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News of a fatal accident last week involving a Tesla electric car that smashed into a tree with no-one at the wheel raises the question: why do Teslas have a “full self-driving” feature if they don’t fully drive themselves?

If I sold your mother-in-law a car and said it was self-driving, only for your mother-in-law to die after the car hit a tree and exploded into flames while operating in full self-driving mode, wouldn’t you be furious?

Well, okay, imagine it was someone other than your mother-in-law…

Wouldn’t you complain that a full self-driving car in which the driver had to sit in the driver’s seat with hands fully on the wheel and eyes fully on the road isn’t really a full self-driving car at all?

Wouldn’t you say, “This car is not self-driving because it doesn’t drive itself. It’s just a normal car being sold at an exorbitant price. How can my friend get one for his mother-in-law?”

If a man puts on a dress and wears make-up, do you call him a woman and insist he should be allowed to play women’s rugby? Or do you say, “That’s not a woman. It’s a man playing dress-ups. And there’s no way I’m letting him tackle my wife.”

And what if he was driving a Tesla? Would you say, “Look there goes a woman in a self-driving car” as it careered straight off the road into a tree?

Of course not.

Wouldn’t he just be a strangely dressed man found in the passenger seat of the burnt-out wreckage of an exorbitantly priced Tesla, leaving the women’s rugby team short a player but not a female player?

Or what if there was a medical procedure that caused an unborn baby to be torn to pieces before being vacuumed out of the womb and thrown into a trash bin?

Would you say, “Isn’t health care wonderful”? Or would you say, “That’s not health care. That’s the barbaric killing of a human being. And it’s wrong.”

And if the abortion doctor arrived at his family planning clinic in a self-driving Tesla, would you say, “Look! It’s the family planning doctor in his amazing self-driving car”? Or would you say, “Look! It’s the butcher in his very expensive Tesla purchased with money made from killing babies in the womb.”

And if that doctor protested that no-one has the right to tell a woman what she can or can’t do with her own body, would you agree? Or would you ask him whether he also believes no-one has the right to stop his self-driving Tesla slamming into a tree at speed with him as the passenger?

Or what about this?

If there was a taxpayer-funded broadcaster that employed no conservatives whilst pushing every left-wing agenda item you can imagine, would you call that media network fair and balanced? Would you say it was impartial? Would you call it unbiased?

Or would you say, “the ABC is an out-of-control Tesla that keeps careering off the road” and demand to know “who the hell is driving this thing”?

And what if Australia had a political and media class that spent more time debating who was masturbating on whose Parliament House desk than they did addressing the erosion of civil liberties, the rising threat of China, and the wisdom of record levels of debt?

And what if sexual mores had become so confused that police seriously suggested an app be used for women to give consent before intercourse?

And what if a footballer who beats his wife can continue playing, but a footballer who quotes the Bible cannot?

Would you say, our country is headed in the right direction?

Or would you say, “Put me in the passenger seat of a full self-driving Tesla, because I like my chances better”?

[Photo by Bram Van Oost on Unsplash]