{"id":179140,"date":"2018-05-06T17:21:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-06T22:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/05\/06\/one-setback-from-being-a-bond-villain\/"},"modified":"2018-05-06T17:21:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-06T22:21:00","slug":"one-setback-from-being-a-bond-villain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/05\/06\/one-setback-from-being-a-bond-villain\/","title":{"rendered":"One Setback from Being a Bond Villain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You may recall that roughly a month ago, <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2018\/04\/silicon-valley-meets-real-world-part.html\">Tesla was kicked off the NTSB investigation of its fatal &#8220;autopilot&#8221; crash<\/a> for issuing self serving pres releases, which the NTSB frowns upon.<\/p>\n<p>Well, it can now be revealed that when the NTSB called Elon Musk, <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2018\/05\/elon-musk-hung-up-on-ntsb-chief-during-call-about-tesla-crash-probe\/\"><b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">he hung up on them<\/span><\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I am a firm believer that a leader needs to be receptive to criticism and differences of opinion.<\/p>\n<p>William Durant, founder of General Motors, famously would defer major decisions if there was no opposition, on the theory that the lack of dissent meant that there had not been enough consideration of the downside.<\/p>\n<p>Elon Musk clearly has some problems:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">On April 11, Robert Sumwalt, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, called Tesla CEO Elon Musk to tell him that the federal agency was taking the unusual step of removing the company from its investigation into a fatal <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/cars\/2018\/03\/tesla-says-autopilot-was-active-during-fatal-crash-in-mountain-view\/\">March 2018 Tesla X crash<\/a> in California. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Now, as <i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2018-05-04\/musk-hung-up-on-ntsb-chief-in-testy-april-call-about-tesla-probe\">Bloomberg<\/a><\/i> reports, Sumwalt says that Musk abruptly ended the call, according to remarks that the safety official gave before the Society of Air Safety Investigators&#8217; Mid-Atlantic Regional Chapter dinner on Thursday. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;Best I remember, he hung up on us,&#8221; Sumwalt said. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">In a short email sent to Ars, Christopher T. O&#8217;Neil, the NTSB&#8217;s chief of media relations, confirmed <i>Bloomberg<\/i>&#8216;s description of the call. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;The account of the Chairman&#8217;s remarks is accurate,&#8221; O&#8217;Neil wrote.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">On April 12, the NTSB formally <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/cars\/2018\/04\/federal-officials-boot-tesla-from-crash-investigation\/\">removed<\/a> Tesla as a party to the investigation into the crash. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;The NTSB took this action because Tesla violated the party agreement by releasing investigative information before it was vetted and confirmed by the NTSB,&#8221; the agency <a href=\"https:\/\/ntsb.gov\/news\/press-releases\/Pages\/NR20180412.aspx\">wrote<\/a>. &#8220;Such releases of incomplete information often lead to speculation and incorrect assumptions about the probable cause of a crash, which does a disservice to the investigative process and the traveling public.&#8221; <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">For its part, Tesla said, in fact, that it withdrew before being booted out of the investigation. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">A spokesperson even <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/04\/12\/tesla-says-it-willingly-withdrew-from-ntsb-investigation\/\">said<\/a> that the NTSB was &#8220;more concerned with press headlines than actually promoting safety.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 230px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/DMcM2V6.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/DMcM2V6.gif\" width=\"220\" \/><\/a><br \/><i>No Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Die<\/i><\/div>\n<p>I am not explicitly stating that Elon Musk has a screw loose, but I am saying that we should be very concerned if he buys a white Persian cat.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may recall that roughly a month ago, Tesla was kicked off the NTSB investigation of its fatal &#8220;autopilot&#8221; crash for issuing self serving pres releases, which the NTSB frowns upon. Well, it can now be revealed that when the NTSB called Elon Musk, he hung up on them. I am a firm believer that &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,414,548,471],"class_list":["post-179140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-psychology","tag-safety","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}