this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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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.

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[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 433 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Notice how they're mad at the video and not the car, manufacturer, or the CEO. It's a huge safety issue yet they'd rather defend a brand that obviously doesn't even care about their safety. Like, nobody is gonna give you a medal for being loyal to a brand.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 163 points 2 days ago (6 children)

These people haven't found any individual self identity.

An attack on the brand is an attack on them. Reminds me of the people who made Stars Wars their meaning and crumbled when a certain trilogy didn't hold up.

[–] billiam0202@lemmy.world 90 points 2 days ago (3 children)

An attack on the brand is an attack on them.

Thus it ever is with Conservatives. They make $whatever their whole identity, and so take any critique of $whatever as a personal attack against themselves.

I blame evangelical religions' need for martyrdom for this.

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[–] stoly@lemmy.world 40 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The term you are looking for is “external locus of identity”. And, yes.

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[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 50 points 2 days ago (8 children)

The styrofoam wall had a pre-cut hole to weaken it, and some people are using it as a gotcha proving the video was faked. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 54 points 2 days ago

Yeah, but it's styrofoam. You could literally run through it. And I'm sure they did that more as a safety measure so that it was guaranteed to collapse so nobody would be injured.

But at the same time it still drove through a fucking wall. The integrity doesn't mean shit because it drove through a literal fucking wall.

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Sounds like Rober gets to repeat this with a cinderblock wall and use the car as a tax write off then.

[–] rocket_dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 48 points 2 days ago

Sounds like Tesla fans should repeat this with cinderblock walls to show us how fake it was.

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[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 287 points 2 days ago (27 children)

As Electrek points out, Autopilot has a well-documented tendency to disengage right before a crash. Regulators have previously found that the advanced driver assistance software shuts off a fraction of a second before making impact.

This has been known.

They do it so they can evade liability for the crash.

[–] bazzzzzzz@lemm.ee 46 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Not sure how that helps in evading liability.

Every Tesla driver would need super human reaction speeds to respond in 17 frames, 680ms(I didn't check the recording framerate, but 25fps is the slowest reasonable), less than a second.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 65 points 2 days ago

It’s not likely to work, but them swapping to human control after it determined a crash is going to happen isn’t accidental.

Anything they can do to mire the proceedings they will do. It’s like how corporations file stupid junk motions to force plaintiffs to give up.

[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 51 points 2 days ago (5 children)

They're talking about avoiding legal liability, not about actually doing the right thing. And of course you can see how it would help them avoid legal liability. The lawyers will walk into court and honestly say that at the time of the accident the human driver was in control of the vehicle.

And then that creates a discussion about how much time the human driver has to have in order to actually solve the problem, or gray areas about who exactly controls what when, and it complicates the situation enough where maybe Tesla can pay less money for the deaths that they are obviously responsible for.

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[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 189 points 2 days ago (8 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 2 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 2 days ago (8 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 2 days ago (4 children)

I thlamed my penith in the car door

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[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 74 points 2 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 2 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 33 points 2 days ago (7 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

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[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 155 points 2 days ago (58 children)

My 500$ robot vacuum has LiDAR, meanwhile these 50k pieces of shit don't 😂

[–] rbm4444@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago

Holy shit, I knew I'd heard this word before. My Chinese robot vacuum cleaner has more technology than a tesla hahahahaha

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[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 141 points 1 day ago (23 children)

I hope some of you actually skimmed the article and got to the "disengaging" part.

As Electrek points out, Autopilot has a well-documented tendency to disengage right before a crash. Regulators have previously found that the advanced driver assistance software shuts off a fraction of a second before making impact.

It's a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

[–] endeavor@sopuli.xyz 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It’s a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

That is like writing musk made an awkward, confused gesture during a time a few people might call questionable timing and place.

[–] cortex7979@lemm.ee 34 points 1 day ago

That's so wrong holy shit

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[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 130 points 2 days ago (5 children)

"Dipshit Nazis mad at facts bursting their bubble is unreality" is another way of reading this headline.

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[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 117 points 2 days ago (39 children)

Why would a car that expensive not have a LiDAR sensor?

[–] O_R_I_O_N@lemm.ee 61 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Cameras are cheaper..that's it

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 43 points 2 days ago

Cost cutting. Lidar is cheaper now but was relative expensive and increased tech debt and maintenance. Also he legit thought that "human see good - then car see good too". Tesla is being led by a literal idiot.

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[–] ZeroGravitas@lemm.ee 99 points 2 days ago (11 children)

Painted wall? That's high tech shit.

I got a Tesla from my work before Elon went full Reich 3, and try this:

  • break on bridge shadows on the highway
  • start wipers on shadows, but not on rain
  • break on cars parked on the roadside if there's a bend in the road
  • disengage autopilot and break when driving towards the sun
  • change set speed at highway crossings because fuck the guy behind me, right?
  • engage emergency break if a bike waits to cross at the side of the road

To which I'll add:

  • moldy frunk (short for fucking trunk, I guess?), no ventilation whatsoever, water comes in, water stays in
  • pay attention noises for fuck-all reasons masking my podcasts and forcing me to rewind
  • the fucking cabin camera nanny - which I admittedly disabled with some chewing gum
  • the worst mp3 player known to man, the original Winamp was light years ahead - won't index, won't search, will reload USB and lose its place with almost every car start
  • bonkers UI with no integration with Android or Apple - I'm playing podcasts via low rate Bluetooth codecs, at least it doesn't matter much for voice
  • unusable airco in auto mode, insists on blowing cold air in your face

Say what you want about European cars, at least they got usability and integration right. As did most of the auto industry. Fuck Tesla, never again. Bunch of Steve Jobs wannabes.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 61 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It's brake, the car brakes.

It probably breaks as well, but that's not relevant right now.

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[–] sundrei@lemmy.sdf.org 91 points 2 days ago
[–] mrodri89@lemmy.zip 61 points 2 days ago (3 children)

If you get any strong emotions on material shit when someone makes a video...you have 0 of my respect. Period.

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[–] wabafee@lemmy.world 60 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (16 children)

I bet the reason why he does not want the LiDAR in the car really cause it looks ugly aestheticly.

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 91 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (14 children)

It costs too much. It's also why you have to worry about panels falling off the swastitruck if you park next to them. They also apparently lack any sort of rollover frame.

He doesn't want to pay for anything, including NHTSB crash tests.

It's literally what Drumpf would have created if he owned a car company. Cut all costs, disregard all regulations, and make the public the alpha testers.

collapsed inline media

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[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 55 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Meep meep!

What do you expect when the company is run by a loony toon?

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[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 51 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Tesla cars are stupid tech. As the cars that use lidar demonstrated, this is a solved problem. There don’t have to be self driving cars that run over kids. They just refuse to integrate the solution for no discernible reason, which I’m assuming is really just “Elon said so.”

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 50 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's even worse than that. Not only is it a solved problem, but Tesla had it solved (or closer to solved, anyway) and then intentionally regressed on the technology as a cost cutting measure. All the while making a limp-wristed attempt to spin the removal of key sensor hardware -- first the radar and later the ultrasonic proximity sensors -- as a "safety" initiative.

There isn't a shovel anywhere in the world big enough for that pile of bullshit.

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[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago (5 children)

It's a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

So, who's the YouTuber that's gonna test this out? Since Elmo has pushed his way into the government in order to quash any investigation into it.

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[–] Cantaloupe877@lemmy.world 42 points 2 days ago (3 children)
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[–] Banana@sh.itjust.works 41 points 2 days ago (21 children)

And the president is driving one of these?

Maybe we should be purchasing lots of paint and cement blockades...

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