Tesla unveiled its Cybercab this week with a typically confident promise: no steering wheel, no pedals, just a robot taxi that will ferry passengers while they nap, scroll, or apply makeup. The company frames the missing steering wheel as liberation—an end to human error, a deletion of the last annoying bit of driver involvement. In the same breath, Tesla claims the Cybercab is 'safety engineered at every level.' But in Texas, the Brookshire Volunteer Fire Department quietly raised a question that no promotional video ever mentions: if there's no steering wheel, how exactly do firefighters point the car out of the way? The concern started as a simple social media post, but it touched a nerve. Firefighters are trained to approach a crash, cut power, pop the hood, and eventually manhandle a vehicle into a safe position. With no steering wheel, the Cybercab offers no familiar option to crank the wheels, no ignition to kill, and no way to throw the car into park. Tesla maintains that first responders simply need to 'wait for the vehicle to make a safe decision.' That, of course, raises a deeper doubt: what happens when the car's 'safe decision' is to orbit the burning wreckage waiting for a software update? From there, the logical consequences begin to pile up like tumbleweeds against a charging station. Fire halls across Texas would need to invest in Cybercab-specific rescue simulators, which consist of a beanbag chair, a pair of VR goggles, and an instruction card that reads 'please wait.' In a true emergency, firefighters say, they'd have no options but to either let the Cybercab choose its own parking spot or chase it on foot until it spots a Starbucks. Tesla has reportedly considered adding a remote 'first responder override' as a $199-per-month subscription, but only after the user agrees not to use it while the car is performing any 'autonomous yoga maneuvers.' Skeptics warn that the no-wheel design could turn a routine fender bender into a bizarre ballet: the Cybercab, sensing sirens, will speed up to merge with traffic while the trapped passenger frantically tries to cancel the destination update. Eventually, the only way to stop the car may be to explain to it, in soothing tones, that it has already arrived. The truly unsettling part is that the missing steering wheel isn't really about the wheel—it's about who gets to decide when the vehicle stops. A steering wheel is a promise of last-resort control. Remove it, and you've replaced a mechanical certainty with an algorithmic promise. The Cybercab's designers probably won't let a Texas fire department dictate their vision, but the question of emergency access is not going away. If a firefighter can't grab the wheel, can they honestly grab control? Or are we all just passengers in someone else's decision-making, waiting for the car to find a reasonable place to pull over—preferably not on top of the fire truck?