at the controls. Uber has now suspended its self-driving testing program in Arizona.
A few months ago Uber’s CEO was bragging that they’d have flying cars in five years. At the rate they’re going, they won’t even have a safe self-driving fleet.
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Ah, my mistake, the latest report says that the woman was walking outside the crosswalk’s boundaries, making her a jaywalker. Still a tragic crime.
Back in California one of my institutionalized patients trying using that defense in court. (“I started to brake, until I saw that he was a jaywalker. So I just ran the bastard down.”) She was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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