this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Mark Rober just set up one of the most interesting self-driving tests of 2025, and he did it by imitating Looney Tunes. The former NASA engineer and current YouTube mad scientist recreated the classic gag where Wile E. Coyote paints a tunnel onto a wall to fool the Road Runner.

Only this time, the test subject wasn’t a cartoon bird… it was a self-driving Tesla Model Y.

The result? A full-speed, 40 MPH impact straight into the wall. Watch the video and tell us what you think!

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 274 points 1 day ago (2 children)

OMFG someone test to see if Teslas stop to eat free bird seed.

[–] GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world 106 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 44 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

So many Acme products we need to test, I saw one guy already successfully tested an Olmec statue.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 50 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Or a badly painted sign that says "Free charging"

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 35 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Somebody with better animation skills than me make a cartoon where Wile E. Coyote is hunting cybertrucks using his old tricks and every single one of them works in his favor.

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[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 174 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It got fucking wile e coyoted

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 84 points 1 day ago

The scientists in Ireland calling their data set to prevent this exact fucking thing "Coyote" sent me over the moon.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 136 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (10 children)
[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 103 points 1 day ago (8 children)

"But humans can do it with their eyes!" - says the man not selling a human brain to go with the optical sensors

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 34 points 1 day ago (3 children)
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[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 32 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

“But humans can do it with their eyes!”

That's the best part, they kinda can't.
There are videos from before they pulled the sensors of some pretty cool stuff where teslas slammed the breaks before anything visibly happened, based on lidar sensors sensing trouble a couple cars up the road, completely blocked to vision.

super cool safety tech, and then they pulled it....

one example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIcC2ZMePKI

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[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The day I heard that was the day I realized he's a fucking idiot and I wanted nothing to do with his cars/tech.

Judging by how things have turned out...damn was that a good decision lmao

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[–] Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 110 points 1 day ago (10 children)

I saw the video pop up in my Youtube recommended, but didn't bother watching because I just assumed that any cars tested would be using LIDAR and thus would ignore the fake road just fine. I had no idea Tesla a) was still using basic cameras for this and b) actually had sophisticated enough "self driving" capabilities that this could be tested on them safely.

[–] Lukas@feddit.org 153 points 1 day ago (9 children)

They are not still using cameras but removed LIDAR and radar from their cars during the chip shortage 2020/21. The story they were telling was "humans don't have LIDAR but can drive cars as well, so the cars also only need 'eyes' like humans".

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 103 points 1 day ago (2 children)

And let me just add, Musk ordered the LIDAR removed against the engineers better judgement.

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[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 96 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Humans cannot, in fact, drive cars well. Humans kill tens of thousands of other humans with cars every year in the US alone.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 81 points 1 day ago (13 children)

Yup, cameras and humans share various exploits. Self-driving is going to work better than humans once every car has it and communicates with each other, allowing for minimal gaps even at high speeds, once roads are all very standardized and in a database, and-

Wait, that's trains

Fucking build more electrified high-speed rail and forget tech bros' shitty promises

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was getting mildly outraged and ready to comment how you were re-deriving the train at first. Well played.

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[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 39 points 1 day ago

I'll add that every other self driving car company has a pretty good safety record, specifically because they do use LIDAR and RADAR so they can see better than humans.

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Small correction here: they never had LIDAR. Cars with LIDAR have big racks on top with a spinny thing measuring the surroundings. Teslas had radar but removed during the chip shortage (and disabled it on existing cars) and acted like it was an improvement. The radar was used for distance keeping on cars and could actually detect the car in front of the car by bouncing signals off the ground, it was really slick.

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[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 62 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They tested a LiDAR rigged car, and it stopped just like you predicted. As of 2021, Tesla uses only cameras for FSD, and not even radar (which my stupid fine Toyota truck has).

They tested the idea safely by building the wall out of styrofoam, or at least that's what it looks like when it blows apart :)

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[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 78 points 1 day ago

TIL Mark Rober is a domestic terrorist

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 77 points 1 day ago (1 children)
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[–] conicalscientist@lemmy.world 73 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

Anyone with half a brain could tell you plain cameras is a non-starter. This is nearly a Juicero level blunder. Tesla is not a serious car company nor tech company. If markets were rational it would have been the end for Tesla.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Austin should just pull the permits until all the taxis have lidar installed and tested. Or write a bill that fines the manufacturer $100 billion for any self driving car that kills a person and puts the proceeds 50% to the family and 50% to infrastructure. One of the first rules of robotics was always about not harming humans.

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[–] rational_lib@lemmy.world 61 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (8 children)

The rain test was far more concerning because it's much more realistic of a scenario. Both a normal person and the lidar would've seen the kid and stopped, but the cameras and image processing just isn't good enough to make out a person in the rain. That's bad. The test portrays it as a person in the middle of a straight road, but I don't see why the same thing wouldn't happen at a crosswalk or other place where pedestrians are often in the path of a vehicle. If an autonomous system cannot make out pedestrians in the rain reliably, that alone should be enough to prevent these vehicles from being legal.

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[–] blackluster117@sh.itjust.works 53 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Still think LIDAR is inferior to computer vision, Elon?

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[–] happydoors@lemm.ee 51 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I love that one of the largest YouTubers is the one that did this. Surely, somebody near our federal government will throw a hissy fit if he hears about this but Mark’s audience is ginormous

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 32 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Honestly I think Mark should be more scared of Disney coming after him for mapping out their space mountain ride.

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[–] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 47 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
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[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 47 points 1 day ago (15 children)

There's a very simple solution to autonomous driving vehicles plowing into walls, cars, or people:

Congress will pass a law that makes NOBODY liable -- as long as a human wasn't involved in the decision making process during the incident.

This will be backed by car makers, software providers, and insurance companies, who will lobby hard for it. After all, no SINGLE person or company made the decision to swerve into oncoming traffic. Surely they can't be held liable. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Once that happens, Level 4 driving will come standard and likely be the default mode on most cars. Best of luck everyone else!

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[–] King3d@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is like the crash on a San Francisco bridge that happened because of a Tesla that went into a tunnel and it wasn’t sure what to do since it went from bright daylight to darkness. In this case the Tesla just suddenly merged lanes and then immediately stopped and caused a multi car pile up.

[–] fallingcats@discuss.tchncs.de 28 points 1 day ago (10 children)

You'd think they have cameras with higher dynamic range and faster auto exposure in their cars by now. Nope, still penny pinching.

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[–] blady_blah@lemmy.world 43 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

Honestly all the fails with the kid dummy were a way bigger deal than the wall test. The kid ones will happen a hundred times more than the wall scenario.

Some sort of radar or lidar should 100% be required on autonomous cars.

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[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 38 points 1 day ago

To be fair, the roadrunner it was following somehow successfully ran into the painting.

[–] CPMSP@midwest.social 37 points 1 day ago (2 children)
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[–] teuto@lemmy.teuto.icu 36 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

According to Ol' Elon the robo-taxi service has been a couple months away since 2017 or so. I can't imagine it's much closer now than then.

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[–] regrub@lemmy.world 35 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I would say that it's a good idea to paint more tunnels on walls, but then I remember how dumb human drivers are too

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[–] MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 33 points 12 hours ago (16 children)

All these years, I always thought all self driving cars used LiDAR or something to see in 3D/through fog. How was this allowed on the roads for so long?

[–] Feersummendjinn@feddit.uk 37 points 9 hours ago (6 children)

They originally the model S had front facing radar and ultrasonic sensors all round, the car combined the information to corroborate it's visual interpretation.
According to reports years ago the radar saved Tesla's from multiple pileups when it detected crashes multiple cars ahead (that the driver couldn't see).
Elmo in his infinite ego demanded both the radar and ultrasonics be removed, since he could drive with out that input so the car should be able to.. also it is cheaper.

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To any artists in Austin,TX: you have your work cut out for you. Godspeed.

[–] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The war against AI will be fought with Looney Tunes bits.

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[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 28 points 1 day ago (14 children)

Mark Rober. Why did it have to be Mark Rober.

[–] waywardninja@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Why not? Seems fitting an ex NASA engineer show Elon, the man currently trying to dismantle NASA, just what kind of intelligent people exist in that agency.

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Mark Rober is about to be listed as FBI public enemy #1 :(

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[–] ladicius@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago

The real test starts at 11 minutes and shows frightening problems of the Nazi clown cars.

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