Cars that can drive themselves are a dream that science fiction authors have been writing about since the seventies. But, right now, they are just that, dreams.
As you can see in this article, a Tesla self-driving car accelerated and hit a parked fire truck on a major freeway in California.
Now, I'm not a Tesla engineer, but I do have a suggestion. If you are programming your radar systems to ignore static objects in the way, maybe you should .... I don't know.... program them not to avoid objects right in front of the car. Imagine what would have happened had that firetruck been a cow, horse, deer, or heaven forbid, a human being standing in the way. In the first four instances, the car would have been totaled from the impact with stationary objects weighing more than a thousand pounds, that would have rolled up and over the car. In the last instance, you would have had a dead human being, and the guilt that if you had been paying attention, you would have been able to slow down and stop.
Like, I said, I'm not a Tesla engineer, but I'm betting that there is a way to ignore static objects off of the side of the car, but not static objects right in front of the car.
What do you think?
