Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is a powerful tool, but like many powerful tools, it has the potential to allow humans to let our natural abilities atrophy. It’s the same way that the invention of the jackhammer pretty much caused humans to lose the ability to pound through feet of concrete and asphalt with our bare fists. We’re already seeing effects of this with the widespread use of ChatGPT seemingly causing cognitive decline and atrophying writing skills, and now I’m starting to think advanced driver’s aids, especially more comprehensive ones like Level 2 supervised semi-automated driving systems are doing the same thing: making people worse drivers.
I haven’t done studies to prove this in any comprehensive way, so at this point I’m still just speculating, like a speculum. I’m not entirely certain a full study is even needed at this point, though, because there are already some people just flat-out admitting to it online, for everyone to see, free of shame and, perhaps, any degree of self-reflection.
Specifically, I’m referring to this tweet that has garnered over two million views so far:
The other night I was driving in pouring rain, fully dark, and the car randomly lost GPS.
No location. No navigation.
Which also meant no FSD.I tried two software resets while driving just to get GPS back. Nothing worked. So there I was, manually driving in terrible… pic.twitter.com/hKlU6AlCEZ
— Oli (@CARN0N) December 13, 2025
Oh my. If, for some reason, you’re not able to read the tweet, here’s the full text of it:
“The other night I was driving in pouring rain, fully dark, and the car randomly lost GPS. No location. No navigation. Which also meant no FSD. I tried two software resets while driving just to get GPS back. Nothing worked. So there I was, manually driving in terrible conditions, unsure of positioning, no assistance, no guidance. And it genuinely felt unsafe. For me and for the people in the car. Then it hit me. This feeling – the stress, the uncertainty, the margin for error – this is how most drivers feel every single day. No FSD. No constant awareness. No backup. We’ve normalised danger so much that we only notice it when the safety net disappears.”
Wow. Drunk Batman himself couldn’t have beaten an admission like this out of me. There’s so much here, I’m not even really sure where to start. First, it’s night, and it’s “fully dark?” That’s kind of how night works, champ. And, sure, pouring rain is hardly ideal, but it’s very much part of life here on Earth. It’s perfectly normal to feel some stress when driving in the dark, in bad weather, but it’s not “how most drivers feel every single day.” Most drivers are used to driving, and they deal with poor conditions with awareness and caution, but, ideally, not the sort of panic suggested in this tweet.
Also, my quote didn’t replicate the weird spacing and short, staccato paragraphs that made this whole thing read like one of those weird LinkedIn posts where some fake thing someone’s kid said because a revelation of B2B best practices, or some shit.
It seems that the reason this guy felt the way he did when the driver aids were removed is that he’s, frankly, not used to actually driving. In fact, if you look at his profile on eX-Twitter, he notes that he’s a Tesla supervisor, which is pretty significantly different than calling yourself a Tesla driver:
This is an objectively terrible and deeply misguided way to view your relationship with your car for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that even if you do consider yourself a “supervisor” – a deeply flawed premise to begin with – the very definition of Level 2 semi-autonomy is that the person “supervising” has to be ready to take over with zero warning, which means you need to be able to drive your damn car, no matter the situation it happens to be in.
If anything, you would think the takeaway here would have been, shit, I need to be a more competent driver and less of a candy-ass as opposed to coming away thinking, as stated in the tweet,
“We’ve normalised danger so much that we only notice it when the safety net disappears.”
This is so deeply and eye-rollingly misguided I almost don’t know where to start, except I absolutely do know where to start: the idea that the “safety net” is Tesla’s FSD software. Because that is exactly the opposite of how Level 2 systems are designed to work! You, the human, are the safety net! If you’ve already made the arguably lazy and questionable decision to farm out the majority of the driving task to a system that lacks redundant sensor backups and is still barely out of Beta status, then you better damn well be ready to take over when the system fails, because that’s how it’s designed to work.
To be fair, our Tesla Supervisor here did take over when his FSD went down due to loss of a GPS signal, but, based on what he said, he felt “unsafe” for himself and the passengers in the car. The lack of FSD isn’t the problem here; the problem is that the human driver didn’t feel safe operating their own motor vehicle.
Not only was he uncomfortable driving in the inclement weather and lack of light (again, that’s just nighttime, a recurring phenomenon), but the reason he had to debase himself so was because of a technical failure of FSD, which, it should be noted, can happen at any time, without warning. Hence the need to be able to drive a damn car, comfortably.
What does he mean when he says, referring to human driving, “no constant awareness?” Almost every driver I know is constantly aware that they are driving. That’s part of driving. Do people get distracted, look at phones, get lost in reveries, or whatever? Sure they do. That’s not ideal, but it doesn’t mean people aren’t aware.
Unsurprisingly, the poster of this admission has been getting a good bit of blowback in comments from people a little less likely to soil themselves when they have to drive in the rain. So, he provided a follow-up tweet:
To everyone that says I should’ve have a license:
This is a true story – it was pouring rain a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night, with insane wind making it a recipe for disaster. I had just washed the car and was on my way to pick someone up.
About 30 seconds after… https://t.co/POIA0Ue58n
— Oli (@CARN0N) December 15, 2025
I’m not really sure what this follow-up actually clarified, but he did describe the experience in a bit more detail:
“I knew the rough direction but not exactly. I never use my phone while driving, so 1 rely solely on the car nav. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working, and I had to pull over to double-check where I was going.”
That’s just…driving. This is how all driving was up until about 15 years ago or so. I have an abysmal sense of direction, so I feel like I spent most of my pre-GPS driving life lost at least a quarter of the time I was driving anywhere. But you figure it out. You take some wrong turns, you end up in places you didn’t originally plan to be in, you looked at maps or signs or asked someone and you eventually got there. It wasn’t perfect, but it was what you had, and when we could finally, say, print out MapQuest directions and clip them to the dash, oh man, that was a game changer.
I took plenty of long road trips in marginal cars with no phone and just signs and vague notions to guide me where I was going. If I had to do it today, sure, there would be some significant adapting to exhume my pre-GPS navigational skills – well, skills is too generous a word, so maybe we can just say ability – but I think it could be done. And every driver really should be able to do the same thing.
FSD (Supervised) is a tool, a crutch, and if you find yourself in a position where its absence is causing you fear instead of just a bit of annoyance, you’re no longer really qualified to drive a car. Teslas (and other mass-market cars with similar L2 driver assist systems) don’t have redundant sensors, most don’t have the means to clean camera lenses (or radar/lidar windows and domes), and none of them are rated for actually unsupervised driving. Which means that you, the person in the driver’s seat, need to actually live up to the name of that seat: you have to know how to drive a damn car.
This tweet should be taken as a warning, because while it’s fun to feel all smug because you can drive in the rain and ridicule this hapless fellow, I guarantee you he’s not alone. There are other people whose driving skills are atrophying because of reliance on systems like Tesla’s FSD, and this is a very bad path to go down. Our Tesla Supervisor here may actually have been unsafe when he had to take full control of the car and didn’t feel comfortable. And that’s not a technical problem, it’s a perception problem, and it’s not even the original poster’s fault entirely – there is a lot of encouragement from Tesla and the surrounding community to consider FSD to be far more capable than it actually is.
Driving is dangerous, and it’s good to feel that, sometimes! You should always be aware that when you’re driving, you’re in a metal-and-plastic, ton-and-a-half box hurtling down haphazardly maintained roads at a mile per minute. If that’s not a little scary to you, then you’re either a liar, a corpse, or one of those kids who started karting at four years old.
We all need to accept the reality of what driving is, and the inherent, wonderful madness behind it. I personally know myself well enough to realize how easily I can be lured into false senses of security by modern cars and start driving like a moron; to combat this, my preferred daily drivers are ridiculous, primitive machines incapable of hiding the fact that they’re just metal boxes with lots of sharp, poke-y bits that are whizzing along far too quickly. Which, in the case of my cars, can mean speeds of, oh, 45 mph.
The point is, everyone on the road should be able to capably drive, in pretty much any conditions, without the aid of some AI. Even when we have more advanced automated driving systems, this should still be the case, at least for vehicles capable of being driven by a human. But for right now, systems like FSD are not the safety net: the safety net is always us. We’re always responsible when we’re in the driver’s seat, and if we forget that, we could end up in far worse situations than just embarrassing ourselves online.
But that can happen too, of course.
I had never thought of this. I used to lament that few people (in the US) know how to drive a stick. Now it’ll be that few people know how to drive without tech assistance.
I hate to gatekeep, but I don’t think this kid gets to call himself a “car enthusiast” until he actually, you know, drives one.
Oh, no—I think we’re fine to gatekeep in this case. Dude shouldn’t even be allowed to drive at this point.
This isn’t gatekeeping, this is forcing people to face reality..
One Clarksonism I really like is “people who don’t care about cars shouldn’t drive”, he explains that if you treat a car as an appliance, you treat driving as a chore and that lack of care means you’re probably bad at it. Same applies here, this guy likes the idea of cars, probably likes looking at them, likes the status they convey etc., but he doesn’t have any enthusiasm for their use, so can’t really have any enthusiasm for them really. It’s like people who tell me they are “into watches” but what they are really “into” are shiny things, specifically the heteronormative type of male jewelry; the wristwatch. Because all they buy are flashy department store garbage.
I followed a Model 3 a few weeks ago and could tell by looking that the driver wasn’t driving when two little traffic islands appeared on this road (not quite a straight road, slightly bowed from one end to the other). The road widens to accommodate said island and then tapers back into its normal width afterwards. Both times, the Model 3 reacted quite late and drove a jagged shape around the island, as if it was short-sighted. I immediately thought “a human doesn’t drive like that.” You see the island from ages away and make a small steering input well in advance to scribe a smooth, barely perceptible arc when you’re driving yourself and paying attention.
But, as you say, ADAS by any other name encourages people to trust the computer and pay less and less attention, which makes them worse and more dangerous drivers, and I don’t believe the average person has a clue what ‘Level 2’ means – they just get sold that the car can do basic manoeuvring ‘for you’ and treat it as a convenience.
Aeroplanes have had autopilot that actually works for decades, but pilots still have to have it ingrained in them how to take over and rescue an unexpected situation. Car drivers aren’t given the same mentality, it seems. We still need significantly better education and some actual training around this technology, and I still feel that driving licences should be re-tested every 5 or 10 years to check people on bad habits.
That bit makes me question the premise of your argument (but not your conclusion). I’ve seen entirely too many people unironically “defend” their terrible driving by arguing they can’t navigate an intersection with multiple turning lanes without lane markings to help them follow a smooth arc from, for example, the leftmost turn lane to the leftmost lane of travel. Most people have truly awful spatial awareness when they’re driving.
Love the new “dipshit” tag
That has to be a bit. Nobody is that dumb. His twitter profile cost me a number of brain cells.
Long-term exposure to Twitter causes people to become like this and long-term exposure to the cult of Tesla causes people to do things like turn their own lack of ability into preaching that FSD is surely the only thing making their car safe.
Unfortunately, that’s just your average Twitter user in 2025.
So glad I left that place. As they say, if you’re hanging out in a bar full of nazis, you’re in the nazi bar and I suggest moving the hell on.
Proud Luddite approves this article
There is hope, well at least for some young’ns. As a little kid, my grandkid (15 now) “are we there yet?” was never asked, it was “where are we?”. Kid loves FlightRadar24, online mapping but rarely needs it, as the kid has excellent location awareness. To the point of messing with me (the driver) giving directions to somewhere we were going (kid age 10). When the kid reaches driving age in just a few years, I have no concerns that even without a electrical nanny, the destination will be reached.
When I was a small child, far back as I can remember, I sat in the back seat with my maps and followed along – I always knew where we were. When I was 6 or 7 Dad had me take over navigation from Mom, because I was better at it. My favorite directions (real, and worked 50 years ago): “Take 95 North from Boston, stay on 95 until you get to the tall wooden Indian, then turn right. The office is a mile on the left.”
Our system left Mom free to look out for roaming dinosaurs – or to wave at everyone who was staring at our DS.
Seems like a good thing to me. The more weak and feeble the easier for the rest of us. Yee who can drive at night and in the rain shall reign supreme!
Honestly I feel FSD is like a good team of horses. 99% of the time the old nags know where they are going, and you can lean back and enjoy the ride. But when a dog chases a cat under their feet and they come unglued, you realize that you were the horse’s ass for thinking all ya had to do was hold the reins and stare at a horse’s ass.
That is the problem with the last couple of generations and the way they were raised, too many safeguards too many training wheels now nobody can actually ride a bike.
I guess there needs to mandatory manual driving for X hours per month if you use ADAS. I don’t like the idea of more regulations but I don’t want to be wiped out by an idiot wh has lost the ability to drive.
Reminds me of an amusing bumper sticker I saw yesterday on a Polestar:
“ONE LESS TESLA”.
Thanks for bringing the rant we need Torch
Couple of thoughts, this could a troll post, trolling for retweets and such, and posts on car blogs so if so they won.
Also this article smacks of old man yells at cloud. I mean FSD is a bit of a joke with the cameras that don’t work so good in the dark and rain, but there’s other things like Waymo that use all ‘ars’, lidar, sonar, radar, probably masers even, and the day is coming when a differently abled person that may not normally be able to go somewhere by themself in a car may be able to own and ‘drive’ a fully self driving car. And on that day, the guy who put the braille pads at all the drive throughs will be vindicated.
My wife an I tried Waymo on a recent visit to Phoenix and it worked great. It was also cheaper than Uber. After that first “test” ride we used Waymo for all our rides the the exception of the ride back to the airport because the hotel booked us a Lyft because they no longer drive their airport shuttle. After the Waymo the human driver felt very sketchy.
Robotaxies can’t happen quick enough.
Is it normal to wash your car just before a huge rainstorm?
its the 21st century equivalent of a rain dance
I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the fellow washed his car during a rainstorm.
Glad I’m not the only one who noticed. My question – why mention that in the first place? It only serves to make them look sillier.
This seems like a pretty clear case of trolling.
I assume you have never played “Day of the Tentacle”.
Sadly no.
You should. The remastered version is on Steam.
Only if you’re inclined to wipe before you poop…
His car didn’t tell him not to, so what was he supposed to do?
I don’t mind driving in the rain, or at night, but the combination does suck. But it’s not worth panicking about. The idea of turning on FSD in those conditions seems a bit crazy though! In any conditions, really, but at night in the pouring rain?
In fact, it’s been pouring around here lately, and I’ve been working 7-5 in December, so it’s entirely dark for me while driving. But truly, the idea that some of the Teslas around me may be on FSD is way more frightening than the actual road conditions!
I think there should be some kind of external indicator when a car is on FSD. Some dome on the top of the car that lights up or something, to let the rest of us know to get the F away from that guy.
Yes, a big lighted signal that FSD is engaged should be required. Now to go find a functioning regulatory environment…
“Douchebag” in glowing six inch tall letters.
Mercedes-Benz explored this concept.
This kid wouldn’t have lasted 10 minutes in the 80’s.
He’s calling himself a Tesla supervisor because he’s “supervising” a Tesla car? Seriously?!
Holy crap, that some next level self-delusions of grandeur.
Great introspection, I couldn’t make any sense of the lede, but I suggest you ask your wife what a speculem does. Also this is what I call thinking out of the box. Every one says driving a Toyota Camry is boring. Well cut out the pussy apps go out in bad weather on bad roads with one and tell me it is an appliance. Just drove my Camry with all season tires 45 minutes to work comp check up and then to work during a snow storm warning it wasn’t boring.
I’m thinking this guy is somewhere on the spectrum between “Actual Tesla Supervisor True Believer Nutbag” to “Disingenuous Twitter Troll Posting Ragebait for Clicks”.
Interesting fact, no matter where he actually exists along that spectrum between the two poles, he is still a giant dildo.
Dont take the rage bait, and thats all this is.. I really hope thats all it is.
Ha! When I first read Tesla Supervisor, I thought he worked for the company. Which might be even worse.
I was driving back to Tacoma from Eugene, OR this morning in moderate rain, surrounded by the road spray being thrown up by the many 18-wheelers on I-5. A miles south of Tacoma, the really picked up in intensity. People around here lament that “nobody knows how to drive in the rain,” but visibility was down to maybe 300 feet; everyone slowed down and there were no accidents that I saw. Of course, that’s not always the case and Portland can be miserable to get through when there are accidents. Or an icing event.
MAKE CARS DUMB AGAIN!
Great article.
But the tweet has me in fear for the future. As a parent, I vow to never let my kid be this helpless and skill-less.
And perhaps more importantly, this unquestioningly adoring of a brand.
When he called himself a supervisor and not a driver, it literally took me 10 seconds to understand what he meant and Jason’s joke about it. It was just so outlandish I couldn’t even comprehend someone would view driving a car as supervising it. does the car get a time out for losing its GPS on him? Maybe 10 minutes in the corner?
Hear, hear. Y’all know what’s up.
Remember, the internet both exposes you to, and even highlights the outliers.
The media used to tell me my generation was worthless, soft, and lost. I don’t get that impression at all, at least from the people I know personally.
I think people have a tendency to forget that you know, these are young people/children, who have a whole lot of developing to do. Even this turd will probably come around eventually.
Has there been a generation of old people who were genuinely happy with and excited about young people?
True. And while I still have a long ways to go, I do a lot less stupid stuff these days than I did back in high school and college!
And with the internet, like some others have commented…who knows whats even real anymore!
Yeah. I refuse to click on the profile, but all of the feedback here seems to be that this guy is very much in it for the clicks.
But Taargus, how do you feel about killing sedans/toilet paper/scrapple/Olive Garden/soap/actual colors/stinkbombing the office toilet/whatever it is this week?!
I’m going to opt to take this too seriously whilst finishing my sandwich.
Killing sedans – I don’t think the people with functioning hips are actually doing this.
Toilet paper – Wait… have millennials done something to toilet paper?
Scrapple – You mean like the Delco breakfast chunk? Seems like the sort of thing someone my age would turn into a food truck.
Olive Garden – The best thing millennials have done, culturally, is reduce the prevalence of restaurant chains. I’ll take credit for that one. Seriously people, there’s a reasonably solid Italian restaurant in like, every damn town in the country. You don’t need unlimited breadsticks you ass, you just ate 2.5 lbs of pasta!
Soap – This industry really has exploded with us hasn’t it?
Actual Colors – This is one of those things that Gen-X is responsible for that they get away with because everyone forgets about them. Millennial gray somehow took over the new car and home renovation industry at a time… where no millennials owned homes or were buying new cars? This started like, 10-15 years ago guys, this is 100% Gen-X. Sometimes being ignored works out.
Edit: For proof, Joanna Gaines is 47. On the younger side of Gen-X but still Gen-X. Gen-X loves that white and gray faux-farmhouse nonsense. Sell-outs.
Stinkbombing the office toilet – no comment
Heh, I just made up a bunch of stuff that seemed plausible for hack articles to accuse us of killing. IIRC, colors, soap, and sedans actually got that treatment, but there were so many asinine “Millennials Are Killing TK” pieces that I tuned the hell out after a while.
The soap one might’ve been the last straw, come to think of it.
The number of news outlets that implied my financial situation in 2010 (at age 22) was because I once ate a half an avacado, was less than zero, let’s just say that.
And I just automatically defend those my age for gray every time I see that reflexively lol. This is a demographic that is very much, not happy with all the gray. Everyone I know makes fun of all the gray. Folks: nobody in their 30’s has chosen all this gray. We promise.
I actively hate avocados and I still can’t afford crap!
All of these boomers are just gonna point to my latte consumption, but I don’t think I can function without caffeine and/or the motivating carrot of a neat little treat (coffee I don’t make) every now and then. Do they want me to be a working, tax-paying member of society or not?! Absolute silliness.
I feel like I constantly see Telsas being driven poorly. I’ve always assumed it was FSD causing it, but the recent noise about ChatGPT causing people to lose the ability to think or write, plus this post, has me thinking maybe people who are bad drivers gravitate towards Tesla because of these systems.
I’ll continue to increase my alertness when a Telsa is nearby. Have we determined if Tesla has any liability when one hits me while FSD is operational?
My personal opinion.
ChatGPT, on average, performs about like a C-/D student at anything difficult.
So, if one is naturally below that, it’s a huge benefit, and using it may be better than actually thinking. Above that, and it’s useful as a tool; like having a minion.
FSD seems to be similar. A bad clueless driver is still a bad clueless driver.
I’ve used a version of ChatGPT for some work documents and find it to be a shortcut from an outline to a workable second draft. Your observation feels about right since things like consistency of terms and thought can be one of the separations between passable and good writing.