Letter: Before You Hand The Wheel To The Computer, Look At Our Side Streets

I read the letter from the writer who bought Tesla’s Full Self-Driving for shmiras einayim, and I want to start by saying kol hakavod. Anyone who spends money to protect his eyes is taking seriously something many of us don’t. He said himself he isn’t trying to convince anybody, and I’m not knocking him.

But as a father who walks his kids to cheder every morning, I’d like to share the view from the sidewalk. Or, on a lot of our streets, from where the sidewalk should be.

On a typical Lakewood morning I pass double-parked vans, cars backing out of driveways, a carpool mother waving kids across, and boys on e-bikes going faster than they should. And every so often a four-year-old darts out between two parked cars because he saw his friend. That’s the moment that worries me. A computer may do very well on the Parkway. I’m not convinced it knows our side streets.

TLS reported this month that e-bike injuries in New Jersey have skyrocketed. Emergency room visits went from 467 in 2023 to 1,676 in 2025. On our streets, the e-bikes are everywhere.

As far as I understand, Tesla itself calls the system “Supervised” and says the driver still has to watch the road. So the eyes have to stay on the windshield either way. And if we’re honest, for most of us the biggest shmiras einayim challenge behind the wheel isn’t the mirrors. It’s the phone: the red light, the “quick look” at a message while driving past a cheder.

So my suggestion: before anyone hands the wheel to a computer, let’s all start by putting the phone in the glovebox. It’s free, and it works in every car.

Drive carefully, and may Hashem watch over all our children.

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