Less than a day after Tesla unveiled its steering-wheel-free Cybercab taxis on the streets of Austin, federal regulators opened an investigation into whether the vehicles — stripped of the manual controls that safety law has long required — actually meet the standards Tesla quietly certified them against. The moment captures a tension as old as technological ambition itself: the gap between what innovators declare safe and what governing institutions are willing to accept. With Tesla's stock falling sharply and multiple autonomous-driving probes already underway, the question is not merely tec