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!
They should just program it to drive through the painted tunnel but when another driver comes behind you they crash into it.
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.
It’s right at the end of the tunnel they’re diggin in CA
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?
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.Exactly, my previous car (BMW) once saved me in the fog by emergency braking for something I wasn’t able to see yet. My current car (Tesla) shuts down almost all safety features when the camera’s can’t see anything, so I doubt it will help me in such situations. The only time my Tesla works well is in perfect conditions, but I don’t live in California.
Exactly, my previous car (BMW) once saved me in the fog by emergency braking for something I wasn’t able to see yet.
If you were driving at a speed at which the low visibility would have gotten you into into an accident due to some obstable you weren’t able to see yet, you were driving too fast. Simple, isn’t it?
They do.
But “all self driving cars” are practically only from waymo.
Level 4 Autonomy is the point at which it’s not required that a human can intercede at any moment, and as such has to be actively paying attention and be sober.
Tesla is not there yet.On the other hand, this is an active attack against the technology.
Mirrors or any super-absorber (possibly vantablack or similar) would fuck up LIDAR. Which is a good reason for diversifying the Sensors.On the other hand I can understand Tesla going “Humans use visible light only, in principle that has to be sufficient for a self driving car as well”, because, in principle I agree. In practice… well, while this seems much more click-bait than an actual issue for a self-driving taxi, diversifying your Input chain makes a lot of sense in my book. On the other hand, if it would cost me 20k more down the road, and Cameras would reach the same safety, I’d be a bit pissed.
On the other hand I can understand Tesla going “Humans use visible light only, in principle that has to be sufficient for a self driving car as well”, because, in principle I agree.
The whole idea is they should be safer than us at driving. It only takes fog (or a painted wall) to conclude that won’t be achieved with cameras only.
On the other hand, if it would cost me 20k more down the road, and Cameras would reach the same safety,
You had a lot of hands in this paragraph. 😀
I’m exceptionally doubtful that the related costs were anywhere near this number, and it’s inconceivable to me that cameras only could ever be as safe as having a variety of inputs.
Musk’s ethos is clear, both in business and government. He will make whatever short term decisions his greed and the ketamine tell him to make, and fuck whatever happens down the road. Let’s not work so hard to sanewash him like the media has Trump.
The whole idea is they should be safer than us at driving. It only takes fog (or a painted wall) to conclude that won’t be achieved with cameras only.
Well, I do still think that cameras could reach “superhuman” levels of safety.
(very dense) Fog makes the cameras useless, A self driving car would have to slow way down / shut itself off. If they are part of a variety of inputs they drop out as well, reducing the available information. How would you handle that then? If that would have to drop out/slow down as much,you gain nothing again/e: my original interpretation is obviously wrong, you get the additional information whenever the environment permits.
And for the painted wall. Cameras should be able to detect that. It’s just that Tesla presumably hasn’t implemented defenses against active attacks yet.You had a lot of hands in this paragraph. 😀
I like to keep spares on me.I’m exceptionally doubtful that the related costs were anywhere near this number.
cost has been developing rapidly. Pretty sure several years ago (about when tesla first started announcing to be ready in a year or two) it was in the tens of thousands. But you’re right, more current estimations seem to be more in the range of $500-2000 per unit, and 0-4 units per car.
it’s inconceivable to me that cameras only could ever be as safe as having a variety of inputs.
Well, diverse sensors always reduce the chance of confident misinterpretation.
But they also mean you can’t “do one thing, and do it well”, as now you have to do 2-4 things (camera, lidar, radar, sonar) well. If one were to get to the point where you have either one really good data-source, or four really shitty ones, it becomes conceivable to me.From what I remember there is distressingly little oversight for allowing self-driving-cars on the road, as long as the Company is willing to be on the hook for accidents.
tesla uses cameras only, i think waymo uses lidar.
Most non Tesla brands that have some sort of self-driving functionality use lidar and/or radar. I’ve got a BMW iX and as far as I know it uses cameras, radar, lidar, and ultrasonic sensors.
It’s the only sensible approach. Not just is the notion that “humans use just their eyes too” completely wrong (otherwise how would be able to tell that something is off with the car “with our butt”?), computers are not even remotely close to our understanding and rapid interpretation of the world around us or cooperation beyond of what’s pre-programmed, which is necessary to deal with unforeseen circumstances. Cars must offset this somehow, and the simplest way to do so is with vast sensor suites that give them as much information as possible. Of course many humans also utterly fail at cooperation and defensive driving, but that’s another problem.
I remember reading that tesla only uses cameras for it’s self driving. My 2018 Honda uses radar for the adaptive cruise so the technology exists, musk is just an idiot.
Does it? My 2023 model throws a shit fit if it’s cold and I assume the camera covers are iced over.
It probably has cameras as well, for lane guidance etc.
My Mazda complains if the windscreen is dirty for the same reason.
Radar doesn’t detect stopped objects at high speed. It’d hit the wall too on radar alone.
This has to be solved by vision and or lidar.
Unless your car is traveling faster than the speed of light, radar will detect objects in front of it. But yeah, I was trying to imply that for a complex system like self driving musk is a buffoon for relying on a single system instead of creating a more robust package of sensors.
Money.
they generally do
Yep, I could see someone placing a billboard like that with a cliff behind it.
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.
I think insurances will require that is it comes to self driving at least here in Europe.
EU leading the world in consumer protection laws yet again
I fully agree, but sadly, investors likely care more about their cars hitting walls than hitting kids. Killing a kid or pedestrian in the US is often a very cheap fine. When my uncle was run over on a sidewalk next to his son, the police ruled it an accident and the city refused to do anything. Same thing happened when my friend was ran over in a bike lane… So killing humans is probably cheaper than hitting a wall.
Interesting that in the most consumerist nation on earth, objects have more value than people.
Suddenly, there are more Yellow Brick Road murals everywhere.
A building owner would not want cars crashing into their property though. Why would they get a mural to intentionally deceive a robot car?
Someone made a mural in Brazil but it was removed for safety.
https://www.jalopnik.com/real-life-wile-e-coyote-drives-fiat-smack-into-paintin-1765745078/
Because its fucking funny.
And the driver will have to pay to rebuild it anyway
If I had a wall to paint it on, you can bet your ass I’d be doing that shit.
+1…a classic!
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.
Notably, roomba vacuum cleaners use cameras instead of lidar that other robot vacuums use. I bought a high end roomba a couple months ago and it was crap at navigating my home, while my old xiaomi with a lidar works perfectly fine. Needless to say i returned the roomba.
If markets were rational, CEO compensation would never have grown so high, and there’d be no billionaires either.
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.
One of the first rules of robotics was always about not harming humans.
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
Honestly I think Mark should be more scared of Disney coming after him for mapping out their space mountain ride.
He probably just made Disney admissions and security even more annoying for everyone else.
Judging by the fact that he has an imagineer-video out (effectively) at the same time as the space-mountain mapping, I’d expect that Disney was fully aware of what he was doing, and the whole sneaky-thing was just to make it more appealing to viewers.
Meep meep.
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.
Who owns the White House right now?
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).
Yes, there are mid-block crosswalks in some of the walkable parts of Austin. There are also roundabouts with yield signs and crosswalks and no lights.
That will cause huge issues possibly. Do you live near there? We need to get this information to the public in those areas. Even if it is raining. Do not cross without checking over and over. We need to ban them from being there, but we need to protect the people first. 1 life may overturn the law, but 1 life shouldn’t be lost. It’s better we figure out an alternative
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”
That should at least slow them down, but yeah it could be a real threat there as well.
Not every pedestrian follows the rules of the lights though. And not every pedestrian makes it across the road in time before the light changes colors from red to green.
I didn’t say anything about whether it was adequate. The fact is it is going live. Trying to find weak spots and dangerous areas and point them out to people is all we can do at this stage.
Who the hell is Wyle E. Coyote?
A victim of American spelling?
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.
You’d think they have cameras with higher dynamic range and faster auto exposure in their cars by now. Nope, still penny pinching.
If only elon hadn’t insisted on not using lidar or anything other than just visible light cameras
Yeah, pulling radar from the cars was the beginning of the end. Early teslas had radar, and that was what led to all of the “car sees something three vehicles ahead and brakes to avoid a pileup that hasn’t even started yet” type of collision avoidance videos. First, pulling radar was a cost cutting thing. Then Elon demanded that they pull out the lidar too, and that’s when their crash numbers skyrocketed.
They never had lidar, in addition to radar they removed the ultrasound sensors for parking, which is stupid because they cost like $2 and for parking they’re much better than cameras. Same for the rain sensor. Why use a $1 rain sensor that always works reliably all the time in any visibility when you can do that with cameras and complex algorithms?..
It’s been about 7 years of model 3 on the market, maybe 8, and the rain detection still doesn’t work reliably. Or the traffic sign recognition (in Europe). My car fortunately still has the ultrasound sensors. Phantom braking is still an issue, too. Thank God for stocks for blinkers and drive/reverse.
I like the car in general, but it has the dumbest fails, things everyone else seems to have figured out.
Other cars also have dumb mistakes, like electric cars with no frunk. Literally bolted down hoods. Looking at you, German auto industry…
They never had lidar, as far as I know.
The video literally shows it having lidar tho.
The lidar car in the video is a modified Lexus prototype (came with radar from factory, modified by a third party, with Lexus branding blacked out and replaced with the third party name)
Afaik at the moment there are no cars in the market that have lidar (waymo is adding lidar to cars that have only radar as stock)
Ah, gotcha, I was only half watching so I misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification.
I think some Chinese ones do (nio?), but definitely not tesla
But why was there a road there?
He also painted the line leading up to it, if I remember the gag correctly. The real road is off camera.
