Self-Driving Cars are Self-Driving Bullets

Why even Elon Musk has been forced to admit that navigating streets is hard

Clive Thompson
The Mobilist
Published in
5 min readJul 7, 2021

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“MINI Cooper” by Rodrigo Canisella Fávero

A car is a just a slow-moving bullet with a stereo system.

When we drive a car, we typically think our main task is navigating from point A to point B. But mostly what we’re doing is trying to keep from killing someone. That is Job One…

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Clive Thompson
The Mobilist

I write 2X a week on tech, science, culture — and how those collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. @clive@saturation.social clive@clivethompson.net