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 wish all MAGAs a very DEI
Wow you guys even lost the ability to do syntax. I guess it was only a matter of time.
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!
Beep beep! Damn things are using ACME LiDAR!
Mark Rober’s video of the six tests (the remaining section is about mapping Space Mountain as Mark wanted to do since he was a kid)
Absolutely hilarious.
Was there a coyote or a roadrunner anywhere nearby?
Yes, they do feature.
Who was the idiot that removed LiDar to cut costs?
/s
Elon removed the radar. Tesla cars never had lidar. What an idiot Musk.
He did say lidar was “useless” though.
He also said the government doesn’t use sql.
It was removed because it was giving false positives. They should have upgraded it with lidar but decided to just remove it.
Yeah, it might drive straight into a wall but at least it isn’t returning false positives!
This is a very good test, and the car should have past. That said though, I hate the click bait format where they show a stupidly obvious cartoonish wall, when the real wall is way more convincing.
The Video:
That sort of clickbait is 100% sure to get a “do not recommend channel” from me, I’m so sick of it. And it’s sad when the video has such a good point.
The Clickbait
I can see it’s kind of funny, but it’s misleading.
You realize Mark Robers target audience is like 8 years old, right? He also references looney tunes and wile e coyote a couple dozen times, including in this thumbnail you’re losing your mind over. The thumbnail fits the theme very well if you ask me.
This video isn’t a rigorous scientific test. This is a children’s video designed to get them interested in the scientific method. Get over yourself.
Why would children be interested in car safety?
My 6 year old kid loves anything about car and enjoyed Marks video. While driving him from school, he asked me why we can tell it’s a wall but the cars can’t. It sparked a 20 minutes discussion on car safety and why we need seat belts.
While driving him from school, he asked me why we can tell it’s a wall but the cars can’t.
Cool inquisitive kid you have there. 👍 😀
Why would children be interested in anything?
Have you never seen educational content before that wraps up potentially boring teachings in an exciting narrative?
Since most grownups aren’t interested in safety, I just thought it would be even less for kids.
All sales promotion stats show that car buyers basically don’t care about safety features. Almost all significant safety features are there because of regulation.Including the horrible angle of headrests these days. You’re right though: nobody gives a shit about the extra safety features.
Oh wow, you really didn’t realize? Yeah man this is a youtube channel for getting kids interested in science and technology, like the technology surrounding self driving cars and lidar. Did you see the part where he introduced the technology by taking it to Disney world?
Here’s a random video from crunchlabs, the company he created and advertises on ALL of his videos. This video shows his fan base enjoying what they got from crunchlabs.
That’s cool then, but probably not for me. And I still think it’s misleading. If they made the analogy in the video it would be different. But as it is, it looks like clickbait. And honestly using clickbait on children is actually worse.
They do make the analogy in the video. They reference it multiple times.
Maybe I didn’t have sound, and that’s not the problem, the problem is the thumbnail for the video is clickbait, I don’t get why I have to repeat that so many times?
Why is anyone interested in anything?
My nephew was obsessed with Teslas a few years ago. I asked him why, his response? The indicators can be set to make fart noises.
My 7 year old daughter and I watch Mark’s videos together and they have helped to spark her interest in engineering & science.
Because they don’t want their friend to die?
To kids, death is just a word.
Kids love cyber trucks, teslas, Ferraris, or any car that is perceived as very expensive
Still astounded people use anything other than the subscription section on YouTube.
History turned off, subscriptions only for me.
We are in a tiny, tiny minority.
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
If it’s made to be misleading and baiting, yes I FUCKING should. And so should you and everybody else.
Have you heard of DeArrow? https://dearrow.ajay.app/
It’s a browser extension that replaces clickbait thumbnails with good community sourced ones
I don’t see a problem with thumbnails that accurately portray the contents of the video, since only a small number of characters can fit in the title and a screenshot of one frame from the video doesn’t say much, so it can be difficult to get a sense for the video at a glance otherwise. I do get really annoyed with thumbnails that are deceptive in any way. If the thumbnail seems like it might be deceptive, I’ll usually read the comments before watching the video, or quickly scroll through it to see if it’s BS or not. Sometimes, the thumbnail advertises something that happens at the end of a 20 minute video that could’ve been 30s, in which case, I’ll scroll usually through to the end instead of watching the whole thing. If it weren’t for the thumbnail, though, I might not have watched it all.
Still supports a creator pulling clickbait.
The only way is to vote with views/retention.But it only supports them if their video is then also good. I don’t like clickbait, because I don’t want to be tricked into my monkey brain looking at something. I do want to see good videos.
Just yesterday the algorithm found some guy doing tech videos. I watched a few of them and then sent a text to a friend who I thought would like it. He asked for a link so I pulled the guys channel up on my phone, and holy smokes, clickbait. If I hadn’t seen the videos already I wouldn’t have given that guy the time of day. But they are well thought out, interesting videos.
I’m not here to correct the world’s poor behaviour. I’m here to watch good videos. De-arrow does a good job of that, it’s quite interesting to see YouTube on a computer without it vs what I’m used to now.
Blame the youtube algorithm and Mr Beast, not all the other youtubers caught up in the tidal wave.
Yeah they do it because it works. I’ve seen several who make otherwise good content talk about it in their videos and make comments about how stupid it is bit they basically have to to be competitive.
yeah but if you share it with people, they’ll still see the clickbait thumbnail, and that’s the actual problem
Thanks no I hadn’t. Is that available as a Firefox extension. I do most of my browsing on desktop.
The link is right there, you could’ve just clicked it instead of taking the time to write this question?!
OK I see it now, a bunch of icons I usually glance over, because such “icon lines” are generally for a bunch of social media crap I don’t use.
Apparently it’s proprietary crap, so no thanks anyway.
https://github.com/ajayyy/DeArrow
https://sponsor.ajay.app/databaseThis (again) is from the link in the comment you replied to…
Your attitude really doesn’t work well with your lack of reading comprehension.The link is in the comment you replied to.
How exactly were you not able to see that?Sorry, I mixed up 2 threads.
Yes, but you could have just clicked the link to find that out
The link in a comment that wasn’t for me? Like I update every 10 minutes to read all the comments??
Get real will you.Imagine being in the middle of a friendly conversation where you ask a question and the person says, “Why are you asking me?? Just google it.”
Well, this is a forum, not an out-loud discussion, so those are 2 completely different scenarios
They were also already given the link, so I guess:
Imagine being in the middle of a friendly conversation where someone asks for something, you give it to them, and then they proceed to ask questions about it that could be answered by looking at the thing you gave them
I give you a green round ball. You then proceed to ask me the colour and shape of the ball.
I’m not the OP, so I wasn’t having a conversation with them. But to me it gives off the vibe of “Random stranger, you should do all the work for me and provide all the answers, because I’m too lazy to do any of it myself.”
Could just be me though 🤷
YouTubers - especially large channels like this - constantly A/B test with different thumbnails and stick with whatever one drives the most traffic (no pun intended) to the video.
You might not like it, but it’s unfortunately the reality of operating a content creation business on an algorithm-driven platform.
There are plenty of channels I follow that make fantastic videos, but sometimes you have to tolerate the shitty thumbnails because that’s just the reality of the system they’re operating within.
Yeah, that is just how youtube works. You as an individual can say you don’t like annoying thumbnails and titles, but they 100% work. And channels that don’t use them are just not getting as many viewers.
algorithm-driven platform
And what is this “algorithm” based on? Actual user behavior. So the way to correct an algorithm is to change actual user behavior, no?
Lemme know when they release an OTA for our parietal lobes.
That sounds horrifying. :)
Just don’t fall asleep during the update.
At this point everyone should know that YouTube thumbnails have no requirement for accuracy. It’s more like an album cover.
I know, but if they are about anything serious like tests, I think it’s a fair assumption that the thumbnail represent it reasonably.
If it’s misleading, I don’t want their vomit. They can just fuck right off. We already have more than enough misinformation. I simply don’t want to waste my time on bullshit.
I disagree with this being a good test. Where on earth would you find a wall on a road with a fotorealistic continuation of the road printed on it? This would trick many human drivers. Self driving cars fail in many realistic situations that are a lot more concerning. This is just clickbait.
While I agree that this would trick many human drivers, I think the goal of a self-driving car is that it be better than human drivers. And there is existing tech that could help achieve that.
True, but Mark’s video basically about comparing Tesla’s Camera Sensors Vs Self Driving car with a Lidar Sensor.
They also simulated some real life scenarios which the car with Lidar sensors passed easily, while Tesla failed some of them.
So I guess Lidar sensors are superior compared to Teslas cameras.
I actually agree, it’s not really a good test. That wall is very realistic. It’s just that people get pissed about negativity.
You haven’t seen what Teslas are in the news for lately?
It’s not that crazy someone would put up a fake wall on some backroad to catch out inattentive Tesla drivers. Doesn’t even need to be nearly as big and elaborate as this one. Any painted object would accomplish the same.
But the point of the video is that optical cameras are easily deceived, and Elon is lying to his customers that LiDAR is overrated and not necessary.
Doesn’t address the point that humans would be equally deceived by this wall if they don’t pay 100% attention.
I’d hit that
Where on earth would you find a wall on a road with a fotorealistic continuation of the road printed on it?
Spoken like a man who has never relentlessly pursued a roadrunner, nor taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
This YT channel definitely went all out on the cartoonish nature of this particular test, but the article describes other tests as well including running over mannequins representing children that other cars (Lexus) avoided.
But we OWNED AND SLAMMED Tesla!
But being dishonest about it, detract rather than add to it.
I seem to recall that fElon prevented the self driving team from utilizing LIDAR for any part of the system, instead demanding that everything run off of optical input. Does anyone else remember the same?
Yes, I recall at the time experts saying it was a terrible mistake and Elon saying Machine learning will bridge the gap.
The real reason was to increase margins.
Is that just to cover his ass cuz he was promising backwards-compatible FSD for models that don’t have LIDAR?
What’s cool is that Teslas used to have radar sensors, at least, but Elon removed them from production to save money. Even if you have a car from back then, the software no longer uses them and they’ll just physically unplug them the next time you have the car serviced, as it’s just a drain on the battery at this point 🙃
meanwhile our subaru has lidar for adaptive cruise control and emergency braking
they’ll just physically unplug them the next time you have the car serviced
So, (looks at watch), in an hour?
So did they unplug it
Yikes.
Was just thinking this
A single LiDAR sensor prevents this kind of issue
Indeed there is a lidar car in the video and it works way better in many scenarios.
I’m trying to find an article that covers what I remember but I know for sure that it’s been a good while since I saw the info I recall. Hopefully I can dig something up.
That might actually be the exact article I’m thinking about. Thanks!
Iirc they were using a combination of lidar and radar, but Elmo wanted to cut costs.
Cameras and radar, I believe. Never lidar.
Funny thing is, the price of lidar is dropping like a stone; they are projected to be sub-$200 per unit soon. The technical consensus seems to be settling in on 2 or 3 lidars per car plus optical sensors, and Chinese EV brands are starting to provide self driving in baseline models, with lidars as part of the standard package.
Ah okay. I was genuinely curious if I was remembering correctly because I definitely know it’s been awhile since I’d read anything on the subject.
I remember there being claims from him or his team about lidar being a dead end that would not scale as well as computer vision.
I believe he claimed that since humans use their vision to drive that computer vision was more than enough.
I don’t know about you, but I also rely on sounds & feel when I drive. I also know that the human eye has evolved to detect motion, filter out extraneous information, and send just the important bits to the brain so that it doesn’t get overloaded with everything the eye sees. Computer vision is the exact opposite from that, having to process every bit of every image the camera sees.
since humans use their vision to drive that computer vision was more than enough
Surprised he didn’t swap out the wheels with legs while he was at it
I don’t know about you, but I also rely on sounds & feel when I drive.
Of course. When I feel myself driving into a wall, I stop immediately.
I also know of many times my vision fails. Driving into a sunrise for example
Yep! That’s what I’m thinking of. It was Elmo. The real engineers objected.
Came here to actually write this. Everyone remembers that. He made Tesler the hated shit it is today.
As a space nut I seriously hope that he never gets a chance to do anything similar with SpaceX. Thankfully he’s mostly been kept away from important things thus far.
Don’t get me wrong, I know SpaceX’s closet is overflowing with skeletons. But since Congress has been so kind as to continuously cut NASA’s budget for the last few decades, I have to rely on SpaceX and other private companies to keep our space endeavors going.
I’m (was) huge SpaceX nerd, but last year or so I’m less and less. He always was dumb narcissist asshole, but now I can’t take it anymore. Also the idea that we’ve fucked up this planet and need to move somewhere else, by doing thousands of launches finishing this planet always made me sick. If someone would take him out, I probably would come back to liking the company.
The actual wall is way more convincing though.
still, this should be something the car ought to take into account. What if there’s a glass in the way?
Glass would be very interesting, might actually confuse lidar also.
Yes, I think a human driver who isn’t half asleep would notice that something is weird, and would at least slow down.
That might have been an even „simpler“ test.
Yes, but Styrofoam probably damages the car less than shards of glass.
Glass is far more likely to cause injuries to the driver or the people around the set, just from being heavier material than styrofoam.
As much as i want to hate on tesla, seeing this, it hardly seems like a fair test.
From the perspective of the car, it’s almost perfectly lined up with the background. it’s a very realistic painting, and any AI that is trained on image data would obviously struggle with this. AI doesn’t have that human component that allows us to infer information based on context. We can see the boarders and know that they dont fit. They shouldn’t be there, so even if the painting is perfectly lines up and looks photo realistic, we can know something is up because its got edges and a frame holding it up.
This test, in the context of the title of this article, relies on a fairly dumb pretense that:
- Computers think like humans
- This is a realistic situation that a human driver would find themselves in (or that realistic paintings of very specific roads exist in nature)
- There is no chance this could be trained out of them. (If it mattered enough to do so)
This doesnt just affect teslas. This affects any car that uses AI assistance for driving.
Having said all that… fuck elon musk and fuck his stupid cars.
This doesnt just affect teslas. This affects any car that uses AI assistance for driving.
Except for, you know… cars that don’t solely rely on optical input and have LiDAR for example
Fair point. But it doesn’t address the other things i said, really.
But i suppose,based on already getting downvoted, that I’ve got a bad take, either that or people who are downvoting me dont understand i can hate tesla and elon, think their cars are shit and still see that tests like this can be nuanced. The attitude that paints with a broad brush is the type of attitude that got trump elected…
I agree the wall is convincing and that it’s not surprising that the Tesla didn’t detect it, but I think where your comment rubs the wrong way is that you seen to be letting Tesla off the hook for making a choice to use the wrong technology.
I think you and the article/video agree on the point that any car based only on images will struggle with this but the conclusion you drew is that it’s an unfair test while the conclusion should be that NO car should rely only on images.
Is this situation likely to happen in the real world? No. But that doesn’t make the test unfair to Tesla. This was an intentional choice they made and it’s absolutely fair to call them on dangers of that choice.
based on already getting downvoted
In this case, yes, but in general, downvotes just mean your take is unpopular. The downvotes could be from people who don’t like Tesla and see any defense of Tesla as worthy of downvotes.
So good on you for making the point that you believe in. It’s good to try to understand why something you wrote was downvoted instead of just knee-jerk assuming that it’s because it’s a “bad take.”
No, it’s just a bad take. Every other manufacturer of self driving vehicles (even partial self driving, like automatic braking) uses LiDAR because it solves a whole host of problems like this. Only Tesla doesn’t, because Elon thinks he’s a big brain genius. There have been plenty of real world accidents with less cartoonish circumstances involving Teslas that also would have been avoided if they just had LiDAR sensors. Mark just chose an especially flashy way to illustrate the problem. Sometimes flashy is the best way to get a point across.
I agree that this just isn’t a realistic problem, and that there are way more problems with Tesla’s that are much more realistic.
Tell that to the guy who lost his head when his Tesla thought a reflective semi truck was the sky
I’m so glad I wasn’t the only person who immediately thought “This is some Wile E. Coyote shit.”
I mean, it is also referenced in the article and even in the summary from OP.
And extensively in the video too.
And that’s what you get for cheaping out on tech and going with cameras over lidar. Not only that, but Tesla removed all the radar technology that literally every car uses for collision detection about a year ago.
I read something a while back from a guy while wearing a T-shirt with a stop sign on it, a couple robotaxies stopped in front of him. It got me thinking you could cause some chaos walking around with a speed limit 65 shirt.
I think one of my favorite examples was using simple salt to trap them within the confines of white lines that they didn’t think they could cross over. I really appreciate the imagery of using salt circles to entrap the robotic demons …
Teslas did this in the past. There was also the issue of thinking that the moon was a red light or something.
Or when a truck is moving traffic lights
That’s almost as bad as Sidewinder missiles locking onto the sun.
So don’t delay, act now, missiles are running out. Allow, if you’re still alive, six to eight years to arrive. And if you follow, there may be a tomorrow, but if the offer’s shunned, you might as well be locking on the sun.
They’re not reading speed limit signs; they’ll follow the speed limit noted on the reference maps, like what you see in the app on your phone.
Yikes, there’s a 25 around here that shows up as a 55 in Google Maps.
Also a 55 that goes down to I think 35 for just a moment when it joins up with a side road. I wonder what a Tesla would do if it was following that data.
There’s a lot of cars that check via camera too to double check, for missing/outdated information and for temporary speed limit signs.
Lots of places also have variable limit signs that get updated based on traffic, accidents etc.
Here in NZ those seem to all be marked on the speed limit maps as 100km/h even if in some places the signs never go above 80.
Ngauranga Gorge is one such location and I believe has the country’s highest grossing speed camera.
Where I live there are a lot of “temporary” 30km/h speed limits that were never removed by the road workers after the work was completed.
Entire video is worth watching. He also snuck a chest mounted lidar into Disney and mapped some rides.
So its road runner rules in play here.
