PAULO ALTO – On the heels of its revolutionary release of autopilot software for its Model S car, electric vehicle maker Tesla Motors has complemented the innovation with an auto-road-rage mode that will allow the car to spontaneously take out its frustrations on other drivers.
“We are one step closer to perfect automation,” said Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, about the implications of this advance. “I estimate that, five to ten years from now, every car on the road will be able to shout verbal abuses, rapidly sound the car horn and even pull out a gun on other drivers completely without human intervention.”
“Cars can drive themselves already,” added Musk. “This was the missing puzzle piece.”
The most significant addition in the new update to the Tesla software is a state-of-the-art text-to-speech engine that can accurately reproduce and respond to human shouting with a vocabulary of one thousand swear words and their combinations. Other sub-capabilities of auto-road-rage are the interplay of a dozen sensors that will allow the car to closely tailgate vehicles it perceives to move slowly, accurately throw projectiles such as coffee cups on other drivers, and extend a mechanical middle finger from either side of the vehicle when necessary.
In response to Tesla’s release, Google announced plans to fit their own self-driving cars with a robotic backseat driver that will regularly remind the car about upcoming stop signs, provide alternate routes that have no guarantee of being faster, and argue with the car about their mutual insecurities.
