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!
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.
Radar would not detect a Styrofoam wall either the return from Styrofoam is extremely low. Radar also can not distinguish elevation differences very well so an overhead road sign can be mistaken for a stopped vehicle or a stopped vehicle mistaken for an overhead road sign.
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.
They get filtered out and the car will not act on it because there is so much noise from stationary objects all around you. The car essentially wouldn’t drive at all if it didn’t filter them out.
At high speeds, the radar in all cars is used to detect moving objects and the change in velocity of those objects.
Radar will not prevent running into this wall at 40mph.
People can downvote me all they want, but that doesn’t change anything.
Only vison and / or lidar would stop for that wall at 40mph.
Edit: aside from clarity on the above this is the expected outcomes
Radar in cars today: hit the wall
Vision: probably all hit the wall but could be sufficiently programmed to not if they trained on it.
Lidar: would not hit the wall.
You’re partially right, stationary objects on the side of the road will have a different Doppler shift than a stationary object in front of the vehicle, items on the side of the road can be filtered. Cheap radars with low sampling rates will not be able to distinguish as their Doppler bins are fairly large.