Tesla owner recreates fatal Autopilot crash, nearly crashes as well

In this case someone reproduced the bug, the blinking lights are a timed warning not related to what is on the road.

Following the line is too basic for a self driving car, I remember some students having small toys programmed to drive toy roads by following the lines, and that was more then 10 years ago.

Tesla should have detailed maps of this big roads, so maybe when the maps and what the car detects do not match it should be less confident, the collision detection should be extra sensitive, the driver should be alarmed, the car should slow down, if they have problems on this big roads then they need a new kind of hardware and software to navigate any medium road.

from the beheading accident discussion couple years ago i remember that Tesla had radar in front. That incident back then happened supposedly because the radar was observing only low-height sector along the road surface. The concrete divider seems to be exactly the thing that the radar would see. LIDAR as well as stereo of course would see that divider easily. It seems at this point though that Tesla's autopilot is only something like single camera image recognition, probably still is or like a MobilEye.

Don't self-driving cars already navigate these situations successfully? I would guess that Google/Waymo/GM had been testing on the stretch of interstate where the Mountain View Tesla fatality occurred.

> LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Volvo’s North American CEO, Lex Kerssemakers, lost his cool as the automaker’s semi-autonomous prototype sporadically refused to drive itself during a press event at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

> “It can’t find the lane markings!” Kerssemakers griped to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was at the wheel. “You need to paint the bloody roads here!”

> Shoddy infrastructure has become a roadblock to the development of self-driving cars, vexing engineers and adding time and cost. Poor markings and uneven signage on the 3 million miles of paved roads in the United States are forcing automakers to develop more sophisticated sensors and maps to compensate, industry executives say.

> Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently called the mundane issue of faded lane markings “crazy,” complaining they confused his semi-autonomous cars.

> An estimated 65 percent of U.S. roads are in poor condition, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, with the transportation infrastructure system rated 12th in the World Economic Forum’s 2014-2015 global competitiveness report.

> Tesla, Volvo, Mercedes, Audi (VOWG_p.DE) and others are fielding vehicles that can drive on highways, change lanes and park without human help. But they are easily flummoxed by faded lane markers, damaged or noncompliant signs or lights, and the many quirks of a roadway infrastructure managed by thousands of state and local bureaucracies.

> In other developed countries, greater standardization of road signs and markings makes it easier for robot cars to navigate. In the U.S., however, traffic lights can be aligned vertically, horizontally or “dog-house” style in two columns. Pavement markings use paint with different degrees of reflectivity - or don’t exist at all.

You ask "Will road markings be kept in better condition for the sake of self-driving cars, I wonder?"

No, no they won't. Rather, why aren't they already being kept in better condition for the sake of public safety?

The onus will be on the car manufacturer, who in turn will need to use more expensive sensors, so the cost will be end up with the car owner. Because in the US, we've been brainw^Wtaught that government is worthless, and powerless against The Free Market.