Tesla's New Roadster Vs. the World's Worst Driver

Hey! Glad you’re here. Welcome to Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026, which also makes it Sweetest Day, so if you forgot, the candy aisle opens at 7.

My calendar says it's Pasta Day, Edge Day, Mulligan Day, Black Poetry Day, Sweetest Day, International Archaeology Day, and International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Take a mulligan on whatever you said at last night's party, keep it sober today, and bring your sweetheart a plate of pasta, preferably before an archaeologist or the EPA finds last week's leftovers in the back of the fridge.

Today in History: 

1777: British Gen. John Burgoyne surrenders his army to Gen. Horatio Gates at Saratoga, New York, turning the tide of the Revolutionary War.
1814: A ruptured vat at the Meux Brewery unleashes the London Beer Flood, sending a tidal wave of porter through the streets and killing eight people. What a way to go!
1907: Guglielmo Marconi launches commercial transatlantic wireless service between Nova Scotia and Ireland.
1919: General Electric forms the Radio Corporation of America.
1931: A federal jury convicts Al Capone of income tax evasion.
1933: Albert Einstein arrives in New York, fleeing Nazi Germany for a new life in Princeton.
1941: A German U-boat torpedoes the destroyer USS Kearny off Iceland, killing 11 sailors weeks before Pearl Harbor.
1956: Thirteen-year-old Bobby Fischer beats Donald Byrne in what chess players still call "The Game of the Century."
1973: Arab oil producers announce production cuts and an embargo, setting off gas lines across the country.
1979: Mother Teresa wins the Nobel Peace Prize for her work among the poorest of Calcutta.
1979: President Jimmy Carter signs the law creating the Department of Education.
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake rocks the San Francisco Bay Area minutes before Game 3 of the World Series, killing 63.
2006: The nation's population passes 300 million, according to Census Bureau estimates.
2018: Canada legalizes recreational marijuana.

Birthdays Today include: Jerry Siegel, comic book writer (Superman); Arthur Miller, playwright (Death of a Salesman, The Crucible); Rita Hayworth, actress (Gilda); Montgomery Clift, actor (From Here to Eternity, A Place in the Sun); Jimmy Breslin, newspaper columnist; Evel Knievel, motorcycle daredevil; Michael McKean, actor (This Is Spinal Tap, Laverne & Shirley, Better Call Saul); George Wendt, actor (Cheers); Margot Kidder, actress (Superman); Mae Jemison, astronaut; Alan Jackson, country singer ("Chattahoochee," "Remember When"); Norm Macdonald, comedian (Saturday Night Live); Ziggy Marley, reggae musician; Wyclef Jean, musician (the Fugees, The Score).

If today's your birthday too, happy birthday, and may your cake be sweeter than Burgoyne's afternoon.

* * *

I’m back on the road this morning, headed back to Letchworth and the Florack Word Ranch therein. So much for my vacation. Seems appropriate that I write about driving, then. I do still like to drive, but over the years I’ve come to regard some drives as more of a chore than a pleasure.

I've driven for roughly 50 years. About 15 of those years, I drove 18 wheels — up and down interstates, through blinding blizzards, past wrecks I still see when I close my eyes. I've watched every species of bad driver in its natural habitat: the texter, the tailgater, the guy who discovers his exit a quarter-mile too late and decides your lane belongs to him now.

So, believe me when I tell you this: The worst drivers on the planet are the ones who inexplicably believe the car they drive is saving it.

You know the type. You've seen the car. Sometimes it whispers past you at 85 with no engine noise, so you never hear it coming so fast you can’t read the “Coexist” sticker peeling off the trunk lid, and taking the paint with it. Sometimes it putters along at 52 in the left lane of the Thruway with a bumper sticker announcing that there is no Planet B. Either way, the driver carries himself with the serene confidence of a man who has already done his good deed for the day and therefore owes nothing further to anyone — including the other people on the road.

That's the root of it. Moral licensing. Psychologists have a name for the phenomenon: Do one virtuous thing, and you give yourself permission to behave badly elsewhere. Eat a salad at lunch, and you've earned the cheesecake. Buy a car that the brochure calls "zero emission," and you've earned the right to cut off a loaded tractor-trailer with about 30 feet to spare.

Let me explain something about that maneuver, since nobody at the Tesla showroom bothered. An 80,000-pound truck needs roughly the length of a football field — sometimes more — to stop from highway speed. When you dart into that gap in front of me, you didn't save the planet. You just stole my stopping distance, and you also bet your life that I'd keep my eyes on the road while you didn't keep yours on yours.

And no, this doesn't rest on one grumpy old trucker's anecdotes. When LendingTree crunched its insurance-quote data (OK, bad pun) covering November 2022 to November 2023, Tesla drivers posted the highest accident rate of any brand — 23.54 accidents per 1,000 drivers. Out of 30 brands. The car that markets itself as the future of transportation carries the drivers most likely to wreck in the present.

Now, honesty compels me to note that Ram drivers racked up more total incidents when you count tickets, speeding, and DUIs. I’ve spent a fair amount of my life around pickup guys, and I won't pretend they never earned a citation. But here's the difference: The fellow in the lifted Ram doesn't lecture you about it. He knows he's a little bit of a menace. He owns it. Nobody in a Ram has ever looked down at me from his moral high ground while drifting across the center line.

The eco-warrior does. He drifts across the line and believes the line should thank him.

Then there's the matter of what these cars actually save. Battery-powered vehicles weigh a lot more than their gasoline cousins — hundreds of pounds more, sometimes over a thousand. Weight shreds tires. One emissions-testing firm in Britain found that tire wear from a heavy EV's extra battery weight can dwarf the particulate pollution coming out of a modern gas car's tailpipe. Engineers will argue over the exact figures for years. But the basic physics doesn't care about your feelings: More mass means more rubber on the road, more wear on the pavement, and more energy to bring the thing to a stop when you finally notice the brake lights ahead.

This brings me back to the real problem. The planet-saver doesn't think of himself as part of traffic. He thinks of himself as above it. Traffic consists of the rest of us — the diesel-burners, the pickup drivers, the commuters in 12-year-old Chevys we can't afford to replace because some bureaucrat decided gas cars need to go extinct. We're the problem. He's the solution. And solutions don't need to signal.

I learned a few things in the cab of a truck that no app or autopilot will ever teach. You assume every other driver will do the dumbest thing possible, because eventually one of them will. You leave room. You signal early. You remember that the road belongs to everybody on it — not to whoever feels best about himself.

The guy in the "zero emission" car never learned that lesson, because he never thought he needed to. He already had his halo. Halos just don't come with turn signals.

Now that we’re here, let's examine tech that the people I’ve described above should never be allowed to drive.

Thought for today: If you believe Democrats will make gas cheaper, a look at California should dispel the illusion. 

VIP members: In your experience, who are the worst drivers?

Take care, gang. Thanks for being here. See ya tomorrow.

Editor's Note: Thanks to President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America's military.

Help us continue to report on Trump and Hegseth's successes as they make our military great again. Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.