Good evening. This is Davi Ottenheimer reporting from the American highways, where a different kind of war is unfolding with mass casualties mounting and accountability scarce.

We have become a nation accustomed to technological progress without pause for moral accounting. Tonight, we bring you a report not from distant jungles and deserts, but from our own streets and highways, where Americans are dying in encounters with Tesla that operate beyond meaningful human control or consequence.

The facts, plain and unadorned: Tesla vehicles equipped with self-driving technology have been involved in at least five fatal collisions with motorcyclists. Five American lives extinguished. Five families shattered.

Brevity is the spirit of wit, and I am just not that witty. This is a long article, here is the gist of it:

• The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of.
• This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities in the same time frame.
• The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists.

Death from behind. A fatal stab in the back.

And yet, the response from Washington has not been to hold the architects of these systems accountable, but rather to aggressively shield them with unprecedented legal protection.

The pattern is unmistakable—Tesla vehicles approaching motorcyclists from behind, failing to detect their presence, and striking them with fatal force as if programmed at the factory for manslaughter.

What separates these incidents from the fog of tragic accidents is their selectivity: while other manufacturers with similar technology report no such motorcyclist fatalities, Tesla’s record stands alone.

The proposed punishment for anyone standing against and damaging distribution of these violent death machines? Twenty years imprisonment—a sentence more severe than many receive for violent crimes against human beings.

…Attorney General Pam Bondi has said she intends to seek a 20-year prison sentence…. Bondi has vowed to treat these attacks [on Tesla property] as “domestic terrorism”…no one appears to have been hurt in such incidents.

Would you accept the risk of 20 years in jail if you knew your actions could save just one life, let alone dozens of them?

Meanwhile, the corporation behind the sharp rise in fatal crashes faces minimal or no scrutiny and continues operations with government blessing for killing ever more Americans in cold blood.

One cannot help but recall the words of Senator Fulbright on our Vietnam involvement:

Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God’s favor.

Have we now extended this confusion to one technological enterprise in particular and alone, believing Tesla dubiously inflated market power signals their moral exemption?

This is not about partisan politics. This is about whether we have surrendered our capacity to demand that technology serve humanity rather than endanger it by design. It is about whether we place higher value on protecting machines of a South African madman than on preserving American human life.

The motorcyclists who have died deserved better than to become statistics in a technological warfare experiment conducted on public roads. And the American public deserves leadership that prioritizes their safety over corporate interests.

Good night, and good luck.