Tesla’s approach to automotive autonomy is a unique one: Rather than using pesky sensors, which cost money, the company has instead decided to rely only on the output from the car’s cameras. Its computers analyze every pixel, crunch through tons of data, and then apparently decide to just plow into deer and keep on trucking.
Photos and video posted to Twitter by @TheSeekerOf42 show the before and after of a deer strike, during which the poster claimed he was using Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” software. Video shows the car approaching a deer in the road without slowing, and a photo of the front of the car shows the resulting damage: A cracked bumper, and a hood that’s both dented and “shifted almost an inch toward the windshield.”
The poster, who pays Tesla CEO Elon Musk for a subscription to the increasingly far-right social media site, claimed that the FSD software “works awesome” and that a deer in the road is an “edge case.” One might argue that edge cases are actually very important parts of any claimed autonomy suite, given how drivers check out when they feel the car is doing the work, but this owner remains “insanely grateful” to Tesla regardless.
This is the sort of edge case where LiDAR would have really helped. The Tesla’s computer vision appears to have missed the light-colored deer against the lighter-colored strip of pavement on the road, but sensors with actual 3D detection capabilities would likely have noticed the solid object standing in the car’s way.
Even more concerning than the lack of detection, however, is that the Tesla reportedly didn’t stop even after hitting the deer. No impact sensor or camera noticed the crash and told the car to pull over, slow down, or even relinquish control back to the driver. A deer strike is generally a considerable impact to a car, especially when the strike manages to relocate the entire hood, but the Tesla either didn’t notice or just decided it wasn’t an issue.
Tesla’s approach to autonomy willfully omits tech that would make it unquestionably better-prepared for situations like this. The pursuit of self-driving cars is of debatable relevance and function anyway, but doing so without key technology is like going golfing using only a putter. It may well work for you, eventually, possibly, but why would you ever want it to?