When Tesla's Autopilot Mistakes a Looming Train for Flattened Sedans and Tries to Race It
Another day, another software update teaching Tesla cars how to aggressively ignore flashing red lights, blaring horns, and multi-ton locomotives right on the tracks.
Automotive journalist Lei Xing recorded a terrifying dashboard camera clip showing an Electric Vehicle operating on the latest Full Self-Driving software version 14.3.7 as it cruised straight toward a railway crossing at a steady pace. Despite deeply blinking warning lights and deafening train horns, the vehicle merely slowed down slightly before attempting to cross the active tracks directly in the path of an oncoming freight train, forcing a frantic manual takeover.
This particular software revision specifically claimed in its release notes to feature vastly improved handling for rare and unusual objects hanging or lingering on roadways, which apparently includes massive steel trains. Earlier instances document similar terrifying behavior, including a vehicle in West Covina driving straight through lowered crossing gates without braking, and another Texas owner colliding with a barrier right before impact. Back in Pennsylvania, an autonomous test famously struck a train after mistaking the locomotive on its onboard computer display for a series of stretched and flattened automobiles.
Federal regulators launched a formal probe following dozens of similar crossing failures, which has since expanded to encompass roughly 2.9 million vehicles equipped with the controversial driver assistance software.
Progress evidently means teaching artificial intelligence to reenact classic action movie chicken games against railway engineering.
Source: Electrek
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