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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

It was a median in the middle of the highway. The car probably continued in a straight line instead of "steering into" a barrier. https://imgur.com/a/iMY1x

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Fair. Could be rewritten as "AutoPilot seems to have made a grave error here, and drove the car into the barrier. AutoPilot should have either avoided the barrier or disengaged."

Why the car was not able to detect and avoid the collision in such a simple situation (from a human POV)? We have seen Tesla's autopilot performing very well in a much more complex scenario than this. Ref:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FadR7ETT_1k

Stationary obstacles are a harder problem, because there are so many stationary objects and features around a road that have to be ignored.

This autopilot incident is similar to the one with the tractor-trailer[1] in that regard.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/30/tesla-aut...

Or the one in China with the street sweeper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc0yYJ8-Dyo

Or the one with the fire truck: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/23/16923800/tesla-firetruck-...

No it's autopilot steered into the median lane in the first place where it diverges from the HOV lane.

Note: Both left lanes are HOV lanes. #1 leads onto Hwy 85, #2 onto Hwy 101. Do they say which lane he was in before entering the median?

Just curious why autopilot would be in lane #1 if he intended to stay on Hwy 101. Or vice versa. Maybe it couldn't make a safe lane change sooner? (Pure speculation)

Not excusing tesla but how on earth can there be a piece of flat concrete instead of a v shaped bendable deflector ? Was there one but had to be replaced ?

There is a crushable barrier there. It was broken that day, because someone had recently crashed into it. Drove past there yesterday, it has been replaced.

I see, sad timing u_u

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