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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[–] [email protected] 133 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 day ago (5 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

"But humans can do it with their eyes!"

The thing is, RADAR can see things humans can't. There was a whole article a while back about a Model X that avoided an otherwise unavoidable accident by bouncing radar under the car in front of it and seeing that car slam on the brakes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I will point out that if you (or your camera-only driver assist) can't stop without hitting the car in front of you when they slam on the breaks, then you're driving too close to them... You really shouldn't ever put yourself in a position where the person in front of you could cause you to unavoidably hit them.

That said... Yeah, radar/lidar are far better than camera alone and there's no good reason not to include them in the sensor suite unless you value profits over lives.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

And I will point out that if the car in front of you isn't paying attention and rams a stopped car in the middle of the road, you are fucked no matter what.

[–] [email protected] 30 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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 20 hours ago

Pretty sure that wasn’t even lidar. It was radar which is even cheaper and pretty much every other new car has if they don’t have lidar.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

On the internet, nobody knows you’re just a brain in a ~~jar~~ car.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Check out moneybags over here who can afford a jar car.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago

Please don't vandalize their JarCar it has my mom's brain tissue in it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

dude is living proof brains are optional

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The thing is, yes humans can do it with their eyes. But even with the giant amount of progressing power from the brain they are still not great at it.

So of the ultimate goal is to the minimum/cheapest to be almost as good as human then yes, optical sensors only are enough.

Of the goal is to prevent deaths and significantly reduce the number of accidents compared to then lidar is the best option.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

Very interesting!

What’s the payoff period, I wonder, assuming everyone could afford optical only before everyone could afford better tech.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I’m kinda confident that even RADAR + cameras was good enough, but they started shipping cars without it and even shutting off the RADAR in existing cars.

The main negative about LiDAR is the cost, but that’s quickly going down.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

They don’t want to install it in the newer cars, and they don’t want to make two software versions I guess. A backup would’ve been great though…

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 34 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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 19 hours ago

They pulled the RADAR from mine just before I took delivery, unbeknownst to me at the time. I received no sort of notification.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

Absolutely the same timing for me. That was a big, oh that’s his logic?, moment.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I tried watching it and it forces a horrible dubbing over it so I didn't want to watch it. Apparently only way to chage it is to change my whole youtube account language

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

for the youtube website interface click on the gear wheel, and you can select the audiotrack you want

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, but not possible on mobile

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

I don’t know if it’s somehow not available to everyone, but I am able to change the audio track on mobile.