An underage teen who was driving a Tesla without a driver’s license or the owner’s permission got creative when the car was stopped by the police: She decided to jump in the back seat and claim the Tesla was self-driving.
The incident happened near Daytona Beach, Florida, where a Flagler County Sheriff’s deputy pulled over a Tesla Model Y driving on the wrong side of the road.
After the vehicle stopped, it slowly backed up into the police cruiser.
When the deputy walked to the driver’s window to see what the problem was, he didn’t find anyone in the driver’s seat.
Instead, the police officer found a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl, one in the back seat and one in the front passenger seat.
Both girls claimed that no one was driving the vehicle and that the Tesla was self-driving.
While Tesla does sell a “Full Self-Driving package,” the feature-complete version of the package is only being tested in “Beta version” with a few thousand cars, and it requires someone in the driver’s seat. The responsibility always stays with the driver.
The deputy quickly determined that the teen girls were lying to hide the fact that they weren’t supposed to be driving the electric car.
The teen girls apparently drove all the way from Charleston, South Carolina, more than 300 miles away, and the mother of the driver thought that they were at her grandmother’s.
Sheriff Rick Staly commented on the situation [via the Daytona Beach News-Journal]:
These kids are very lucky that no one was hurt and their actions didn’t have more serious consequences. It doesn’t matter if you are driving a ‘smart car,’ driving without a license is still against the law. I hope these kids have learned a valuable lesson and I am grateful that no one was hurt and only minimal damage occurred to their vehicle.
The “driver” ended up receiving a citation for driving without a license and the teens were left in the Florida Department of Children and Family’s custody for the night since the parents couldn’t get there immediately.
It’s not the first time that drivers have tried to blame Tesla’s Autopilot for bad or illegal driving.
In 2018, a drunk driver tried to get out of a DUI by claiming that his Tesla was driving itself.
Tesla’s driver-assist features under its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving packages are still considered “level 2” on the self-driving scale, and they should always be used with full driver attention and the driver being ready to take control at all times.
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But using that notion of cooling what the House passes to outright kill a bill by filibuster is not in the US Constitution, and likely not what Washington had in mind.
In fact, early in American history senators did not use endless debate very much to obstruct legislation they didn’t like.
It wasn’t until the mid 1800s that more and more senators began to talk legislation to death that they opposed.
According to the official Senate.gov website, it started happening so much in the mid 19th century the term “filibuster” was born — derived from the Dutch word “freebooter” and the Spanish word “filibustros,” who were pirates raiding a Caribbean island at the time.
But there was no mechanism at all to overcome filibusters for the first century and a quarter of the US Senate.
It wasn’t until 1917 that a frustrated President Woodrow Wilson convinced the Senate to adopt a rule — known as RULE 22 — that allowed senators to vote to break a filibuster. It was, and still is, known as “invoking cloture.” (Fun factL The first time the new rule was used was to try to overcome a filibuster of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919).
At first, the vote threshold to break a filibuster was a supermajority — 67 votes. But that was always hard to reach and became harder as the years went on, so in 1975 it was changed to 60 votes, which is where it stands today.
‘Relic of Jim Crow’
Southern senators took advantage of the filibuster for years to block civil rights legislation — including anti-lynching bills.
Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 in the longest uninterrupted filibuster in Senate History, according to Senate.gov.
It wasn’t until 1964 that senators finally overcame a filibuster to pass the landmark civil rights bill when former Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was President.
In 2013, then Senate Majority leader Harry Reid got so fed up with GOP obstruction on then-President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees, he led a major change so that presidential nominations only need a simple majority to be confirmed, which helped get more Obama judges on the bench. When Republicans took control of the Senate, they used the same 51-vote threshold to confirm a record number of conservative judges appointed by then-President Donald Trump.
What does ‘Talking Filibuster’ mean?
In recent years senators used the filibuster so much that the expectation is that most legislation will need 60 votes to pass, rather than a simple majority of 51 out of 100 senators.
It is now so baked in that Senate majority leaders tend to schedule so-called cloture votes to overcome the 60-vote threshold right away.
The “talking filibuster” that President Joe Biden said this week he could get behind would actually be more of a change in practice than Senate rules. It would force senators who oppose any given legislation to stand up and talk about it.
The idea is to make it more painful to wage a filibuster against a bill — to have more events like when Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas talked for hours opposing Obamacare, in part by reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” or when Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, talked for 13 hours against the use of military drones.
But experts like former Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin say the “talking filibuster” probably wouldn’t do much to stop obstruction.
The reason: let’s say Republicans are filibustering HR1, the voting rights legislation that passed the House. If enough GOP senators are willing to talk they could take turns and go all through the night for days and days.
Plus, rather than act as a deterrent, the filibustering senators may see it as politically advantageous to make a show of their opposition to a bill. So, the process would change, but the result — legislation getting bogged down in the Senate with no end in sight — may not.
The Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft docks with the International Space Station on Oct. 14, 2020, delivering three new crew members to the research complex. Credit: NASA
NASA wants to fly an astronaut on Russia’s next Soyuz mission to the International Space Station in April, a measure the agency says would ensure a continued U.S. presence on the research outpost in case of delays in the launch of SpaceX’s next Crew Dragon flight.
A NASA astronaut could join two Russian cosmonauts on the Soyuz MS-18 mission, scheduled for launch April 9 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Russian commander Oleg Novitskiy, a veteran of two prior missions to the space station, will lead the three-person crew. Two rookie cosmonauts — Pyotr Dubrov and Sergey Korsakov — have been training to fly in the other two Soyuz seats.
NASA said Feb. 9 it might secure rights to at least one of the Soyuz seats as a hedge against possible delays to SpaceX’s next Crew Dragon launch to the space station, currently scheduled for April 20 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA wants to make sure there is at least one U.S. crew member on the orbiting complex at all times.
In a statement, NASA said the “supplemental seat” on the upcoming Soyuz crew rotation mission would give the space agency a backup plan in case the Crew Dragon launch is delayed. According the Russian Tass news agency, the Russian space agency Roscosmos says it expects to “formalize” an agreement to fly a U.S. astronaut on the mission.
April and May are scheduled to be busy months for crew rotations at the space station.
Novitskiy’s crew will arrive at the space station soon after their April 9 launch from Baikonur, beginning a week-long handover with the outgoing Soyuz crew that docked with the space station last October. The Soyuz MS-17 crew — commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins — are scheduled to depart the station and head for landing in Kazakhstan on April 17.
Four other members of the station’s current seven-person crew arrived in November aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Resilience” spacecraft. That crew, led by NASA commander Mike Hopkins, will be replaced by four astronauts on SpaceX’s Crew-2 mission set to blast off from Florida on April 20.
Assuming an on-time launch of the Crew-2 mission, Hopkins and crewmates Victor Glover, Soichi Noguchi, and Shannon Walker will head for Earth around May 1, targeting a splashdown at sea off the coast of Florida.
The Crew Dragon’s seven-month design lifetime expires in mid-June, meaning the Crew-2 mission must launch by then for the space station to remain staffed with U.S. astronauts. While there’s no hint of a delay in the Crew-2 launch, schedule slips are common in the space business.
“NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 is expected to launch as planned April 20,” NASA said in a statement Feb. 9. “However, if the mission launch is delayed or an event occurs while Crew-2 is in-orbit that requires a premature return, NASA risks not having a U.S. crew member aboard the International Space Station.”
There’s also the unlikely scenario where a crew capsule might have to leave the space station early, due to a health emergency or a technical failure. Space station astronauts and cosmonauts must ride to and from the station in the same spacecraft, so such a situation could empty the outpost of all its U.S. or Russian crew members.
The Crew-2 astronauts are led by NASA commander Shane Kimbrough, who will be joined by pilot Megan McArthur, Japanese mission specialist Akihiko Hoshide, and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
NASA contracted with SpaceX and Boeing to develop the Crew Dragon and Starliner spacecraft to end U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz vehicles for astronaut transportation services to and from the space station. The Starliner has not yet flown with astronauts, and Boeing plans a second unpiloted test flight of the Starliner in late March, redoing a previous test flight in December 2019 that ended prematurely due to software problems.
If the Starliner demo flight goes well in March, Boeing plans to launch astronauts on a Starliner for the first time around September, followed by the start of regular crew transportation service.
SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission, led by Hopkins, is the company’s first operational Crew Dragon flight. SpaceX previously accomplished successful unpiloted and crewed test flights on the Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2019 and 2020.
NASA officials have said for years they want to continue flying U.S. astronauts on Russian Soyuz missions. But instead issuing cash payments directly to the Russian government, NASA says it wants to provide Russian cosmonauts with rides on SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner spaceships in return.
Kathy Lueders, head of NASA’s human spaceflight directorate, told Spaceflight Now in November that the agency had finalized the text of a draft agreement with Roscosmos that would allow Russian cosmonauts to begin flying to the International Space Station on U.S. crew capsules in 2021.
She said NASA wanted to have the agreement in place in time for a Russian cosmonaut to fly on SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission scheduled for launch this fall. NASA has named three crew members to the Crew-3 mission, and a seat remains open, likely for a Russian cosmonaut if agencies approve a final agreement in time.
The agreement would allow all future U.S. and Russian crew missions to the station to carry a crew member from the other partner.
The agreement will help ensure there is always a trained crew member on-board the space station to operate the outpost’s Russian section and U.S. On-Orbit Segment, or USOS, which includes U.S., Japanese, European, and Canadian hardware. If Russia’s Soyuz program or the U.S. crew vehicles are grounded, crew members from the other international partners will still be able to fly to the space station.
“At NASA, we have a phrase we use often – dissimilar redundancy. That’s NASA speak for saying we always have a back-up plan that ensures we have a path forward even if we encounter an issue with our initial approach,” said Robyn Gatens, acting director for the International Space Station at NASA Headquarters. “We look forward to the next crew rotation on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission, and we’re looking to ensure we can continue to maximize our use of the station and minimize any risk by flying a U.S. astronaut on the upcoming spring Soyuz by providing in-kind services.”
NASA issued a solicitation this week to request information from companies that might be able to secure a Soyuz seat on the April 9 launch. NASA has previously used Boeing as an intermediary to purchase Soyuz seats, and other space tourism companies — like Axiom Space and Space Adventures — are in positions to act as brokers in such a deal.
The Verge reported Thursday that NASA is looking to buy the Soyuz seat in April through Axiom.
“There is one established U.S. Crew Vehicle (USCV) capability in the early phases of operation, which is scheduled to fly this spring, and a second USCV provider in the late stages of development,” NASA wrote in the Feb. 9 solicitation, referring to SpaceX and Boeing, respectively. “Experience has shown that new launch capabilities may encounter unanticipated delays or difficulties maintaining initial schedules.
“Should no supplemental crew transportation capability be acquired, the result could be a period wherein there is no U.S. presence on the ISS, disrupting ongoing research and technology development in the United States On-orbit Segment (USOS), in addition to putting the ISS itself at risk since trained USG (U.S. government) crew members are necessary to maintain and operate hardware and to conduct emergency Extravehicular Activities (EVAS, or spacewalks) if necessary to perform repairs,” NASA said.
NASA is planning to buy an astronaut seat on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft through Texas-based aerospace firm Axiom Space, according two people familiar with the plans. The seat is a backup for NASA in case its upcoming ride with SpaceX runs into technical problems, and suggests the agency is proceeding cautiously.
The agency announced Tuesday it was weighing options to procure a Soyuz seat as a safety net to keep the International Space Station staffed with US astronauts. It’s the second time NASA has procured a Russian seat through a US-based company, following a deal with Boeing in 2017 for four Soyuz seats. This time, the deal is with Axiom, a startup that arranges private astronaut rides to space.
The terms of the agreement for the astronaut seat are still being negotiated, according to the two people, who spoke the The Verge under the condition of anonymity because the talks are private.
The space agency relied on Russia to provide rides to the space station when the U.S. shuttle program retired in 2011. But last year, SpaceX launched its first crew of US astronauts to space under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
An Axiom spokesman declined to comment.
“A U.S. company reached out to NASA with a proposal that could meet NASA’s needs,” the agency said a statement to The Verge. “However, we are unable to share the name of the company as NASA has not entered into any agreement regarding the seat and that information is procurement sensitive.”
