We got two incidents this past weekend with users of technology that blatantly disregard their own safety.
Peloton had a child die to it’s treadmill in March. Details were undisclosed but this weekend, the Consumer Product Safety Commission released a video of a child playing unsupervised around an active Peloton treadmill. The child was pulled underneath almost as if being eaten by the exercise equipment.
After watching the video, it was clear that there was gross negligence on the part of the parent. A big machine like a treadmill is NOT a toy and needs to be treated as such. Letting it run and having a kid play around it is literally asking for an accident to occur.
Case number two. A giant fireball 20 feet high was reported into dispatch at the scene of a crashed Tesla this morning near Houston. So far, the report shows no one was in the driver’s seat, only one man in the passenger seat and another in the back, both perished. Despite Elon Musk saying auto-driving will be available by the end of this year, only semi-self driving is enabled at the moment.
So far it looks like the two passengers in the fatal crash straight up ignored the fact the technology wasn’t even out yet. They might have just decided to test it with their lives.
In both cases, it’s clear that the users are 100% at fault and the root cause of these accidents appear to be utter stupidity. But the damage is done. Stock of Peloton has dropped 9% just over the weekend, and we’re yet to see what Tesla’s stocks will do.
Currently, I’m not invested in either of these companies, but it just goes to show how fast individual company stocks can be adversely affected by people’s stupidity that has nothing to do with the company themselves.
Be careful in what you do, and how you invest.