Maybe I'm just naive or dense, but I'm not seeing language I'd be concerned about in the article? Help me get calibrated, is there something in particular that bothers you? or just a general vibe?
So you somehow think that the $300 fine deters or hurts the person making $200k a year the same that it does the person making $20k per year?
It's not that the poor person speeding is any less dangerous than the rich person speeding, it's that the $300 fine doesn't really matter to the rich person. It's just a price they're willing to pay on random occasions to go faster.
It's worse than that ... It has an "auto dark mode", but in my opinion, doesn't get dark enough by default. I like my screens very dark at night. Admittedly darker than most. When using the "self driving" mode, my former model 3 thought the screen was too dark and any time it was engaged, actually INCREASED the screen brightness from my setting to a level I felt was uncomfortable and inhibiting night vision. I'd manually crank it back down again (via several distracting menus and steps) and it would stay at that level until the next time self driving was activated.
I made a complaint about it to the service department and was told that it was intentional so that the internal camera could see me better to ensure compliance with my eyes looking at the road. That might be true, but since I could still manually turn the brightness down after starting self drive and self drive would continue, it's obviously not required and there should be some way to disable it.
The high trust society is "gone" in many segments of society, but I don't see that we've made a decision to forsake it. Forsaking implies renouncing or turning away from it intentionally.
First, let me just state up front: I agree with you that some people on bikes should show more care when passing cars closely. Dangerously close is dangerously close no matter who initiates it.
Second, while room should be given by both parties, the consequences for failure are far different between the two scenarios. In the scenario where the car driver is passing dangerously close, you have a multi-thousand pound vehicle potentially hitting an unprotected body. Even if the initial impact doesn't cause great harm to the person, there's a lot of potential for knocking the bike and person over and then causing them to get run over by the initial vehicle's wheels or into the path of a second vehicle nearby. Who loses most in this situation? The person riding the bike.
In the scenario where the person on the bike passes too closely and hits the stationary car, there's just a lot less energy and moving mass involved. The potential for serious injury is greatly reduced. And perhaps most importantly, the party suffering the greatest potential for serious injury is the one that caused the situation.
I don't mean to dismiss the potential for damage to the car (mirrors knocked off, scratches, etc) as that's a real thing which should be avoided. But there's also a VERY big difference between property damage and bodily damage.