A fan of Tesla might think that the automaker just can’t catch a break when it comes to its autonomous driving tech. It’s already subject to several federal investigations over its marketing and deployment of technologies like Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD), and as of last week, we can add another to the list involving around 2.4 million Tesla vehicles. This time, regulators are assessing the cars’ performance in low-visibility conditions after four documented accidents, one of which resulted in a fatality.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says this new probe is looking at instances when FSD was engaged when it was foggy or a lot of dust was in the air, or even when glare from the sun blinded the car’s cameras and this caused a problem.
What the car can “see” is the big issue here. It’s also what Tesla bet its future on.
Humans are bad drivers as well. Technology should try to do better than humans, not accept the limitations of humans. When Radar, lidar (and others - possibly including things not invented yet) exist we should use them to make cars safer.
You can still do better than human drivers wiith only visible light cameras by using more of them at different heights and angles than a person could pay attention to. I think mixing in other sensors and data sources would still be even better, but they’re already getting more data than a human could.