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Comment by nwvg_7257 | Hacker News Reader

This is a black truck, facing sideways in a lane, with no reflective surfaces of any kind, at night. Why is it surprising that a car hit it?

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I counted three seconds from noticing the truck to hitting it. Three seconds of braking is a lot more than zero

Devil's Advocate: You already knew what to look for* when you watched the video. I would say that a typical driver in the same scenario certainly wouldn't have had nearly as much of three seconds between noticing and collision.

Edit: *Specifically, to be on the lookout for a black sideways truck on an unlit road directly in ahead of where the car is traveling.

If a kid running out to get their ball is a the standard example of a hazard that drivers should always be expecting on a residential road, I think a broken down vehicle is the standard example for a highway.

Maybe a human could have braked even a little bit, but the autopilot didn’t brake at all. That’s a problem for advocates for it

Okay, now imagine you're driving home after a long day at work and it is dark; you still think you will react fast enough?

Because the car had radar. There are plenty of other car brands that ship similar emergency breaking features that wouldn't have missed this. Also, I, as a human viewing a video with crappy color balance (much inferior to human night vision), noticed the car long before it was struck. At least I would have begun breaking before hitting the car.

This specific car has multiple laser vision cameras that detect objects from long distances, supposedly even at night.

What laser system do you think Teslas have?

Tesla shouldn't have any. Waymo is the company banking on Lidar.

op is slightly confused on terminology. It does not have lasers\lidar but some models do have sensors such as the ars4-b. Other models use cameras only

Elon Musk is adamant about but needing such systems because "after all, humans are fine without them as well". I don't know what systems the current hardware has, but am sure there's no LIDAR.

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