A 27-year-old woman is dead after the Tesla she was riding in tore through Midtown Manhattan and slammed into scaffolding early Wednesday — and you can bet the establishment press will blame the machine, not the human behind the wheel.
According to the New York Post, the 2024 Tesla struck a mailbox around 2:43 a.m. before careening into scaffolding outside 315 Madison Ave. just before 3 a.m. The vehicle traveled several blocks east along East 42nd Street before finally stopping at the intersection of Second Avenue. The passenger was rushed to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead. The driver, also a 27-year-old woman, is in stable condition and in police custody. No charges have been filed. No cause for the loss of control has been named. The investigation is ongoing.
That last sentence is the one that matters — and the one the anti-tech press will bury. Officials have said nothing about Autopilot or Full Self-Driving being engaged. No indication this was anything other than a driver who lost control of her vehicle at nearly 3 in the morning in one of the most congested cities in America. But because the badge on the steering wheel says Tesla, the story becomes a referendum on electric vehicles and autonomous technology instead of what it actually is: a tragic wreck caused by a human being on crumbling city streets.
This is the playbook. Every time a Tesla is involved in an incident, the headline leads with the brand. The framing writes itself before the facts are in. A gas-powered sedan kills a pedestrian — that's a local tragedy. A Tesla does the same — that's a tech industry scandal. The New York Post ran the headline "out-of-control Tesla" before any investigation determined what was actually out of control: the car, the driver, or the road.
Meanwhile, the real dangers on American roads get no coverage at all. Decaying infrastructure, distracted driving, impaired driving — these kill thousands every year. New York City's streets are notoriously hostile to drivers and pedestrians alike, and the scaffolding that this car hit is itself a symptom of a city where construction wraps buildings for years with no accountability. But none of that fits the narrative that Silicon Valley is coming for your life.
The Dissenter take: a young woman is dead. Another young woman may face charges. That is the story. The make of the car is a detail — and until investigators say otherwise, treating it as the cause is not journalism, it's agenda.
The open question: will NYPD's investigation actually examine the road conditions, the driver's state, and the infrastructure — or will it become another data point in the establishment's war on tech?
