In 1902, Eugene C. Richard applied for a Buick patent on an overhead valve, or valve-in-head, engine. The design was later adapted across the auto industry.
Evil cars are not a new idea created by Stephen King. While he undoubtedly is the horror fiction master, there are urban legends about cursed or possessed cars that stretch further back in modern history. Like the 1964 Dodge 330 that has been blamed for the murder of fourteen people! The story is that the car began as a police vehicle. Three officers who drove the Dodge all committed suicide after murdering their families. It then found its way to Wendy Allen, an owner who claims the doors had a mind of their own. Then came a spate of strange deaths, all happening to people who had vandalized the notorious Dodge. From a strike of lightning to a horrific semi-truck accident, the car sought its bloody revenge. The legend says that it was then chopped into bits by a worried church group. (Okay, there are no documents or proof that this Dodge was truly murderous, but it sure makes for great fiction like Christine and From a Buick 8.)
A more verifiable story of a possibly “cursed” car is the 550 Spyder owned by movie star James Dean. Nicknamed “L’il Bastard” by Dean, the Spyder caused so much death and destruction, it was purposely hidden from the world. First, it took its famous owner’s life. On September 30th, 1955, twenty-four-year-old Dean was killed when he hit a vehicle in rural California. After this tragedy, George Barris, creator of the Batmobile for the Batman TV series (1966–1968) came into possession of the Spyder. He sold a few parts to two doctors who used them in a race. One of the doctors perished. Then, Barris loaned the car out to the California Highway Patrol in order to be used as a deterrent against reckless driving.
The first place the CHP stored the car was in a garage that promptly burned down, with only the wreckage of the old car left standing. Chalking this up to bad luck, the CHP continued to use the car, taking it to high schools as a visual aid for the dangers of reckless driving. En route to one school, the car broke loose from the truck hauling it and crashed into another vehicle, causing a fatal accident. Undeterred by these bad omens, the CHP took the car to another school, where the car fell on a student, breaking their hip. In total, the Spyder fell off of the trailer that carried it three times, crushing a truck driver once. Not only did the car give law enforcement trouble, but it also made life difficult for criminals. Two thieves tried to steal the bloodstained seats and steering wheel from the wreck. Instead of getting some memorabilia out of it, all they got were injuries.2
The mystery of James Dean’s Spyder, which went missing shortly after its supposed reign of terror, came back to the headlines in 2015 when forty-seven-year-old Shawn Reilly revealed that as a child he had helped his father hide a sports car behind a wall. During the task, Shawn sustained a scar on his thumb that still lingers today. The Volo Auto Museum in Illinois conducted a lie-detector test on Reilly to substantiate claims that he and his father, along with George Barris, hid the Spyder.
He passed the test.
Whether cars can be possessed or cursed, they are undoubtedly an integral part of our lives. As technology rockets ahead, the reality of self-driving cars has come to be more than just fiction. When Stephen King wrote Trucks in the seventies, he couldn’t have guessed that in a few short decades cars would, indeed, be driving themselves. In the last decade, the development of self-driving cars, also known as autonomous vehicles, has exploded. Each state has developed safety laws, yet they have changed rapidly, as they are attempting to keep up with technology.
In 1985, researchers determined that 57 percent of traffic crashes were due to human error, while only 2 percent were due to the vehicle alone.
The US Department of Transportation first released guidelines in 2016 to give direction to developers of self-driving technology, and has updated them three times since. The guidelines emphasize safety, tech neutrality, and regulatory consistency, and they encourage companies to submit information about their approaches to safety. But they didn’t create any rules around testing self-driving cars. Today, states oversee testing and have taken wildly different approaches. California, for example, requires developers to obtain a license to test, and to annually submit detailed information on its testing activities, which is released to the public. (Many in the industry argue that the data collected by the state doesn’t provide a clear or accurate picture of its activities.) Arizona, by contrast, only requires companies to submit information about how their vehicles will interact with law enforcement and emergency services, and to guarantee in writing that their vehicles are autonomous. After that, Arizona does not monitor the vehicles, though its governor reserves the right to revoke any company’s ability to operate after something goes wrong. Governor Doug Ducey did just that in 2018, kicking Uber’s self-driving operations out of the state after a testing vehicle struck and killed a woman on foot.3
Forty-nine-year-old Elaine Herzberg died when she was struck by a self-driving Uber with a human operator in the driver’s seat. According to the National Safety Traffic Board, her tragic death was blamed on the vehicle’s inability “to classify an object as a pedestrian unless that object was near a crosswalk.”4 Therefore, because it couldn’t recognize Herzberg as a person since she was jaywalking, the Uber concluded she was a bike or an “other” and braked only one second before hitting her. Unfortunately, the operator inside the vehicle was not alerted by the vehicle, and was streaming TV on her phone rather than watching the road. This mix of human and technological error cost Elaine Herzberg her life. Because of this accident, Uber has programmed their recent cars to be able to recognize jaywalking humans.
This fatality is listed as the only “level three” autonomous vehicle deadly accident. This refers to the type of car involved. Because the Uber car was autonomous and required only little human intervention it is considered a level three autonomous vehicle (AV). As of September 2019, there have been five worldwide fatalities due to “level two” self-driving cars. All were Tesla models. These require more human involvement. It’s interesting to make note that the more people were expected to intervene, the more deaths occurred. Ranging from 2016–2019, one of these deaths happened in China, while the other four were in the United States. The first death was twenty-three-year-old Gao Yuning who after turning on the AV feature in his Tesla, was slammed into the back of a truck. In Florida, Joshua Brown was killed when his Tesla’s AV function mistook a left-turning white truck for clear sky. While Tesla has come under fire for such tech mishaps, they point to statistics to prove that self-driving cars are safe, if not safer than the average car. In a letter to the public after Yuning’s death they emphasized the point: “This is the first known fatality in just over one hundred and thirty million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is fatality every ninety-four million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every sixty million miles.5