Did you see this yesterday? A model new Tesla Mannequin 3 Highland was concerned in an accident in Taman Bukit Serdang, demolishing a concrete block wall that sealed off a housing space – a quite common sight right here in Malaysia. The collision brought about important injury to the entrance of the electrical sedan and set off the entrance airbags.

Based on the viral Fb submit, the driving force, who was coming from dinner, mentioned that the highway was too darkish for them to see the highway forward. Nevertheless, the pictures and video present that the highway was brightly lit with road lights, making that excuse greater than somewhat flimsy.

Now, in fact, you can also make your individual conclusions from the incident, taking into consideration that none of us know what precisely brought about it. One of many theories being floated about is that Autopilot – which makes use of the camera-only Tesla Imaginative and prescient system – wasn’t capable of stop the accident, whereas a standard radar-based autonomous emergency braking system would’ve. This might expose a possible weak point in relying solely on cameras.

It does stand to cause {that a} radar would’ve been capable of detect a strong wall – though it’s possible the radar sensor would’ve wanted to corroborate its knowledge with a digital camera to eradicate false positives. However extra importantly, Tesla’s engineers in all probability didn’t really feel the necessity to make Autopilot recognise a wall coming in direction of the driving force.

In any case, Tesla isn’t the one firm to have a camera-based collision prevention system – so does Honda, let’s not neglect (to be truthful, automobiles fitted with camera-based Honda Sensing have been concerned in their very own spate of accidents). Plus, nearly each system that solely provides AEB performance is a camera-only system. So clearly, Tesla Imaginative and prescient isn’t the factor responsible right here.

There have additionally been query marks surrounding the navigation system. A fellow consumer of the Mannequin 3 posted a video within the feedback exhibiting their automobile’s navigation system placing up instructions that undergo the wall. Tesla does use map knowledge from Google, however Google Maps doesn’t do that (we’ve tried), so clearly there’s one thing completely different – and maybe flawed – with regard to how the automobile itself plots its instructions.

Then there’s the truth that this explicit automobile was fitted with the Mannequin S’ steering yoke, which can have brought about a lack of management (extremely unlikely, on condition that it’s a straight highway). And in the event you take the driving force’s purported excuse of the highway being too darkish at face worth (we don’t), you may additionally make an argument that the Mannequin 3 Highland’s lack of stalks made it troublesome to activate the excessive beams.

In case you have been questioning, the excessive beams are activated by urgent and holding the excessive beam button on the left spoke of the steering wheel (urgent it as soon as prompts the flashers). Stalks or no stalks, nonetheless, you must actually familiarise your self with the controls of your individual automobile earlier than you drive it.

All of that’s immaterial, in fact. You can also make all types of excuses relating to the (actually not) darkish highway, the Autopilot system, the automobile’s navigation or the dearth of stalks, however the truth of the matter is that as an operator of a two-tonne motorcar able to hitting 200 km/h, your major job is to concentrate on the highway forward.

That doesn’t change even in case you have a sophisticated semi-autonomous driving system, which is what Autopilot in the end is. Regardless of in case you have the bottom Autopilot, the prolonged system and even the costly so-called Full Self Driving bundle (which doesn’t even work in Malaysia), the Mannequin 3 can’t drive itself, which implies the only real duty of stopping an accident falls on the driving force.

It’s said within the submit that the wall has been on that highway for near a decade, and both no one has hit it earlier than or there have been accidents which have by no means been reported (in all probability as a result of the automobile that hit it wasn’t a Tesla). We also needs to level out that Malaysian highway customers are barred from driving hands-free and you may be fined in the event you’re caught letting your automobile (whether or not it’s a Tesla or not) drive for you.

Whether or not the driving force was intoxicated or just put an excessive amount of religion within the automobile’s programs, it’s brutally clear from this incident that Autopilot doesn’t make you resistant to collisions. Which implies that, similar to driving some other automobile, it’s important to take note of your environment everytime you’re on the highway – particularly once you’re unfamiliar with the realm. And naturally, don’t simply blindly observe your navigation system – whether or not it’s Waze, Google Maps or your automobile’s built-in system. It’s simply widespread sense.

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