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!
I read something a while back from a guy while wearing a T-shirt with a stop sign on it, a couple robotaxies stopped in front of him. It got me thinking you could cause some chaos walking around with a speed limit 65 shirt.
I think one of my favorite examples was using simple salt to trap them within the confines of white lines that they didn’t think they could cross over. I really appreciate the imagery of using salt circles to entrap the robotic demons …
Teslas did this in the past. There was also the issue of thinking that the moon was a red light or something.
Or when a truck is moving traffic lights
https://youtu.be/QhA2CH6Z-v4?t=99
That’s almost as bad as Sidewinder missiles locking onto the sun.
To be fair, it is really hot…
So don’t delay, act now, missiles are running out. Allow, if you’re still alive, six to eight years to arrive. And if you follow, there may be a tomorrow, but if the offer’s shunned, you might as well be locking on the sun.
Nice.
They’re not reading speed limit signs; they’ll follow the speed limit noted on the reference maps, like what you see in the app on your phone.
Yikes, there’s a 25 around here that shows up as a 55 in Google Maps.
Also a 55 that goes down to I think 35 for just a moment when it joins up with a side road. I wonder what a Tesla would do if it was following that data.
The same thing a Tesla always does: behave erratically and dangerously.
There’s a lot of cars that check via camera too to double check, for missing/outdated information and for temporary speed limit signs.
Lots of places also have variable limit signs that get updated based on traffic, accidents etc.
Here in NZ those seem to all be marked on the speed limit maps as 100km/h even if in some places the signs never go above 80.
Ngauranga Gorge is one such location and I believe has the country’s highest grossing speed camera.
Where I live there are a lot of “temporary” 30km/h speed limits that were never removed by the road workers after the work was completed.