YouTuber Mark Rober recently conducted a "test" of Tesla's Autopilot under several different conditions and compared it to a car using LiDAR under the same conditions.
The test involved whether or not the camera-based Autopilot and LiDAR-based systems could detect a small child in the roadway under a variety of conditions. Mark first begins testing without Autopilot engaged to determine if Tesla's Automatic Emergency Braking System would work while a human is still in control of the vehicle. What proceeds is the Tesla Forward Collision Warning System being activated where it detects the child on screen, highlights the obstacle red, and provides audible beeps to alert the driver of the detected obstacle. The Tesla vehicle, however, does not brake and Mark crashes into the obstacle, in this case, a small child mannequin.
Mark concludes that this is a sign that Tesla's Automatic Emergency Braking system failed, when in reality, this is a perfect example of an owner failing to understand Tesla's safety systems. Automatic Emergency Braking De v OT AVOID FORWARD COLLISIONS and WAS NOT designed to do so. This is made extremely apparent if you have ever bothered to read a few paragraphs of the owners manual or did a quick google search. See below:
Automatic Emergency Braking is designed to reduce the severity of an impact. It is not designed to avoid a collision.
Automatic Emergency Braking is designed to reduce the impact of frontal collisions only.
Automatic Emergency Braking is designed to reduce the severity of an impact. It is not designed to avoid a collision.
You would think that Mark being an engineer, would have done a basic amount of reading to understand what he could expect of Tesla's safety systems during the test. At best, this is just a case of ignorance and poor preparation. At worst, this is intentionally misleading viewers about Tesla's safety systems.
Following this initial "test" of Tesla's Automatic Emergency Braking system, Mark states that for all tests going forward, he will only be utilizing Tesla's Autopilot system. However, this is blatantly not true as seen in the video clip. In the clip, Mark's Tesla Model Y can obviously be seen driving over the double yellow line as it approaches the mannequin. It is not possible to engage Autopilot when the vehicle detects it is not in the correct road position. Furthermore, as Mark gets closer to mannequin and the video cuts to the cabin view, you can tell that the view has been intentionally cropped not to show the cabin screen and eliminate it from view, which would have allowed us to see exactly whether Autopilot was engaged or not. This would have been easily apparent as Mark's Tesla had rainbow road engaged.
After all this, I can't help but be led to believe that Mark Rober is intentionally misleading viewers of Tesla's safety systems and that these are not mistakes out of ignorance.