this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
1492 points (98.3% liked)

Not The Onion

15254 readers
959 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

In the piece — titled "Can You Fool a Self Driving Car?" — Rober found that a Tesla car on Autopilot was fooled by a Wile E. Coyote-style wall painted to look like the road ahead of it, with the electric vehicle plowing right through it instead of stopping.

The footage was damning enough, with slow-motion clips showing the car not only crashing through the styrofoam wall but also a mannequin of a child. The Tesla was also fooled by simulated rain and fog.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 190 points 3 days ago (7 children)

I wondered how the hell it managed to fool LIDAR, well...

The stunt was meant to demonstrate the shortcomings of relying entirely on cameras — rather than the LIDAR and radar systems used by brands and autonomous vehicle makers other than Tesla.

[–] Weirdfish@lemmy.world 162 points 3 days ago

If I could pass one law, requiring multiple redundant scanning tech on anything autonomous large enough to hurt me might be it.

I occasionally go to our warehouses which have robotic arms, autonomous fork lifts, etc. All of those have far more saftey features than a self driving Tesla, and they aren't in public.

[–] thesohoriots@lemmy.world 133 points 3 days ago (7 children)

The tl;dr here is that Elon said that humans have eyes and they work, and eyes are like cameras, so use cameras instead of expensive LIDAR. Dick fully inside car door for the slam.

[–] fahfahfahfah@lemmy.billiam.net 55 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I thlamed my penith in the car door

[–] troybot@midwest.social 10 points 3 days ago

You SLAMMED your PEnis IN the CAR door

[–] sirdorius@programming.dev 25 points 3 days ago

"Wow, such a brilliant CEO! Cutting waste where it truly matters." - fanbois/bots everywhere

[–] Walican132@lemmy.today 20 points 3 days ago

Ah human eyes have never caused a car accident.

[–] BetaBlake@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago

This is the same energy as blizzard saying "you've got phones don't you?"

Teslas are cheap crap, for a premium price, this has always been the case

[–] grue@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

In theory he's not wrong, except for that part where neither the optics nor (especially) the software come anywhere close to matching the performance of human eyes and brains and won't for the foreseeable future.

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

And human eyes/brains aren't good enough anyway. The whole hype about self-driving cars was that they were supposed to be better than humans.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The worst part is that LiDAR isn’t even expensive anymore. Hell, my phone has LiDAR. He originally said that to justify the fact that they were dealing with a component shortage and he needed to keep shipping vehicles. So he simply shipped them without the LiDAR systems that he couldn’t get ahold of, and claimed it was because he didn’t need LiDAR.

But now LiDAR is much more advanced and cheaper. But since he refused to admit it was because of a component shortage, adding LiDAR now would require Musk to publicly admit he was wrong. And we all know that will never happen.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 2 points 3 days ago

The entire premise of the joke is that we could mistake a sufficiently detailed image of a road for an actual road. That humans are susceptible to such a failure does not mean it is reasonable for a robot to share the same flaw.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 74 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They used to have it but Elmo removed it years ago as a cost cutting move.

Now they’re the only self driving car that drives into immovable objects.

You might remember a few years ago a guy got decapitated when his Model S drove straight into the side of a semi trailer.

[–] Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 52 points 3 days ago

To be clear, Elon Musk removed radar from Tesla vehicles and not Lidar, but a) he had it removed even from vehicles that had the hardware for radar and b) radar would have been enough to pass all the tests in the video anyway.

[–] Joeffect@lemmy.world 34 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It didn't fool lidar... The car equipped with lidar stopped before hitting the wall because it saw the obstacle not what was on the obstacle

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You didn't see the quote in the above comment that specifically states Teslas don't have lidar but other brands using it weren't fooled?

[–] Joeffect@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The person I replied to said he wondered how it fooled lidar...

[–] redbeardgecko@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They wondered that before/while reading the article, then got to the quoted part that explains that Teslas don't have Lidar, and understood that it did not in fact fool it: it just wasn't there.

[–] Joeffect@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

Yeah I'm dumb... Can't Read

[–] Goretantath@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

"Wondered" past tense, as in now they realise after reading the quote that the car they thought had lidar in it actually does not.

[–] Joeffect@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Well I'm an idiot... That's all

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

More like liedar! /s

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago

I see you didn't catch just how dumb teslas are. If it wouldn't result in actual human harm I would have liked to paint one of these.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

tesla doesnt use lIDAR anymore, not since '18, it relies on cameras solely.

[–] hovercat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 3 days ago

They removed radar in 2021 for cost-cutting reasons and have never had LiDAR, which Elon called "a fool's errand".

Source: I worked on their ADAS systems.