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 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.
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.
Spoken like a man who has never relentlessly pursued a roadrunner, nor taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
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.
With this paint job, in this environment? Maybe. Though IRL you would probably see it much clearer due to the lack of parallax effect on a 2D projection.
But if we’re talking e.g. about a dark-ish barrier at knee height, your brain does a much better job to quickly recognize it as obstacle. Whereas cameras without depth perception would fail completely.
I’d hit that
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.
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.
I actually agree, it’s not really a good test. That wall is very realistic. It’s just that people get pissed about negativity.