The Internet Found a New Villain. It Was the Wrong One.

Yes, I wrote about the Ford Mustang Mach-E crash video. You've probably seen it. The viral clip of a green electric car scraping along a California highway barrier, its driver apparently praying with his hands raised, while it smashes into another car and flips it like a toy. The internet lost its mind. "Electric Ford malfunctions, leaving the driver with no option but to pray behind the wheel." That was the caption that went viral. Millions shared it. Ford was supposed to be sued. The self-driving cars are going to kill us all. Elon Musk should be embarrassed. Tesla's competition is failing. Except none of that was true. 2 The California Highway Patrol investigated. They found something much simpler than a car malfunction. The driver was drunk. He was arrested for DUI. The crash resulted in injuries to another person. The vehicle? Was not operating in autonomous mode. Not even close. The Mach-E doesn't even have Ford's BlueCruise system. It's not a self-driving car. It was never a self-driving car. 3 But here's what really got me. The internet didn't want to hear that. The drunk driver explanation was too boring. Too human. Too inconvenient. We live in an age where we'd rather blame the technology than admit humans are the problem. Give us an evil robot car any day over a guy who had too many drinks and got behind the wheel. The praying was the perfect prop. It looked like the car had trapped him. It looked like technology failing us. The man had his hands up! He was helpless!