Photo Credit: The Dawn Project/Instagram
Elon Musk may have been getting a reputaation for ruining Twitter as of late but he’s quietly been doing the same with Tesla for some time now. We just haven’t heard about it because people are buying them to avoid having to pay for gas. Green Hills Software CEO Dan O’Dowd paid around $600,000 to prove the deadliness of Teslas in a Super Bowl commercial this weekend. With a video of a Tesla hitting multiple child like mannequins and a stroller, his organization, The Dawn Project, designed to ban “unsafe software” funded the project.
Green Hills Software also happens to have their own self-driving software and O’Dowd created operating systems for projects including Boeing’s 787s, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Fighter Jets, the Boeing B1-B Intercontinental Nuclear Bomber, and NASA’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. He’s also a recipient of the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award, the highest honorary the universtate bestows upon their graaduates and based on his work making safety-critical software systems unhackable since his days attending CalState, of which he graduated in 1976.
Watch The Dawn Project’s #SuperBowl ad demonstrate critical safety defects in @Tesla Full Self-Driving. 6 months ago we reported FSD would run down a child. Tesla hasn’t even fixed that! To focus their attention, @NHTSAgov must turn off FSD until Tesla fixes all safety defects. pic.twitter.com/AxJbN5oOSr
— Dan O’Dowd (@RealDanODowd) February 11, 2023
The Dawn Project ad said Tesla was “endangering the public with deceptive marketing and woefully inept engineering.” Their website said Tesla’s full self driving (FSD) technology is “not safe for public roads.” Their tests were done on public roads and showed Tesla’s FSD technology “will commit a concerning array of critical driving errors.” O’Dowd tweeted Sunday that Tesla “would run down a child.” O’Dowd said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) should “turn off FSD until Tesla fixes all safety defects.” He also wrote, “I am trying to remove the worst, most incompetently designed, developed, and tested automotive product on the market,” calling for the government to deactivate Tesla’s FSD until all defects were corrected.
And if Tesla is so dangerous, just how have they been getting away with it for so long? Well the NHTSA launched a program to test fully autonomous vehicles in 2020 but since Musk has these cars vehicles as still needing human interaction, he doesn’t have to report crash data. Musk responded to the commercial in a tweet Sunday saying, “This will greatly increase public awareness that a Tesla can drive itself (supervised for now).” And back in August The Dawn Project took out a full page ad in the New York Times against Tesla followed with videos showing Teslas “indiscriminately mow down” children. Tesla responded with a cease and desist letter where O’Dowd responded saying he can “afford not to be intimidated by these threats.” And to remedy things, O’Dowd offered Musk a challenged. He tweeted, “To remove all doubt that these severe safety defects are real, we invite Elon Musk, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, [and] the media to witness a public demonstration,”
And O’Dowd isn’t the only one saying these things. Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak last week argued that he had been cheated by Tesla saying the company had overpromised and underdelivered on its claim to turn a car into a fully automated robotaxi at the touch of a button. And that shouldn’t be a surprise after a top Tesla engineer said he staged a self-driving video at Elon Musk’s request. As for the offer from O’Dowd on whether he’ll do a public demonstration of his cars, we’ll see. It does, however make you wonder that if Musk is not telling the truth about his self-driving technology, what else is going on with his cars that he isn’t telling the truth about?
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