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!
It is a very high bar for FSD to force it to deal with intentional sabotage of FSD.
This is a matrer of safety so yes, i expect that it can handle any situation
The biggest problem will always be a backdoor that allows remote control of the car for purposes of killing the driver or other people. The Wile E Coyote attack is much more expensive and puts attacker in jeopardy for the time involved in constructing the “trap”.
Most dangerous? Yes. Maybe.
Biggest? No. It’s in the magnitude of a spy thriller plot for plausibility.
Exploding pagers would seem like something “government should never be so bold as to destroy confidence in industrial economy”. It was praised for being brilliant by our rulers.
Government demanding backdoors is common even when it results in hackers, and foreign agents, finding and exploiting them. The forward thinking component of our government is not as important as maximum control value. The most dangerous car for this application is one that is pure drive by wire, without completely mechanical brake pedal/steering, that further overrides any signal to “wire control” for steering/power input.
Over the air updates is a possible vector for backdoor control, but the FSD feature of summoning vehicle from parking spot to front door, is an RC control feature. Just as key fobs get “cloned”, security is not foolproof. The ultra discrete assassination power makes backdoors/hacking features very valuable.
That’s not what this is about at all. The idea is that the car needs to handle crazy situations that don’t make sense. It might not be a wall but it could be a reflection or some other optical illusion.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/26/24141361/tesla-autopilot-fsd-nhtsa-investigation-report-crash-death
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/feds-autopilot-was-active-during-deadly-march-tesla-crash/
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/171ickg/the_final_11_seconds_of_a_fatal_tesla_autopilot/
People will definitely fuck with autonomous cars though so you have to plan for it.