Self-Driving Tesla Crashes into Wall Painted to Look Like a Road… Just Months Before Planned Robotaxi Launch
-
My 6 year old kid loves anything about car and enjoyed Marks video. While driving him from school, he asked me why we can tell it's a wall but the cars can't. It sparked a 20 minutes discussion on car safety and why we need seat belts.
While driving him from school, he asked me why we can tell it’s a wall but the cars can’t.
Cool inquisitive kid you have there.
-
Why would children be interested in anything?
Have you never seen educational content before that wraps up potentially boring teachings in an exciting narrative?
Since most grownups aren't interested in safety, I just thought it would be even less for kids.
All sales promotion stats show that car buyers basically don't care about safety features. Almost all significant safety features are there because of regulation.Edit:
I can only laugh at the downvoters, you know nothing. It's been a well established fact that safety doesn't sell cars since the 50's. -
Iirc they were using a combination of lidar and radar, but Elmo wanted to cut costs.
Cameras and radar, I believe. Never lidar.
-
Why would children be interested in car safety?
Why is anyone interested in anything?
My nephew was obsessed with Teslas a few years ago. I asked him why, his response? The indicators can be set to make fart noises.
My 7 year old daughter and I watch Mark's videos together and they have helped to spark her interest in engineering & science.
-
Oh wow, you really didn't realize? Yeah man this is a youtube channel for getting kids interested in science and technology, like the technology surrounding self driving cars and lidar. Did you see the part where he introduced the technology by taking it to Disney world?
Here's a random video from crunchlabs, the company he created and advertises on ALL of his videos. This video shows his fan base enjoying what they got from crunchlabs.
That's cool then, but probably not for me. And I still think it's misleading. If they made the analogy in the video it would be different. But as it is, it looks like clickbait.
And honestly using clickbait on children is actually worse. -
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!
Mark Rober's video of the six tests (the remaining section is about mapping Space Mountain as Mark wanted to do since he was a kid)
-
Why would children be interested in car safety?
Kids love cyber trucks, teslas, Ferraris, or any car that is perceived as very expensive
-
OK I see it now, a bunch of icons I usually glance over, because such "icon lines" are generally for a bunch of social media crap I don't use.
Apparently it's proprietary crap, so no thanks anyway.The link is in the comment you replied to.
How exactly were you not able to see that? -
Was just thinking this
A single LiDAR sensor prevents this kind of issue
Indeed there is a lidar car in the video and it works way better in many scenarios.
-
Why would children be interested in car safety?
Because they don’t want their friend to die?
-
I disagree with this being a good test. Where on earth would you find a wall on a road with a fotorealistic continuation of the road printed on it? This would trick many human drivers. Self driving cars fail in many realistic situations that are a lot more concerning. This is just clickbait.
While I agree that this would trick many human drivers, I think the goal of a self-driving car is that it be better than human drivers. And there is existing tech that could help achieve that.
-
That's almost as bad as Sidewinder missiles locking onto the sun.
So don't delay, act now, missiles are running out. Allow, if you're still alive, six to eight years to arrive. And if you follow, there may be a tomorrow, but if the offer's shunned, you might as well be locking on the sun.
-
This is a very good test, and the car should have past. That said though, I hate the click bait format where they show a stupidly obvious cartoonish wall, when the real wall is way more convincing.
The Video:
That sort of clickbait is 100% sure to get a "do not recommend channel" from me, I'm so sick of it. And it's sad when the video has such a good point.
The Clickbait
I can see it's kind of funny, but it's misleading.
You shouldn't judge a book by its cover.
-
You shouldn't judge a book by its cover.
If it's made to be misleading and baiting, yes I FUCKING should. And so should you and everybody else.
-
The link is in the comment you replied to.
How exactly were you not able to see that?Sorry, I mixed up 2 threads.
-
Mark Rober's video of the six tests (the remaining section is about mapping Space Mountain as Mark wanted to do since he was a kid)
Absolutely hilarious.
-
He did say lidar was "useless" though.
He also said the government doesn't use sql.
-
It was removed because it was giving false positives. They should have upgraded it with lidar but decided to just remove it.
Yeah, it might drive straight into a wall but at least it isn't returning false positives!
-
That's cool then, but probably not for me. And I still think it's misleading. If they made the analogy in the video it would be different. But as it is, it looks like clickbait.
And honestly using clickbait on children is actually worse. -
Fair point. But it doesn't address the other things i said, really.
But i suppose,based on already getting downvoted, that I've got a bad take, either that or people who are downvoting me dont understand i can hate tesla and elon, think their cars are shit and still see that tests like this can be nuanced. The attitude that paints with a broad brush is the type of attitude that got trump elected....
I agree the wall is convincing and that it’s not surprising that the Tesla didn’t detect it, but I think where your comment rubs the wrong way is that you seem to be letting Tesla off the hook for making a choice to use the wrong technology.
I think you and the article/video agree on the point that any car based only on images will struggle with this but the conclusion you drew is that it’s an unfair test while the conclusion should be that NO car should rely only on images.
Is this situation likely to happen in the real world? No. But that doesn’t make the test unfair to Tesla. This was an intentional choice they made and it’s absolutely fair to call them on dangers of that choice.
