On one hand, plenty of time to push that car out of the way.

You hint at it but I’ll say it bluntly: while it’s appealing to the instant-gratification side of the consumer brain, the flat pricing is really the risky (read: stupid) move here. As others have pointed out, whether this is a reasonable deal or not depends entirely on what your baseline insurance costs are.

I’m old enough to have been through “simulator training” by which I mean a roomful of these with a movie screen at the front wall:

Yeah, this. “Steer into the skid if RWD, away if FWD” — what kind of advice is that? First, it relies on conscious knowledge (what kind of car and I driving) for a reflexive task. (Not that it’s bad to have multiple modes in your hindbrain for FWD/RWD/AWD but it shouldn’t be necessary to drive safely). Second, it…

He grew up to program Tesla autopilots.

Well obviously the proper response to a likely baby-in-a-sack-in-the-road is to go around it — once you’re past that baby’s somebody elses problem.

You missed the flying pink Cadillac at 23:00

WAKE UP YOU ARE GOING 120MPH

Paul Harvey? I thought you were dead!

This stands in counterpoint to the bizarre TV ads for the incoming Lidl chain that claims that any attempt to provide service or interest is “wasting your money”. I’ve been trying to think of who they are trying to appeal to, beyond the 1960s German housewives they seem to have been created for.

Of all the components involved in a cup of breakroom coffee, the stir stick is by far the least ecologically burdensome. Thin strips of wood are one of the few things that will actually reliably break down in a landfill. If you are willing to spend an extra 0.3 cents you can get them in bamboo which is considered…

The Carfax report consists of this

TWO idiot lights? That’s just making the problem worse.

I’d be hesitant to bring somebody else’s container back into the kitchen, as policy, or really ask a server to handle it at all.

I’m from Chicago, and I never heard of a “hot dago sandwich” (though a “hot paisano” rings a bell). But back in the day it wasn’t uncommon to see somebody wearing a dago tee buying dago bread at the Jewels, so it’s not like we were progressive (and don’t even ask me what we called brazil nuts).

And they used to say don’t buy a car built on a Friday.

“Witching time” is exactly the right phrase. The transitional period between stupid assists (cruise control) and autonomous operation is going to be a witching time indeed — and as often noted, it gets worse not better as the dial shifts towards, but doesn’t quite reach, autonomy.

As much as my instinct as a tech-forward person is to support Tesla, which really does have some excellent, groundbreaking engineering (in its multiple endeavors), their obstinately tone-deaf public relations responses like this, and the underlying culture it hints at, make it very, very hard.

This would make an excellent mileage mule or sacrificial high-school car. At about half this asking price. CP

Actually a minimum service time per stop makes a lot of sense to me. Probably not a minute, but take the standard service time and add a 50-100% safety factor. This allows enough time to require all crew and equipment to be out of the work zone before releasing the car without making a race out of that too — once…