I think I understand why this video that is going viral right now has gotten such a grip on so many people’s attention: because it’s a cartoon trope, made real. And that’s always a good time. If someone could synthesize a way to walk off a cliff and not fall until you realized you were hovering in mid-air, for example, that would be huge. But what YouTuber (not like a potato, like a person who makes videos) Mark Rober has done is the next best thing: built a full-size version of the painting-of-the-road gag from the Road Runner and Coyote cartoons.
I should note what this video is really about if you look past all the cartoony frippery and the remarkable mid-video distraction involving sneaking a LIDAR rig into multiple Disney World rides, including Space Mountain and the Haunted mansion – which is absolutely worthwhile and I’m surprised didn’t end up as its own video. It’s about the differences between an all-camera-based driving sensor system and a LIDAR (light detectiopn and ranging)-assisted sensor array.
If anything, the classic Warner Bros painted-road gag is sort of the perfect way to distinguish between LIDAR- and camera-based systems. Oh, and if you somehow were denied a childhood and don’t know the cartoon trope I’m talking about, it’s this:
Oh man, that’s a classic. And Mr.Coyote is quite an effective and efficient artist, I have to hand it to him, even if his paintings do sort of violate everything I thought I understood about the nature of reality.
Anyway, here’s Rober’s video, so you can see it all for yourself; there are some things I want to talk about from the video, too:
I think what I personally find so engaging about this video is how well the fake-road-wall was executed. I mean, look at this:
Damn, that’s a mighty fine fake road wall, there. And thought was put into the potential smashing-through, which I respect. At the risk of spoiling things, here’s the Tesla smashing through the wall:
…and the aftermath:
As you can tell, the breakaway portion was made to give a very nice cartoony jagged-edged hole. That’s some top-notch real-world cartoon prop work!
Okay, now let’s address some of the issues with this video, and cover a bit why all of the hardcore Tesla people are so very cross about it. Now, I’m not usually one to side with the glassy-eyed, drool-providing Minions of Musk, but I think there are some valid suggestions that, in some ways, this video may make Tesla look a bit worse than it actually needed to.
I say this for a few reasons; first is that, fundamentally, this isn’t a LIDAR vs Tesla issue; it’s a lidar vs camera issue, and the video does make this clear:
The issues that the Tesla had would be the same ones any automated or semi-automated driving assist systems would have had, because, at least in the case of the big fake road wall, you’re seeing a two-dimensional representation of the road ahead – and that’s what camera-based systems see, all the time. Cameras take two dimensional images and interpolate depth and distance cues, unlike LIDAR systems, which actually shoot lasers out and see how long they take to bounce back, giving a true three-dimensional representation of the immediate environment.
Where a camera system may see a big photo of the road on a wall as the road, a lidar system sees, well, a wall:
Lidar can’t see color or what may be on the surface of an object, but it sure as hell can tell where an object is and how big it is (see above), what shape, and so on.
Almost any non-LIDAR-based car would have done just as bad here: a Ford Mach-e, a Lexus, a Cadillac, a whatever. But a Tesla is definitely going to get more clicks, and YouTubers aren’t dummies, at least not about that stuff.
Of course, you could argue that the use of a Tesla in a LIDAR-based competition makes sense, because Tesla’s reclusive, hermit-like, borderline silent CEO, Elon Musk, has opinions about LIDAR that he likes to share, like this quote from him from earlier this year:
“Obviously, humans drive without shooting lasers out of their eyes. I mean, unless you’re Superman…. humans drive with eyes and a neural net and a brain neural net, sort of biological… the digital equivalent of eyes and a brain are cameras and digital neural nets or AI,”
Now, the idea that “humans drive without shooting lasers out of their eyes” is objectively accurate, so good job noticing that Mr. Musk, but it’s also an insipid analogy. Just because humans have some limitations doesn’t mean our technology has to toe those limitations as well. Humans also don’t have electric motors or wheels or lights or any number of other parts of a car, and we’re fine adding those to our arsenal of tools to go faster and more comfortably and safely than we can on our own.
And also, driving isn’t what Superman uses his eye-lasers for. Those are for welding shit and burning holes in things.
But, other than that, this isn’t specific to Tesla.
A lot of hardcore Tesla geeks have taken issue with the fact that Rober decided to use Autopilot, Tesla’s original Level 2 driver-assist system instead of FSD (Full Self-Driving), their more recent and more advanced Level 2 driver-assist system. This has, of course, caused a lot of outrage among Tesla fans, with some even suggesting an outright attempt to deceive and suggesting Rober may be a target of a lawsuit:
I don’t really think that is likely, and, honestly, I’m not sure how much of a difference FSD may have made for the Wile E. Coyote test; maybe it would have done better, maybe the same, but ultimately it barely matters, because gigantic paintings or photographs of roads covering a massive wall are just not driving issues we generally need to worry about.
Other tests that were performed in the video, for foggy conditions or harsh rain? Sure, those are worth testing, and perhaps FSD could have performed better, but since both of those fundamentally impaired any camera’s ability to view a scene, that’s hardly guaranteed.
So, overall, I think this video had one real point: LIDAR can sometimes, in some situations, provide a better understanding of a car’s situation than cameras alone. I think the true path forward will incorporate both technologies, and Tesla, while not especially worse than any other camera-based system in these circumstances (and likely better than many), probably shouldn’t be so adamantly against LIDAR.
The video was fun, and maybe that’s enough. I mean, of course it’s not, the world being what it is and people being who they are and Tesla being Tesla, but one can dream.
Topshot: Warner Bros and Mark Rober/YouTube
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Only Tesla has claimed they can do level 5 autonomy with only cameras though, so I don’t think it’s invalid to hang this on them. Everyone else is only doing level 2, and that still relies on the driver being aware of what’s going on. Basically, everyone except Tesla acknowledges the limitations of camera-based systems.
Hey, now, you’re forgetting the neural net.. Don’t forget the neural net..
OMG, that part still cracks me up every time. Neural Net! That sounds impressive.
Just wait until it’s ported to watercraft and called “Aqua Net”.
With Full Self Diving
Tesla’s also only doing level 2, they just deceptively market the level 2.
Somebody warn this guy not to open any Candygrams sent to his door.
Torch I’m DISAPPOINTED in your lack of research for this article, even worse than usual. Superman laser eyes are mainly used for shaving. See Exhibit A: https://i.sstatic.net/JniCh.png
Jason, as a published author on autonomous vehicles, you of all people should know that most driver-assist systems outside of Tesla use a combination of radar sensors and cameras, not cameras alone.
Radar would behave exactly like LiDAR for every one of these tests, so the cars that use radar (like the Mach-E, Lexus, and Cadillac) would have performed just fine.
Mark Rober didn’t touch on radar at all, but radar is better for long range and poor weather distance measurement, while LiDAR is better for high resolution at short range. Radar might not be able to see a sign post in the middle of the road, but LiDAR could. That’s why vehicles like WAYMO use all three: cameras, LiDAR, and radar.
To be fair to Jason, he wrote Robot Take The Wheel before taking a (non-bedazzled) chainsaw to lead-acid batteries.
I’m not sure radar would have worked as well as Lidar for the wall, because as far as I can see the ‘wall’ is made of polystyrene, which is generally transparent to radiowaves. So a radar system would probably have not seen any obstruction.
If it had been a real wall made of brick it would have detected it just fine of course.
So radar would have seen the kid on the other side of the wall then?
NO, a Ford Mach-e, a Lexus, a Cadillac, a whatever would not (necessarily) do the same. Because everyone besides Tesla uses RADAR for their auto-breaking (along with cameras). Including the Lexus in the video, where they presumably disabled it’s built-in Pre-Collision System to use the fancy LiDAR version.
That would have been a better actual consumer advice comparison.
I’m disappointed we didn’t get to see him paint the wall in one giant brush stroke.
Of course he may be the target of a lawsuit, its Elon’s favorite response to getting his feelings hurt
Only because he hasn’t thought of using deportation yet.
The video about Tesla being “defrauded” and a “major lawsuit” coming is such a great example of how the internet has fucked us. Even if the original video were lawsuit-worthy (it’s not!), the claim would likely be for defamation, not “defrauding.” But the video was posted, the idiocy was spewed into the world, the intended audience absorbed it to reinforce their preexisting beliefs, and the ad revenue was collected. Sigh.
We’re so deep into Idiocracy there is no going back. The dumbification will only grow. Remember when the Internet was just coming out and people talked about having all of the world’s knowledge at their fingertips? We have it and look at what happened. I share your sigh, we are all fucked.
I object that this Tesla also broke that wall to shit
and interrupted me watching ow my balls
Defraud: illegally obtain money from (someone) by deception
“Excuse me Mr Tesla Stan Lawyer Man, can you please first point to the money which Mr Rober has allegedly stolen from Tesla? And next, please show us any “deception”.”
Bird law in this country — it’s not governed by reason!
Erm … doesn’t the Ford Mach E and presumably Cadillac also use radar? Which would probably provide the level of redundancy necessary to pass the Wile E Coyote test (however see the next paragraph for a possible issue with this assumption). Tesla’s reliance on ‘cameras only’ really is a predominantly Tesla issue, as I’m fairly sure most other car manufacturers use at least one other range sensor as an additional source of truth.
Actually it would have been interesting if they used a radar – but not Lidar – equipped car to see if it also passed the test, noting that I’m not sure how a radar sensor would interpret a wall of polystyrene (radio waves can travel through stuff, especially non metal stuff, unlike light).
Rober could commit to the whole radar bit and make a wall out of brick instead.
Wouldn’t the whole FSD versus Autopilot point be moot anyway because…you know….FSD also only uses cameras too…?
If you watch the video it explains the difference. One is programmed to understand that ultimately the driver is supposed to be in control, so it is less invasive to avoid false positives. It is meant to be a safety net, not a primary source of input controlling the vehicle. This means that it also more likely to miss true positives as well, or it can wait long enough that it can’t fully correct/stop from a true positive.
The other is supposed to allow the driver to take their eyes off the road and not pay attention at all, therefore it reacts a lot more easily, and thus is more likely to get confused by false positives.
In reality, it just sucks because Tesla’s system is a joke.
I would add that until a car maker accepts liability for its autonomous driving system, it will remain a system that requires 100% driver attention.
That’s the difference between emergency braking and autopilot.
The difference between autopilot and “Full Self Driving” is uhh…. I guess it’s really just a further developed version of the same shit. I don’t know it would be any different in ignoring false positives.
The tags at the bottom of this article are fantastic.
I don’t normally check out the article tagging, but you are correct…these are great.
Reminds me I need to order an anvil and some explosives. Good thing I have Acme Prime.
There’s a reason Teslas drive into the back of emergency vehicles, they paint lines up the sides of them and the system can’t tell the high vis markings from road markings. The reason it’s almost always a Tesla is that they are the vast majority of camera based cars on the road and the drivers have been intentionally misled to believe that they’re more capable than they are
Revzilla did a blog post a while ago about numerous cases of motorcycles all being rear-ended by Tesla cars while on the highway, while at night. While of course Tesla wouldn’t say anything about it, the thought was that because motorcycles typically have one, smaller, lower taillight vs cars, the vision-only systems assumed it was a car that was a lot farther away, expecting the light to get much bigger/ “closer” before slowing down.
“Fortunately” Teslas have eye-searing distinctive headlights that usually aren’t aimed properly so if I happen to be on the bike I ensure I’m not in front of one. Even during the day I tend to give them a wide berth. I don’t trust the car’s “vision”, and I trust the drivers of them even less than usual to be paying attention.
There is a reason most Chinese adas use lidar. It also so happens if you get a lidar robot vacuum they don’t crash as much either or fall down the stairs. Optical sensors don’t do depth perception well.
A human, with just their two eyes, would likely have seen the 2-D wall for what it was despite the image of a road continuing on. That’s because perspective continuously shifts as you move, but the image on the wall would remain static. A human would notice that something was off immediately.
Run the test again with just human drivers and no cameras or lidar – no driver assists at all. I’ll bet an alert driver in decent seeing conditions would see the fake wall almost immediately 100% of the time.
That guy has managed to get on Warner Brothers, Disney, and Musk’s enemies list with one video. That’s quite an accomplishment. The Space Mountain scan was so cool I could almost overlook the backward hat.
Humans get confused and run into things all the time. Being as good as humans isn’t even close to adequate.
Stereoscopy might have worked on the cartoon wall, but probably not the fog and the rain, Adding some structured illumination by projecting an array of infrared spots in conjunction with a camera and ranging by triangulation would be cheap and much more effective.
Yeah, I’m really curious if a stereoscopic system would have caught the wall or not. To my knowledge, while Tesla does have multiple front-facing cameras they are not configured as a stereoscopic system.
It is interesting that no one uses structured illumination, but I suspect that’s because outside noise (like sunlight) makes it unreliable. LIDAR is a little different in that it’s checking for a specific reflected signal/pattern so it’s capable of rejecting false signals.
Yeah, I was thinking of something like that Microsoft Kinect Camera, vastly cheaper than lidar.
Right, I know what you’re talking about. Now that I think of it more, I have come across a structured light system that was capable of operating outdoors, but I think the effective range was too limited for the speeds cars operate at. Good for nearby object detection, but not capable of seeing something far enough away to stop a vehicle in time.
He was 100% doing the first part with Disney’s cooperation. Notice he doesn’t have the slightest qualms about not blurring security guards’ faces and filming clips about what he’s doing while walking through the line. As for WB, they should be grateful he reminded people their legacy cartoons exist with a new Daffy-and-Porky theatrical movie coming out last weekend that they’ve done absolutely zero marketing for.
WB just pulled all their Looney Tunes from streaming, and is holding Coyote vs. ACME hostage. The asshole that’s running WB into the ground deserves awful things to happen to him.
I take slight issue with this quote from the article: “The issues that the Tesla had would be the same ones any automated or semi-automated driving assist systems would have had.”
The video never claims that these issues were inherent to Tesla cameras specifically.
Sure, but that’s what’s going to be surmised by the video given how it was packaged — that this is a Tesla problem.
It IS a Tesla problem. It just so happens to be other manufacturers’ problem as well. If you and 5 others fail a math test because you used a formula that only works 40% of the time, but 10 others ace it because they used the correct formula, pointing that out to your parents or the teacher that others also used the wrong formula doesn’t get you extra credit. Cadillacs potential issues don’t matter for Tesla, especially when the video doesn’t even mention Cadillac.
Rober is fun science, and as such still requires you to use your brain a little, but not much since it’s meant primarily for kids. It’s still entertainment, though. It’s not a peer reviewed scientific study and treating it as if it should be is a bit disingenuous. This is a guy who filled a pool with jello, after all.
It absolutely IS a Tesla problem. Tesla continues to defraud customers and the stock market with its FSD BS while telling everyone that cameras are only wholly sufficient.
It is a Tesla problem, everyone else at least has a Radar Sensor.
Right wing Dave aiming to be Transportation secretary under his fav President and auto dealer?
I can’t wait for his take on Teslas being the best cars for not having a timing belt 😀
But what I surmise from the way the article is packaged is that this is somehow an industry-wide problem, and not chiefly a Tesla problem.
Does anyone else find it unsettling how much Musk apparently knows about human biology? Like, how long have his people been on our planet?
Terracotta figurines dating to 4500-5500 BC (belonging to the Ubaid period) have been found in Ur between 1919 and 1922 during archaeological excavations directed by Henry Hall. Some are depicted with a “lizard head” or “Ophidian figures”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_conspiracy_theory#Archeology
Dr. Chuck Jones was trying to prepare us and we didn’t listen! This is going to become a common problem and we will look back on this with regret.
Musk is just upset his car failed a trompe l’oeil test.
It hurts to say this, but Musk is right, in principle. Cameras can see in 3D. You just need two of them and the software to properly interpret the data.
You need more than two. CMOS sensors have terrible depth perception and it has to do it very fast. Why would you do it that way, though, when cheap lidar sensors can do it without being computationally expensive?
You CAN start an engine with a hand crank, but why would you when there’s push button electric starters?
It didn’t say it was a good idea, just that it’s possible.
At my old job, I found myself once or twice a week starting a conversation with “that is a terrible idea, but this is how you would do it, and why it was a bad idea” and the idiots would go off and do it anyway.
Well if you’re going to use cameras, you at the very least need two of them, you need global shutters ( well if you are not moving and objects around you are not moving, you don’t need global shutters shutters, but that seems like a big limitation for a self driving car) and things that diffuse light like dust, rain, fog, or snow will mess things up. Back lighting will also cause lots of weird edge cases, and shiny things will freak it out.
Cameras combined with AI will also be vulnerable to adversarial attacks and random mistakes.
Sure, they will work most of the time, but I really don’t want to be around something that works most of the time.
No, Musk is wrong in principle because he continues to push that vision only is the way to go. I don’t have an issue with systems primarily reliant on cameras, but they need at least some other form of sensor like radar and/or lidar. It’s the only way to really counter the fact that vision based systems struggle in poor visibility conditions like fog, snow, and heavy rain.
Cameras don’t have to be limited to visible light. Broaden the scope to IR and you can achieve those things. Again, I didn’t say it was the best way, just that it’s possible.
If you’re opening up cameras to non-visable light waves, you’ve just expanded the definition to also include radar and lidar. Musk is specifically doubling down on visible light based camera systems. Lidar is as much a “camera” as IR cameras. Both take in non-visable light and through software produce an image in we can interpret with our eyes.
The difference is that lidar and radar are active systems that provide their own light source. Cameras are passive, using only the available light. Otherwise, you are correct, but that’s the distinction Musk is making.
I highly doubt the current camera system isn’t taking advantage of, or at least significantly improved by using headlights. Sure, those are necessary for the driver, but it’s kind of a weird distinction to make when the current system as implemented also uses an artificial light source.
Including headlights as part of the camera system is an interesting way of looking at it. There’s certainly a case to be made for that.
The difference is that LIDAR and other such systems can distinguish which signals are originally sent by the system. Unless the headlights have the ability to embed a signal that can be filtered from other sources, it isn’t the same thing.
That’s easy enough. A unique flicker sequence would do it.
Maybe, but it depends on the fidelity of the hardware being used for the lights. If current hardware needs to be updated, it might quickly end up costing more than just adding specialty LIDAR hardware that is widely available.
Plus, using visible light and another radiation source provides significant other advantages due to having a wider spectrum from which to gather information. LIDAR has different qualities that visible light simply doesn’t.
Regular cameras must have strong filters installed, otherwise wavelengths invisible to humans saturate the sensor. Frankly I’m kinda surprised there aren’t more cheap imaging sensors out there with extended Bayer filters to take advantage of this for applications exactly like this.
That said I agree its foolish to artificially limit the options. Lidar, radar, sonar, V2G, V2V, GPS, etc all should be on the table too.
“Interpret” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement. Cameras can only capture 2D. The system then makes assumptions based on 2D images form multiple cameras or single cameras that have moved.
<An aside, the reason birds and other animals bob their heads is that those with eyes on opposite sides of their heads are looking at things from multiple positions with a single eye to replicate binocular vision>
Cameras’ 3D pictures are guesses that can easily be fooled for a variety of reasons, such as strange scale, lighting, patterns, etc. Cameras can’t give precise speed or distance measurements in a dynamic environment. Those issues of scale, pattern, lighting, and such can be processed, but not when everything is moving. An example would be one of those digital billboard trucks with a changing image or a very reflective surface on another moving car. Neither provides a consistent visual profile that would provide good information from 2D images. Rain, puddles, non standard size sings, etc. all will cause cameras to fail at making an accurate 3D model.
Plus, the computational requirements for cameras to provide information close to that given by lidar or other more direct forms of measurements as raw data are immense. Processing power which could be used much more effectively if it was put to task on using better data rather than getting better at guessing using bad data.
Guessing from 2D isn’t the dame as 3D.
Subaru’s Eyesight driver assistance system uses two cameras for stereoscopic 3D vision, but it also has radar sensors to support the cameras.
And it still doesn’t work very well, from what I hear.
Not sure, never driven a Subaru with it. I would think if it was really necessary that all makes would be doing it that way.
My Mach-E only has one front-facing camera, but a whole array of radar sensors, and it does a great job.
I’ve driven a few. They react to brake lights a LOT. when the sun is low, they think brake lights more often than they should. The allowable follow distance increases with speed. Merging into a small gap and having your car panic brake in front of the car behind the gap is … more exciting than I like. Just not merging into small gaps? Imagine living in a city. I like the radar adaptive cruise control and auto braking in a Lexus, but Eyesight is a hard no from me. Sensors matter.
One camera is red and the other is blue. If the car look through them really hard, it’s almost 3D!
I need a car wearing a car-sized pair of those cardboard 3D glasses you get at the movies. Only then will I feel safe!
I have heard of “over sensitivity” complaints. I guess maybe not running into cartoon walls, but I could be extrapolating.
Probably not enough cartoon walls out there for a valid data set.
Are we still talking about Subarus? A white line that went diagonally into a wall next to the road might do it. Subarus are attracted to lines on pavement like moths to a flame. At least my wife’s is.
I have driven the Subaru, and although one could argue that it improves safety by scaring the hell out of you it random intervals by trying to steer you into oncoming traffic or those white fences that people with fancy horses like to put around their pastures, I think that a feature that would randomly jerk the steering wheel would be just as good from a safety aspect. In all fairness in a world where the people that were in charge of painting lines on the road and doing something to hide obsolete railroad tracks we’re doing their jobs, it would probably work fine.
Subaru has definitely nailed the how do we keep the driver from falling asleep problem, I will grant them that.
oh dear
Also the Superman character isn’t actually a human.
This is the guy that thinks the name of Harrison Ford’s character was “blade runner”. And that he would drive an ugly stainless steel truck instead of a bitchin flying police car.
Deckard would have driven whatever his owners/bosses told him to.
His owners/bosses had flying cars too
The flying car effects in fifth element were cooler (much later) but nothing set the scene like blade runners rainy city streets.
They just had to use styrofoam. They better have picked up every last nanoparticle of it.
Lawsuit hell, Elon’s probably angling to get him deported as we speak.
He will just take remote control of a Tesla nearby and run the guy over, then blame the Tesla owner for not paying attention.
Idk I’m down with anything that pushes Tesla stock down.
Careful, that statement includes about 99% of Elroy’s activities for the past few months…
It was an interesting video. While the wall was the big finale the real damning fails were the rain and fog.
Yeah, big cartoon walls are rare, but it rain all the time.
Humans are terrible drivers in patchy fog. I adjust my speed to the current level of visibility, but I’ll get people going past me at 70mph in thick fog, then have goons still doing 20mph in the clear bits.
Humans, as a whole, are terrible drivers. Period. Some are very good, but most are very bad.
And yet somehow we manage to drive 3,200 million (3.2 trillion) miles a year collectively, with somewhere around 0.043 million (43 thousand) traffic fatalities. (U.S. numbers.)
And some of those 43,000 fatalities are attributable to vehicles running advanced driver aid systems that honestly are so lacking they shouldn’t even be allowed on public roads.
We can complain (a lot) about how other people drive, but statistically we’re actually pretty good at life preservation when behind the wheel.
On the one hand I’m tempted to ask if anybody happens to have the numbers on self driving vehicles, but then I remembered there’s actually no such thing at the moment – Level 5 only exists for things traveling on rails.
Just realized my math was off. Sorry, hadn’t had my caffeine yet. 3,200 million is only 3.2 billion. I need another set of zeros in there to get to a trillion. That should read 3,200,000 million miles driven.
Insurance companies disagree, if only to justify high premiums. Oh, how I hate insurance companies.
There was a time when insurance companies gave discounts for vehicles with antilock brakes, figuring the improved braking performance would decrease accident incidents and/or severity. Then they figured out people acclamate to the better braking and adjust their bad behavior accordingly, so antilock brakes don’t actually do much to reduce claims.
The point being, those actuaries don’t always know what they’re doing.
That said, regarding the increasing insurance rates, the root problem there is vehicle repairability. It’s gotten so much worse. It used to be a 5 mph impact on a bumper caused zero damage – perhaps a minor scuff mark at worst. Now you could be looking at a whole new back hatch on your SUV, or a camera system replacement and recalibration along with a new front grill.
Car companies are saving money by building the cars cheaper, but deferring the repair costs on to us consumers. Pretty sure it actually costs us more in the long run.
Apparently a $40,000 repair job for a minor fender bender in a Rivian isn’t a rare thing. And I read about a basically brand new C8 that had to be totalled because a piece of debris on the road scraped a critical spot on the underside of the car and GM deemed it not repairable. The car looked and drove just fine, but would forever be in danger of the suspension falling apart, so the whole car had to be written off.
Stuff like this is why insurance costs are skyrocketing.
My gripe is more about the lack of actual coverage while my rates go up. In the last 5 years I have been in 3 accidents where I was not at fault and the other driver was cited. In two of those, I was made to pay my deductible and each drivers’ company covered their own insured. In the 3rd I could see them starting to make the argument and presented the dash cam footage. Shut them down instantly. So my issue is that while costs keep going up for a variety of reasons, the companies seem to think they can re-adjudicate the case and force me to pay for someone else’s mistakes. I’ve pretty much had it with them.
I’m guessing you’re in a no fault state? So much for the concept of “making you whole”. I’d be pissed too.
Also rising medical costs. You probably aren’t going to max out your $500000 policy on vehicle damage alone (unless you crashed into a Ferrari dealer or something), but you could easily hit that if someone is seriously injured and spends years recovering.
months, not years
Yeah, these days you can rack up a half a mil in medical expenses in a matter of months, especially if somebody starts out in an out of network emergency room.
Sure but the cars are way safer now too. Used to be you’d go through the windshield or impaled on the steering column in a 30mph collision. Now? Something extraordinary has to happen to be injured in a 30mph collision.
“Not dying” is the lowest of bars to clear.
The one fault I see is in the the rain test, in that it appears that the LiDAR may be picking up the “rain” spews as solid objects themselves, and braking for them and not necessarily even the mannekid target. To do it more validly, one might use more water sprays pointed generally upward and then arcing down naturally vertically on the roadway, and also starting well ahead of the unfortunately tyke.
Yeah, the rain isn’t remotely realistic.
TBH the main problem is that the mannequin parents did such a bad job of teaching their kid to stay out of the road.
I mean, I’m with you to some extent. Rain and fog are real world things that happen often and are things that real self driving cars will need to deal with, so it again reinforces that Tesla has been selling promises of self driving “any day now” to their customers without cars capable of it.
False promises aside- as an assisted cruise control feature it can determine that the rain/fog/snow are fucking up the camera readings and shut itself off. What Teslas have shown, though, is that they are not good at avoiding stationary objects in the middle of the road and handing the driver control.
Pfft, more Deep Fog and Big Rain conspiracies!
/s, for the love of god /s