this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
784 points (99.6% liked)

Not The Onion

14963 readers
2444 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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!

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 11 points 46 minutes ago (2 children)

There's a very simple solution to autonomous driving vehicles plowing into walls, cars, or people:

Congress will pass a law that makes NOBODY liable -- as long as a human wasn't involved in the decision making process during the incident.

This will be backed by car makers, software providers, and insurance companies, who will lobby hard for it. After all, no SINGLE person or company made the decision to swerve into oncoming traffic. Surely they can't be held liable. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Once that happens, Level 4 driving will come standard and likely be the default mode on most cars. Best of luck everyone else!

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 minutes ago

If no one is liable then it's tempting to deliberately confuse them to crash

[–] chilicheeselies@lemmy.world 3 points 31 minutes ago

There is no way insurance companies would go for that. What is far more likely is that policies simply wont cover accidents due to autonomous systems. Im honeslty surprised they wouls cover them now.

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 17 points 1 hour ago

To be fair, the roadrunner it was following somehow successfully ran into the painting.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 1 points 10 minutes ago

They sound like they’re perfect for red states

[–] Coreidan@lemmy.world 4 points 57 minutes ago

Tesla is trash.

Fuck Elon musk.

can someone do this to trumps tesla please

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 1 points 25 minutes ago

To be fair, I'd be surprised if half the humans driving didn't do the same.

[–] kane@femboys.biz 5 points 1 hour ago (4 children)

Can this be solved with just cameras, or would this need additional hardware? I know they removed LIDAR, but thought that would only be effective short range, and would not be too helpful at 65 km/h.

[–] bitchkat@lemmy.world 4 points 23 minutes ago

Teslas never had LIDAR. They did have ultrasonic sensors and radar before they went to the this vision only crap.

[–] Overtheveloper@lemmy.world 4 points 38 minutes ago

If for some bizarre reason you would want to stick to cameras only, you could use 2 cameras and calculate the distance to various points based on the difference between the images. Thats called stereoscopy and is precisely what gives our brains depth perception. The issue is that this process is expensive computationally so I'd guess that it would be cheaper to go back to lidar.

[–] toddestan@lemm.ee 5 points 1 hour ago

Theoretically, yes. A human would be smart enough not to drive right into a painted wall, using only their eyeballs combined with their intelligence and sense of self-preservation. A smart enough vision system should be able to do the same.

Using something like LIDAR to directly sense obstacles would a lot more practical and reliable. LIDAR certainly has enough distance (airplanes use it too), though I don't know about the systems Tesla used specifically.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Good question. I don’t know if they ll succeed but they have a point that humans do it with just vision so why can’t ai do at least as well? We’ll see. I’m happy someone is trying a different approach. Maybe lidar is necessary, but until someone succeeds we won’t know the best approach, so let’s be happy there’s at least one competing attempt

I gave it a try once and it was pretty amazing, but clearly not ready. Tesla is fantastic at “normal” driving, but the trial gave me a real appreciation how driving is all edge cases. At this point I’m no longer confident that anyone will solve the problem adequately for general use.

Plus there will be accidents. No matter how optimistic you may be, it will never be perfect. Are they ready for the liability and reputation hit? Can any company survive that, even if they are demonstrably better than human?

[–] bitchkat@lemmy.world 1 points 21 minutes ago

It works pretty well as a highway assist. I never use it on city streets because its so slow and hesitant which is worse.

To any artists in Austin,TX: you have your work cut out for you. Godspeed.

[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 56 points 5 hours ago

TIL Mark Rober is a domestic terrorist

[–] arankays@lemmy.ca 16 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I tried Waymo when I was visiting LA a few months ago. Genuinely terrific stuff.

I do not trust Teslas one bit though.

[–] melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

waymo's have almost hit me like three times, and if i were slower, they would have. you are part of the problem. those are killing machines.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world -2 points 55 minutes ago (1 children)

almost. Human driver would hit you in similar scenarios probably.

[–] kenoh@lemm.ee 7 points 1 hour ago

Tesla doesn't use lidar for its sensing, living on the prayer that AI will just get good enough soon enough. Absolutely galaxy brained decision.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca -3 points 53 minutes ago (2 children)

It is a very high bar for FSD to force it to deal with intentional sabotage of FSD.

[–] chilicheeselies@lemmy.world 5 points 28 minutes ago

This is a matrer of safety so yes, i expect that it can handle any situation

[–] nomy@lemmy.zip 5 points 40 minutes ago

People will definitely fuck with autonomous cars though so you have to plan for it.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 71 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 10 points 3 hours ago

Im glad Luigi & Wile are on the same side.

load more comments
view more: next ›