Viral video exposes potentially dangerous flaw in crucial Tesla feature: 'Didn't even hit the brakes at all'

YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober (@MarkRober) just went viral after testing whether his Tesla would fall for a cartoon-style prank in a YouTube video. He painted a fake road on a wall, Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote-style, and drove his Tesla straight at it to see if Autopilot would hit the brakes. 

"I'm doing this to see if Tesla's autopilot can be tricked," Rober says in the video. "Because it famously only relies on simple cameras to navigate the world as opposed to much more expensive tech."

The car didn't stop. "Tesla's optical camera system would absolutely smash through a fake wall without even a slight tap on the brakes," he says, after watching his dummy passenger lose two arms and a head.

Tesla uses only cameras instead of a combination of cameras with lidar, which is a laser-based system many other self-driving cars rely on to map their surroundings, or radar. To see how they stack up, Rober ran both a Tesla and a lidar through six obstacle tests, including fog, rain, bright lights, and child mannequins running into the road.

The lidar car nailed it for the most part, but the Tesla? Not so much. "That was on Autopilot. The cameras didn't even hit the brakes at all," Rober said about one of Tesla's test runs in which the car sped straight through a mannequin obscured by fog and then simulated heavy rain.

The fact it was using Autopilot is a sticking point for many critics, though, because Rober did not pay the $8,000 or work with Tesla to upgrade the vehicle to a Full Self-Driving package with the latest software, which may have affected the results. Another YouTuber, Kyle Paul, reproduced Rober's experiment using FSD and had to slam on the brakes manually to stop from damaging his car, though a Cybertruck he used did stop at his fake wall automatically using only cameras, suggesting Tesla's latest vehicles may have better abilities to recognize these types of problems as well as a human eye could.

Another criticism of the video is that it appears Autopilot disengages before the crashes, though Futurism examined those claims and, with Rober posting a follow-up with raw footage, referred to reports of Autopilot disengaging on its own when it detects a crash is imminent but inevitable, without enough time to brake. "Not sure why it disengages 17 frames before hitting the wall but my feet weren't touching the brake or gas," Rober said.

No self-driving tech is fully there yet, either way, even if the lidar-equipped Waymo's rollout in select U.S. cities such as San Francisco has been relatively smooth so far, as has most Tesla testing, such as at its controversial "We, Robot" event last year that chauffeured guests in driverless Cybercabs. Waymos have been pulled over by police for issues including going into oncoming traffic nonetheless, and Tesla drivers have reportedly been facing fines in China for traffic infractions.   

While the video is full of Rober's signature fun (including 3D models of Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion made with secret lidar data gained from strapping a device to his chest), it also comes at a time when Tesla is under more scrutiny. The last 12 months have brought investigations over a major recall over Autopilot safety issues and rising backlash over Elon Musk's political activity, which have reportedly hurt Tesla's stock and sales. 

According to The Verge, Tesla's brand perception has taken a hit, with some customers saying they no longer want to support the company due to Musk's beliefs not aligning with their own, though there are also reports of some others, including President Donald Trump, deciding to buy a Tesla in response.

Would you trust a self-driving car to take you to work every day? For sure 👍 Maybe someday 🤔 I'm not sure 🤷 Never in a million years 👎 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

Sticking to the facts of the video, though, Rober's overall point was that while a team of cameras can do a great job and may even reach a point of exceeding human driving, adding lidar should only offer additional safety. 

Other electric self-driving car companies like Waymo and Cruise are already using multiple sensors like cameras, radar, and lidar to help prevent failures like the ones in Rober's video. As Rober puts it: "You get to shape the future, potentially save a bunch of lives."

"Purely looking at the technology, we should all be excited for the COMBINATION of these great technologies into much safer vehicles all around," one commenter on the video said.

"Came for the car tests, stayed for space mountain," wrote another.

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