One of the indignities of old age is about to fade into oblivion.
I learned this in an HEB parking lot on the day before Christmas. As anyone who lives in Texas knows, the parking lots for HEB supermarkets are huge. And crowded. Cars prowl; people of all ages push carts. Mothers herd children. Everyone has Other-things-to-do.
I found the last items I needed to cook a Christmas prime rib dinner for eight and returned to my car, a 2024 Tesla Model Y. This time, I engaged Full Self Drive.
The car backed out of its parking spot. Then it turned into its lane, avoided people on both sides of the lane, and slowly went to the end of the lane. Then it turned right and followed the lane out of the parking lot. It stopped, right turn signal blinking. It turned right and wove its way to the left turn lane. It stopped again, turn signal blinking. It turned left onto Highway 290 and drove the 18 miles home.
Without incident.
Arriving at our driveway, it signaled right, turned and made its way toward our garage, stopping outside.
I didn’t touch the steering wheel. I sat with my knees comfortably bent, feet on the floor, happily watching the car adjust speed and change lanes on the trip home.
The next day I added Grok, the talking AI interface that allows me to ask for navigation and get answers to related travel questions. Now I can have conversations with ARA, the traveling companion for FSD. I enjoy her sparky attitude and sense of humor.
I’ve also used FSD for the drive to and from downtown Austin. FSD even passed the extreme test of going through the construction at the infamous Y without blinking a proverbial eye. (Readers blessed without experience of the Y should know that it is an enormous, perpetual construction project that is miles long with paths that appear to change constantly. There are rumors it will be completed someday.)
On another trip, I had FSD drive from our home to the Uptown restaurant in Blanco. Unlike the Redbud Café, it’s seldom busy at midday. My friend and I enjoyed a leisurely lunch at one of the only spots with tablecloths and napkins. Blanco is an 18-mile drive. FSD navigated the many changes of three-lane Texas country highways easily.
A road trip beckons.
More important, I now have a driver. This is not something I’ve coveted since childhood. I learned to drive at 16 in an old army surplus jeep while doing odd jobs at a small airport with dirt runways. I’ve always loved driving.
Having a chauffeur, even a digital one, never made the cut for my Life Aspirations. But I’m 85 and, like everyone else, enjoy my personal freedom to come and go.
By car.
Last month I learned that my 100-year-old friend in Florida can still drive – but he must be re-examined every six months. Elsewhere I hear regular conversations about who is still driving but shouldn’t be.
The leap here is huge. But start to imagine this as a “problem solved.” Full Self Driving will, in due course, liberate millions of seniors and the indentured adult children who are driving them around, doing errands and getting to medical appointments. It’s going to be hard to hate old Elon when that happens.
But now, after years of hype, it’s here. Full Self Driving IS revolutionary. In the very nicest way.
Skeptical? Don’t rely on me. Check the booming number of YouTube videos demonstrating FSD. Search “FSD driving for senior citizens” and see how much it means to old folks.
Better still, the long-term benefits of FSD go well beyond personal freedom and independence. Here are just a few:
- Motor vehicle deaths. Accidents are the third largest cause of death in the United States. And deaths from motor vehicle accidents are the third largest cause of accidental deaths. In 2023, 44,762 people lost their lives in motor vehicle accidents. FSD will reduce the loss of life.
- Motor vehicle accident injuries. A 2014 study for the CDC showed that for every person killed in a crash, eight were hospitalized, and 100 were treated and released after emergency treatment. The study estimated that the lifetime cost of crash injuries was 50 percent greater than the cost of treating HIV in the U.S. FSD will reduce the number of people injured in accidents.
- Motor vehicle insurance. According to the Journal of Consumer Affairs, the U.S. auto insurance industry was a $353 billion market in 2023. It’s also growing faster than our economy, and the cost is a persistent cause of inflation in our consumer price index.
These figures just touch the surface. Sadly, with GM, Ford and Chrysler in retreat from electric vehicles, it’s easier to imagine a future of rising inflationary costs for transportation than to imagine a New Age of cost efficiency for consumers that would also bring a new age of freedom for senior citizens.
But hope springs eternal. With Full Self Driving, hope is renewed by the mile.
Related columns:
Scott Burns, “Lessons from a 100th Birthday,” 12/21/2025: https://scottburns.com/lessons-from-a-100th-birthday/
Scott Burns, “My Horrifying $137.85 Tesla Maintenance Bill,” 11/2/2025: https://scottburns.com/my-horrifying-137-85-tesla-maintenance-bill/
Scott Burns, “Shocking News! I’ve Gone Tesla,” 1/12/2025: https://scottburns.com/shocking-news-ive-gone-tesla/
Scott Burns, “How a Rogue Toyota Dealer Became a Marketing Agent for Tesla,” 5/21/2023: https://scottburns.com/how-a-rogue-toyota-dealer-became-a-marketing-agent-for-tesla/
Sources and References:
Uptown restaurant in Blanco, TX: https://www.facebook.com/UptownBlancoRestaurant/
Redbud Café in Blanco, TX: https://redbudcafetx.com
CDC study cited: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6340a4.htm
Journal of Consumer Affairs cited: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/car-insurance-industry-statistics.html
Grok: https://grok.com
This information is distributed for education purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, product, or service.
Photo: Scott Burns, 01/02/26, FSD on the way from downtown Johnson City to home.
(c) Scott Burns, 2026
8 thoughts on “A New Freedom for Seniors”
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how much does your tesla Y FSD cost (final drive away price)? Perplexity.ai says it is not really FSD, so what am i missing? are you overselling/hyping?
FSD (Full Self Driving) is available by monthly subscription at $99. It can also be lump-sum purchased but the price makes it unattractive compared to monthly subscription.
Perplexity is correct in one sense, but wrong in another.
—Correct in the sense that you can’t tell the car where you want to go and then sit in the back seat to work on your laptop while being driven from Chicago to Omaha.
—Incorrect in the sense that FSD relieves you of an immense amount of concern about driving. Yesterday, for instance, I introduced one of my brothers to FSD by directing the car to drive from our home to a location near Austin High School so we could walk Town Lake. It drove there faultlessly, changing lanes as necessary, negotiating the dreaded “Y” construction, finding an alternate faster route, and getting close to the high school. I took over to handle parking in the parking lot. When we were done, I told the car to drive us back, which it did. Faultlessly.
As a practical matter, I enjoy driving, but I think FSD is a better, safer driver than I am.
I will write more about this because talking with ARA while in FSD can be hysterically funny. (Particularly true when my wife is in the car…)
You may have just sold me on a Tesla with FSD when my Chevy Volt dies. I have lamented driving in DFW for the last 10 years as traffic has progressively gotten worse. Thanks for your continued commentary on finance and other topics.
Yes, when I hear people complain about Austin traffic I want to tell them they should spend a week in Dallas. They would come back grateful!
The best way to live in Dallas, I think, is to pick a small area that meets virtually all of your needs and settle in. The worst thing you can do is buy a house in one area and work at a distance away so you are condemned to dealing with heavy traffic every day.
The best way to drive this forward might be for insurance companies to start offering deep discounts to individuals owning vehicles equipped with AND using FSD (as verified by some form of GPS tracking), but, perhaps the more efficient way to go for most seniors will be Waymo (https://waymo.com/) or something similar.
I don’t follow why FSD has to be coupled to an electric vehicle. Internal combustion engine self-driving cars are possible, and they undoubtedly would get much better gas mileage than the typical lead-footed human driver (unless there is a sport-FSD mode).
Auto insurance rates may come down as evidence accumulates that FSD drivers have fewer accidents. But that will take time. Another hurdle is the high cost of repairing accident damage to EVs: they are often totaled even though the ICE and related parts are complicated and expensive.
After the signal light incident in California where Waymo vehicles froze when traffic signals went out, it appears that the Tesla system is more adaptive. It also appears that the Waymo folks who were declaring that Tesla FSD would never work were over-claiming and wrong.
FSD doesn’t have to be coupled to an EV. But it was an integral part of development for Tesla EVs so that’s what it works on. The bigger picture is for EVs to displace ICE vehicles for a host of reasons and for EVs to morph into replacements for individual vehicle ownership in densely populated areas. In cities it will be far less expensive to Uber with a driverless EV than to own, insure, service, and garage a personal vehicle.
I wonder if the benefit of FSD to seniors will be lessened by the requirement that a senior still needs to be able to maintain their State driver’s license in order to buy and insure an FSD-equipped vehicle?
There are certain to be lots of flies in this ointment and the need to maintain a driver’s license is just one of them.
Individuals and institutions will be slow to adapt because, well, they always are.
That said, I’ve been using FSD daily for a month now and it has taken me from my home to park in a supermarket parking lot and back in addition to a multitude of other complex situations.
I believe it is a better, safer driver than I am — even though I believe, as 90 percent of all Ameericans believe, that I am an above average driver…