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Comment by dieselgate | Hacker News Reader

I thought this article had a pleasant historical summary of car related culture in the US but thought the parts about the Cybertruck fell kind of flat.

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To my read, the author sets up owning a Cybertruck up as the vehicular equivalent of owning an assault weapon: "A bulletproof three-and-a-half ton stainless-steel truck equipped with “Bioweapon Defense Mode” designed to slam through other cars is the perfect vehicle for a society where over a third of people are scared to walk around at night." Hard to support that without hearing from buyers, but I thought that was rather pointy.

That statement is entirely factual though.

Musk has continually promoted the car as being bulletproof.

And we know from regulators and crash tests that it's going to be a nightmare for pedestrians. To the level where in many countries it is likely to not be street-legal. Factor in the sports-car level acceleration and it is going to be an unprecedentedly dangerous car.

If I have to choose between a "comfortable" car to be hit by without active safety features and an uncomfortable car that has active safety features, then I rather choose the latter. In other words, rather a car that is driven by a human and might break from itself than a "comfortable" car driven by only a human.

That's a total false dichotomy though. No new consumer vehicles in that price range lack active safety features like automatic breaking.

The cybertruck is just unnecessary in its disregard for other people.

Didn't they roll down the windows when they shot it? Pretty sure the standard windows aren't bulletproof (and therefore the vehicles with the standard windows aren't bulletproof either).

So in the end it's mostly just for show.

We don't know that. I think its likely safer to pedestrians then an F150 because the hood is significantly lower. The steel ia irrelevant, trucks don't crumple already for pedestrians, they crumple for other cars.

> Musk has continually promoted the car as being bulletproof.

South African aparteid mafia understands what the up-and-coming dictator aspires to.

There are lower-hanging, pointier fruit to be plucked there but the author didn’t pick them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_security_vehicle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casspir#/media/File:Caspir1.jp...

It felt like all lead-in no body.

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