A fan of Tesla might think that the automaker just can’t catch a break when it comes to its autonomous driving tech. It’s already subject to several federal investigations over its marketing and deployment of technologies like Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD), and as of last week, we can add another to the list involving around 2.4 million Tesla vehicles. This time, regulators are assessing the cars’ performance in low-visibility conditions after four documented accidents, one of which resulted in a fatality.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says this new probe is looking at instances when FSD was engaged when it was foggy or a lot of dust was in the air, or even when glare from the sun blinded the car’s cameras and this caused a problem.

What the car can “see” is the big issue here. It’s also what Tesla bet its future on.

  • @Bassman1805
    8•2 months ago

    “Humans only need visible light”

    • bluGill
      11•2 months ago

      Humans are bad drivers as well. Technology should try to do better than humans, not accept the limitations of humans. When Radar, lidar (and others - possibly including things not invented yet) exist we should use them to make cars safer.

      • @[email protected]
        1•2 months ago

        You can still do better than human drivers wiith only visible light cameras by using more of them at different heights and angles than a person could pay attention to. I think mixing in other sensors and data sources would still be even better, but they’re already getting more data than a human could.

    • @FlowVoidEnglish
      6•2 months ago

      Humans can move their heads to avoid glare. They can shield glare from their eyes with visors.

      Tesla cameras currently can’t do either.

    • troed
      6•2 months ago

      Musk is of course right. The “only” thing he forgot was that his vision-only model needs full human level artificial intelligence behind it to work.

      Very genius.

        • @SpaceNoodle
          9•2 months ago

          I use echolocation by screaming at other drivers.

      • @SpaceNoodle
        4•2 months ago

        And even then, it would only be able to drive as well as a human, and humans kill tons of people on the highways.

    • @IphtashuFitzEnglish
      2•2 months ago

      If the Wright Brothers used the same logic their flying machines would have all flapped…