378. The Robot

The United States national soccer team plays Belgium tonight in Seattle. Approximately one million people are expected in Seattle for the match. Seattle is a city of approximately eight hundred thousand people. The million people who have arrived for the match outnumber the residents of Seattle. The residents were already there, using the roads, before the million people arrived. The roads have not been expanded.

Traffic in Seattle has reached a condition that fans, according to multiple reports, have begun responding to by handing control of their vehicles to Tesla's Full Self-Driving software and allowing the car to navigate while they watch match highlights on their phones. This is how things are going.

Full Self-Driving is a feature sold by Tesla that allows the vehicle to operate without active human input under certain conditions. The system requires the driver to remain attentive and prepared to take over. The drivers in Seattle who have activated Full Self-Driving in order to watch match highlights are attentive in the sense that they are present in the car. Whether they are monitoring the driving situation is a related but separate question. The highlights are very good this tournament.

Seattle was selected as a World Cup host city because of its stadium, its infrastructure, and its capacity to host large international events. The capacity assessment was conducted before one million additional people were factored into the calculation. The assessment was not wrong exactly. It assumed the roads would be used by a normal number of people. The normal number of people arrived, and then an additional million people also arrived, which changed things.

The Full Self-Driving software does not experience anxiety about the traffic. It processes the available information and navigates accordingly. The cars are moving. The fans inside the cars are watching. The match will start at the scheduled time regardless of whether the fans have arrived yet. The robot is driving. The people are watching the highlights of matches that ended earlier today. Seattle is full. The game is starting.