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Self-Driving Tesla Crashes into Wall Painted to Look Like a Road… Just Months Before Planned Robotaxi Launch (fuelarc.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (6 children)

The question there would be does Austin have crosswalks that don't have red lights. Many places put a light at every cross walk, but not all. Most beaches don't have them at every crosswalk, they just have laws that if someone is in or entering the crosswalk you have to stop for the pedestrians. (They would all be at risk from what you are saying).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't know the answer to your question, but I'll add that I've seen major cities that have overhead yellow flashing light boxes that mean "you must stop if there is a pedestrian crossing the road"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

That should at least slow them down, but yeah it could be a real threat there as well.

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