√Video: Children used to “prove” Tesla pedestrian avoidance tech

The feud between Tesla fanatics and its detractors continues, with children now being used as real-life crash-test dummies.

A Tesla owner in the US has used two children – his son and daughter, both of whom appear to be under the age of 10 – to demonstrate the vehicle’s controversial Full Self-Driving (FSD) crash-avoidance system.

The video was posted on YouTube over the weekend, after the Tesla owner teased audiences last week about his audacious plan to test the technology on real-life children rather than crash-test dummies.

The stunt was conducted as safety authorities in the US investigate numerous fatalities and serious-injury crashes involving Tesla cars being driven in semi-autonomous modes.

The test using real-life children was created in response to a number of recent videos criticising Tesla, which claimed to show the autonomous driving technology failing to recognise child-like mannequins.

While a number of the videos were debunked as not correctly engaging the crash-avoidance tech, others said the dummies were too unrealistic, prompting Tesla fanatic Whole Mars Blog to seek out parents willing to use their child in a real-life test.

In the video, the Tesla fanatic is shown sitting behind the wheel at suburban speeds with his foot hovering over the brake pedal and his hands close to (but not touching) the steering wheel – while his daughter stands in the middle of the street.

Shortly after, his five-year-old son walks across the road in front of the electric car. The Tesla automatically slams the brakes and the car stops, narrowly missing the children.

Although the test with real-life children went to plan, autonomous emergency braking technology and lane-keeping systems are not failsafe, and can be adversely affected by road markings and weather conditions – or be tricked by roadside obstructions.

Safety advocates are concerned drivers of modern cars are starting to place too much reliance on technology that is designed to be a back-up when a driver is not paying attention – rather than the first line of defence when it comes to road safety.

Whole Mars Blog, who has about 130,000 followers on Twitter, posted the video to his YouTube channel in an attempt to disprove the criticisms of the so-called Full Self Driving mode – specifically addressing a video shared by The Dawn Project, which was created by “safety-critical software” advocate Dan O’Dowd.

Mr O’Dowd hit back on the social media platform, calling out his critics for not trying to replicate his test, but rather creating their own – with both sides of the argument claiming victory.

The post Video: Children used to “prove” Tesla pedestrian avoidance tech appeared first on Drive.