Missy Cummings

Mary “Missy” Cummings (born 1966) is an American engineer, former U.S. Navy fighter pilot — among the first women to fly the F/A-18 — and a professor at George Mason University, where she directs the Autonomy and Robotics Center. Previously at Duke and MIT, she studies human-machine interaction, and in 2021–2022 served as a senior safety adviser at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Warning on autonomous driving

Cummings has spent years arguing that self-driving and driver-assistance systems are being sold well beyond their real capabilities. She warns that drivers “overtrust the technology,” growing so comfortable that “they are letting the cars speed” and “getting into accidents that are seriously injuring them or killing them.” She has been especially critical of Tesla’s camera-only approach, insisting that a system that cannot reliably perceive the world cannot safely act in it.

Her stance made her a target: after her NHTSA appointment, Elon Musk called her “extremely biased against Tesla,” and she faced a wave of online harassment. Cummings frames her position not as opposition to autonomy but as a demand for regulation and honesty about failure modes — the technology, she says, is being abused by humans and needs guardrails government has been slow to impose.