Not many details have been released yet to explain why a Tesla suddenly accelerated and veered off a road in Colorado and crashed at high speed.

According to Colorado State Patrol Trooper Gabriel Moltrer, around 5:54 p.m., troopers were dispatched to the crash involving a 71-year-old Tesla driver.

Moltrer said a crash investigation showed the Tesla was heading west off of South Boulder Road when the front of the vehicle collided with an embankment before going airborne.

The Tesla then rolled an unknown number of times before coming to rest on its wheels facing north, according to Moltrer.

Molter said the Tesla was the only vehicle involved in the crash and the driver was the only occupant.

This tragic crash report reminds me of all the video footage I’ve seen of Tesla driverless software drifting across the road into oncoming traffic.

Investigators report a male juvenile from Mendota was driving a 2021 Tesla on northbound Highway 33, north of Clarkson Avenue just as a 2019 Freightliner was traveling southbound on the same road.

For reasons yet to be determined, officers say the juvenile allowed the Tesla to partially veer to the left, into the southbound lane. The Tesla crashed head-on with the Freightliner and the juvenile was ejected from the force of impact.

The Tesla continued northeast as it came to rest within an agricultural field east of Highway 33.

CHP says the juvenile driver of the Tesla sustained fatal injuries and the driver of the Freightliner received treatment on the scene for minor injuries he sustained.

There are too many examples of Tesla crashes like this one, where reasons are yet to be determined.

An 18-year-old cyclist suffered life-threatening injuries at a 25 mph intersection where infrastructure design and automated vehicle systems combined with lethal effect, although you won’t find that critical safety analysis in standard reporting.

Consider however that lethal design choice at the Nevada intersection deliberately omitted important crosswalk markings, creating legal cover for artificial intelligence to violently terminate innocent pedestrians. Google Maps shows the sides clearly labeled with a strategic gap on one side of the intersection:

This intersection exemplifies how calculated infrastructure choices create predictable collision patterns, where engineering choices forge designated deadly space for vulnerable humans. While Tesla’s sensor limitations are well documented, this intersection demonstrates how road design actively teaches AI systems to devalue pedestrian life.

This hostile design stems directly from 1930s American road doctrine that criminalized poverty through infrastructure – a cynically-named “safety” movement that transformed public spaces into killing zones. The deliberately obscured stop sign in the following image (far left side, behind the bushes) exemplifies the road to violence: positioned so far back that northbound traffic must pull into this intersection’s conflict zone just to see oncoming traffic.

Combined with the missing crosswalk, this creates a deadly catch-22: stop where directed and remain blind to cross traffic, or edge forward into danger. These aren’t design oversights – they’re calculated decisions that shift liability onto road users as if to use fear to either force them off the streets, into cars, or unfairly judge any crash as their fault.

Heavily faded crosswalk markings on the remaining three sides compound the problem, demonstrating systematic neglect of infrastructure and heightened risk for any road user encountering automated vehicles. At best this configuration saddles pedestrians and cyclists with a punitive triple-distance crossing requirement that serves no legitimate safety purpose. Or they assume a cross-walk has faded where there was none by cruel design.

This intersection’s design reveals a systemic prioritization of vehicle throughput over human life. Even from the cyclist’s approach northbound – the very angle where visibility is most critical – the stop sign remains far back from the intersection among obstructions and nearly invisible. Rather than enabling autonomous vehicles to protect human life, such hostile infrastructure actually trains algorithms to amplify anti-pedestrian bias.

This collision exemplifies a dangerous feedback loop: infrastructure designed to marginalize pedestrians becomes training data for AI systems, which then learn to automate and amplify this violence with algorithmic precision. The Tesla didn’t merely fail to protect human life – it weaponized decades of anti-pedestrian infrastructure design, while police reporting perpetuates the car industry’s long history of victim-blaming.

Police said a 2016 Tesla Model X was traveling westbound on Arby Avenue when it was struck by an electric bicycle traveling northbound on El Capitan Way. Authorities reported that the 18-year-old e-bike rider failed to stop at a posted stop sign, leading to the collision with the Tesla. The e-bike rider sustained substantial injuries and was transported to UMC Trauma by ambulance, where his injuries were deemed potentially life-threatening.

The police narrative strains credibility when examined against the physics and geometry of this 25 mph intersection. How could the Tesla driver definitively assess that a cyclist failed to stop at a sign they themselves can barely see? If Tesla’s sensors can’t reliably identify a blown stop sign in this configuration or detect the common cyclist, any claims about compliance become suspect.

The physics are damning: on this wide, clear street, a Tesla’s automated systems should have easily detected and responded to cross traffic. At the posted 25 mph limit, with regenerative and mechanical braking plus near-instantaneous sensor reaction, the stopping distance would be just 25 feet. Yet the Tesla apparently didn’t brake at all, delivering its full kinetic energy (≈ 156,800 Joules at 25 mph, given its 2,500 kg mass) directly into a human body. This suggests either significant speeding, complete failure of safety systems, or both – making the police’s reflexive blame of the vulnerable road user even more egregious.

Is the automated vehicle failure as much to blame or more than the flawed infrastructure design, given institutional bias that pollutes AI systems?

The intersection’s design – with its missing crosswalk, poorly placed stop sign, and emphasis on vehicle throughput is training autonomous vehicles to harm, teaching them to replicate and amplify decades of anti-pedestrian attacks. Each deeply flawed Tesla deployed is learning from infrastructure fundamentally biased against human life, normalizing and relearning to attack vulnerable road users. The bias runs deep in American infrastructure – even our language betrays it. While British English uses “pavement” because people have historical rights to the road, American “sidewalk” literally pushes pedestrians aside, reflecting a cultural shift that prioritized vehicles over human life.

The solution requires immediate action on simple humanitarian grounds: implementing clear crosswalk markings, optimizing stop sign placement, and fundamentally rebalancing our infrastructure priorities away from vehicle throughput and toward human safety. Without these changes, we risk increasingly automated systems that turn obscured historical infrastructure biases into the foundations for mass algorithmic violence – with each software update and vehicle deployment turning our streets into unlivable combat zones.

I have no idea why an economist like Noah wants to reveal he’s so far out of his depth, but his recent defense of Elon Musk exemplifies exactly why criticism of the infamous snake-oilman is warranted – logical fallacies dance around ignoring the fundamental issue of a pattern of grandiose promises followed by systematic and dumb, really dumb, failures.

Noah’s horrible “clutching perils” (pun intended) analysis fails on three very basic levels: technological, historical, and – most surprisingly for an economist – fundamental financial evidence.

Cough. Fraud. Cough. The entire Noahpinion piece falls victim to surface narratives that are completely false.

• Accepting marketing claims without verification
• Ignoring documented operational failures
• Overlooking systematic deception
• Conflating financial success with actual achievement

The barrier to entry for fraud isn’t intelligence or cunning, it’s simply the willingness to do it and a context that enables it.

Let’s break down how Noah’s defense of Musk proves exactly what critics have been saying all along: intelligence isn’t the issue when there’s a systematic pattern of deceptive practices. When someone repeatedly takes money for products they never deliver, announces features that don’t exist, manipulates markets through social media, and uses new promises to distract from old failures, that’s not a question of IQ. Noah’s defense of intelligence is actually an own-goal because it works up a frothy nothing-burger about Musk while completely ignoring the well documented history of deceptive business practices that disprove it all. It’s like defending the integrity of the Enron CEO by arguing about his golf handicap.

FSD has been promised 8 separate times since 2016 and still can’t be trusted for a second. It literally just drove a brand new Cybertruck directly into a pole like on a suicide mission. Every missed deadline has been followed by a price increase, every lie has been doubled down with even more outrageous claims to never arrive. The “extreme survival” design fails within 1,000 miles and is less safe than a Ford Pinto. 17X less safe. Nobody should be distracted by discussions about this being about intelligence or not. It’s fraud.

Got your logical fallacy bingo cards ready? When a defense requires so many logical fallacies and yet still fails to address the fundamental criticism, it suggests Musk’s critics are really on to something.

1. Appeal to Accomplishment (Courtier’s Reply)

The article argues that critics can’t criticize Musk because they “couldn’t build SpaceX.” This is like saying you can’t criticize Lance Armstrong for taking drugs unless you can win the Tour de France. Or that you can’t possibly identify a Ponzi scheme and criticize it unless you could steal billions yourself. It’s a textbook logical fallacy that stupidly attempts to silence criticism by completely ignoring the most important substance. SpaceX is fraud. Why would we expect anyone to rob a bank in order to stop criminals from robbing a bank?

2. False Attribution of Success (Post hoc ergo propter hoc)

Noah attributes Tesla and SpaceX’s achievements solely to Musk, which is truly ignorant. There’s a saying in Silicon Valley that Musk has never built anything, which is true. He failed miserably out of every company he’s ever entered into, which isn’t to say he didn’t get rich. It’s to say he couldn’t hold a candle to the actual hard work by the thousands of real engineers and scientists, taking in billions in government subsidies and contracts, to work with existing technological foundations, delivering on favorable market conditions and timing, thanks to teams of managers and executives who handle daily operations. Are we calling Musk the only success after he just shows up and writes term sheets that give him massive speculative gains from laundering his parents’ apartheid blood money? That’s like calling Nazi Germany an achievement of one Swiss banker.

3. Moving the Goalposts

This fallacy practically defines the Musk experience. When confronted with failed promises, defenders shift from concrete deliverables to vague concepts like undefined “vision” and mystery “potential.” This childish sleight of hand transforms clear failures into nebulous successes:

• The promise of coast-to-coast self-driving cars by 2017? “Ambitious” fraud.
• Mars landing by 2018, with colonies by 2022? “Boundary pushing” fraud.
• Hyperloop to divert public transit funds to Tesla? “Inspiring” fraud.

The list of fraudulent statements to avoid admitting failure is practically endless at this point, which itself is ridiculous. If we have to give more than three, who is really listening?

4. Appeal to Authority

This is a strange one for two reasons. First, authority is relevant if speaking within expertise. Second, IQ is injected into conversations by defenders of Musk (a Red Herring). So when Musk’s biographer, an actual authority, says he finds no evidence of IQ tests only a lot of evidence that it’s 100… that’s not some random voice. That’s an authority. Yet somehow Noah decides he can respond on this point by appealing to far lesser authorities if ones at all. He goes with SAT scores from decades ago, selective quotes from friendly biographers and testimonials from invested business associates. Marc Andreessen? That’s like asking Goebbels if Hitler tells the truth. None of these IQ points address the actual criticism about failed delivery and lack of accountability, which speak more realistically about someone’s intelligence. If Musk has an IQ over 100, why would he constantly tell lies and fail so badly at his promises? That’s not intelligent, it’s fraud. If you’re fooled by his advance fee fraud, or somehow made rich too by engaging and enabling in it, that doesn’t make him smarter.

5. False Equivalence

Need I even say why someone comparing Musk to Genghis Khan or Henry Ford has jumped the shark with false equivalences? Let’s just ignore vastly different historical contexts, conflate different types of achievements, misrepresent the nature of modern technological development, and totally bypass the role of teams and institutions. Elon Musk is a worse form of Ford, if anything, with the flamboyant racism and affinity for Nazism not to mention the habit of taking credit for ideas he stole. Musk’s tweet about Genghis Khan is a concerning red flag, like when he compares himself to Alexander the Great or Napoleon (Historian protip: Musk echoes megalomania topics of the AWB – Nazi party of South Africa – which he grew up with).

The “illiterate man on a pony” defense is particularly weak when discussing modern corporate leadership. Mongols had oral culture such that any lack of writing was completely normal and expected for their best leaders. An obvious ethnocentric perspective, claiming that people operating within powerful oral traditions somehow should illustrate to us their intelligence was underestimated at the time, is some true ahistoric bullshit that only demonstrates the profound ignorance of Noah.

Genghis Khan wasn’t operating at some cultural disadvantage that needed to be overcome, he was fully equipped with the most advanced and sophisticated training and tools for leadership and organization. It’s logically incoherent to use him as one of the greatest minds leveraging advanced tools at massive scale in order to defend Musk operating outside organizational competencies and repeatedly failing. Remember when he announced his factories would be robots and then catastrophically backtracked, trying to cruelly laugh it off as “underestimating human worth” before landing in court from widespread racist abuse of his workers? This demonstrated the most fundamental misunderstanding of well-known manufacturing processes that other automakers had spent many decades documenting. Tesla can’t keep a general council in its toxic culture for more than a year or two, right? Is it any wonder Noah falls victim to Musk fraud, if he can’t comprehend such basic modern history or philosophy.

Suggesting that because once upon a time there was a “great man” who shaped history before (like Genghis Khan), somehow that means Musk’s current position and actions could somehow should be characterized as equivalent? Once again I’d say he’s far more like a racist Ford who steals’ ideas. There’s the equivalence. Ford was a horrible, horrible person who did much to damage America (don’t get me started on WWI taking money to build tanks and then never delivering them because he wanted Britain to fail). History will likely show Musk has always been on the wrong side and will stay there, given his long-time adherence to repeatedly promoting Nazism. You think Tesla puts “88” all over its car marketing as a coincidence? Sure, and the “SS” merchandise and Hitler salutes definitely aren’t related to rebranding Twitter with a swastika. Yeah, equivalence fallacy is a cruel road that goes the exact opposite direction Noah expects if he really wants us to engage in it.

6. Ad Hominem

I’m sad to report this seems inevitable in these defense jobs circulating around Musk. Rather than addressing critics’ arguments, the defense tries to sling a bunch of mud as “cope” and “class resentment”, or being “unwise people”. The substance of the criticism remains unaffected. Class resentment? What class of fraud is Musk, exactly? Is it the Madoff class or the Epstein class? Seems worthy of resentment either way.

7. Bandwagon

Suggesting that because Musk has repeatedly “made his hecklers eat their words,” his critics must be wrong now? If anything Musk has been the one eating his words more than anyone. Remember when he said if you tried to warn people his driverless didn’t work he would blame you for all the deaths he caused? It was a lethal bandwagon fallacy that threatened accurate reporting with retaliation. Now he’s not only admitting he never had driverless, that it never really worked while many dozens or more were killed, he’s switching to say everyone who already paid a premium to be grandfathered in (and wasn’t killed) is expected to pay more advanced fees… while there’s still no evidence it will ever work.

8. False Dichotomy

Presenting the only options as either accepting Musk as “the single most capable man in America” or being foolish. This ignores the vast spectrum of reasonable positions between these extremes, such as Musk being assessed as the most prolific liar in the history of American business.

9. Cherry Picking

Selecting specific successes is not a strong position. SpaceX’s unsafe numbers of failing satellites injected into space hastily are already falling apart, which will prove to be a disaster some time in the near future rather than today. Any attempt to downplay or ignore the past and current disasters or problematic areas for Musk isn’t going to fly for long because there are far too many problems in too many areas. We usually call this tech-debt and he has more accumulating than the entire history of tech. They simply can’t be avoided, no matter how fast and far he tries to run from the tsunami of mistakes he created. He literally threw himself into Roman-era concubine problems, just to show how deeply disturbed and unworthy of leadership roles he is across multiple levels. Honestly I’m surprised anyone wants to still hunt for cherries in the rotting soggy botulism tech-pies he tosses around.

10. Strawman

Noah characterizes critics’ positions as calling Musk “stupid” or focusing on IQ, when many criticisms of Musk are mainly about his racism, sexism, irrational decision-making, leadership style, and degrading impact on institutions… just to get started. The man has more issues than the Library of Congress.

11. Survivorship Bias

Noah completely ignores all the failures and abandoned projects like Twitter being converted from a business into a state-financed Russian propaganda megaphone, all the Tesla recalls and crashes being far higher than average, charging station maintenance nightmares, the robots that aren’t coming, HyperLoop and Boring disasters… let alone the FSD fiasco.

• Tesla solar roof: $5B+ write-off
• Hyperloop: $0 in actual transportation delivered
• Twitter Blue: 99.98% subscriber rejection rate
• Boring Company: 0 cities served as promised

When you need nearly a dozen different logical fallacies to defend someone’s record, it suggests you’re trying to hide something substantial.

The Snake-Oil Pattern of Sell Lies and Skip Town

Every few years Tesla rips out all their driverless fraud technology and starts over, just to throw critics off the trail. Version what? None of it works, but you’re supposed to wait and see until they rip it out so you have to wait and see again. What makes Noah’s long-winded intellectually devoid defense particularly revealing is how it exemplifies the very problem critics identify. Consider this pattern:

1. Grandiose promises
2. Missed deadlines
3. Redirected attention to new promises
4. Attack of critics
5. Rinsed and repeated

If those are the rules of success in business, who can’t do it? Any toddler can fail to deliver and throw a tantrum. What kind of person wants to lower the bar of success so far that it ceases to have any meaning at all other than someone pays dearly for it?

• 2016: Promise full self-driving by 2017, Mars landing by 2018
• 2017: Miss deadlines, announce Roadster by 2020
• 2018: Miss deadlines, promise everything by 2019
• 2019: Miss deadlines, announce Cybertruck by 2021
• 2020: Miss deadlines, redirect news to Twitter purchase
• 2021-2024: Missed deadlines, Cybertruck safety 17X worse than Ford Pinto, still no self-driving or Mars landing because FRAUD

The Musk defense never addresses the central question orbiting around his IQ claims. Why should someone who consistently fails to deliver on promises, in the most fraudulent ways possible including taking millions of up-front payments for nothing, be considered highly competent?

What seems to really be going on is some people love to celebrate stock market performance over actual delivery and confuse marketing with technical competence. Worse, they treat simple wealth accumulation as proof of capability, seemingly to justify ends-justifies-means crimes. Fundamentally, Noah’s defense of Musk completely ignores the pattern of overpromising and underdelivering in a way that can only be described as fraud.

This is highly problematic because such an illogical, fallacy defense undermines accountability in business leadership. We should not confuse financial success with actual achievements because it sets a dangerous precedent for corporate responsibility. A personality cult does not substitute for demonstrable, measured and transparent results.

Perhaps instead of asking why critics call Musk’s competence into question, we should ask why his defenders show such blindness and incompetence in addressing the actual criticisms: consistent failure to deliver on promises, a systemic pattern of fraud.