We were talking to you a few days ago about the campaign video of US Senate candidate Dan O’Down. This clip quickly went viral because it talks about the Autopilot (or rather the Fully Autonomous Driving software beta) and its supposed bugs. The candidate affirms in fact nothing less than the device does not detect children. Which would lead to accidents.
The campaign clip is accompanied by a demo in which we see a Tesla with “Autopilot” engaged driving into (and crashing into) a small child-sized dummy three times. Several Internet users, however, had noted inconsistencies in the video. On a short sequence we can see for example on the central console that the system was disengaged with impact.
Tesla’s Autopilot crushes children? Not so fast…
The speed readings at the time of impact taken up by the campaign team on the official site moreover correspond rather to a scenario in which the Autopilot system should have been disengaged to allow the vehicle to crush the dummy… But it is necessary immediately note that Dan O’Down does not seem to have the only campaign program to fire red balls at Tesla.
And the inconsistencies visible in the original video are clearly not such as to prevent the candidate from urging the American traffic laws to suspend the beta of the Fully Autonomous Driving (FSD) system until “Elon Musk Proves He Doesn’t Cause Accidents With Kids”. Elon Musk did not directly respond to the candidate.
But Tad Park, a known Tesla investor, decided to put the candidate’s claims to the test, with his own Tesla, models… but also real children. The test resulted in a video being uploaded to the Whole Mars Catalog YouTube channel. We see the system detect mannequins and children well before risking the slightest collision.
And stop in front of the obstacle or carry out avoidance manoeuvres. At no time did the models, or the children visible in the video, seem to be in any danger – especially since the driver stated that he was ready to regain control in the event of dangerous behavior of the vehicle. Unfortunately, the video was blocked by YouTube who accuses him of “show minors participating in a dangerous activity”.
The video nevertheless remains available in the tweet that we resume at the end of the article. Note in passing that the NHTSA, the American equivalent of the French highway code, reacted to the Whole Mars Catalog video – to better remind users that “attempting to test technologies available in vehicles yourself can be extremely dangerous”.
Read also – Tesla raises the price of Fully Autonomous Driving again (still in beta)
And the agency to drive the point home on the Bloomberg site: “No one should risk their life, or the life of someone else, to test the performance of technology embedded in a vehicle”.
Does Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta really run over kids?
Thanks to @MinimalDuck and @_tadpark for your help on this! @elonmusk @RealDanODowdhttps://t.co/A1Pq1LkDyQ pic.twitter.com/bR19cVkWcL
— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) August 14, 2022
