Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/20/changing-a-35-mph-traffic-sign.html
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So the Tesla’s AI will basically follow any driving directions it reads? What if it pulls up behind someone with a “HONK IF YOU’RE HORNY” bumper sticker?
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“I can’t drive 85”…
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I am actually surprised by this. My Outback has NAV in it, and when I am driving if I bring up the map it automatically reads the posted speed limit based on the database and displays it (in black if I am at or under and in rd if I am over). I would think that Tesla would be using similar tech by reading a database value for a road, not using the cars cameras to scan road signs.
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On the one hand, this looks like an edge case that no one thought of testing for and it’s easy to fix. On the other hand, we don’t know how many hundreds or thousands more edge cases like this still exist.
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Tesla’s stock ran from ~$300 to $900 a few weeks because of some articles about the China plant and some engineers from Japan declaring there is no way to catch Tesla for 10 years or some such.
So there are going to be articles to try to push their valuation back down.
That said, if you put a sign up that says 55 MPH in a 35 MPH limit zone you would fool humans, too.
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THIS! My car does this as well. As soon as a pass a Speed Limit sign that is a different speed, the car knows it.
My guess is Tesla does not want to pay for access to whatever database(s) have this info and would rather do it on their own.
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I can see why including that feature would be important for decreasing the car’s speed in certain situations; for example in a construction zone where signs are posted advising that the speed limit has been temporarily reduced from 55 to 25.
But obviously if a hack like this can cause the car to go 50mph over the limit then that’s a serious flaw that needs to be addressed immediately.
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It’s still sad his presidential ambitions fizzled out, considering.
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Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of masking tape on a sign
Heh, they didn’t even turn the 3 into an 8:
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“We are not trying to spread fear and say that if you drive this car, it will accelerate into through a barrier, or to sensationalize it,” he said. “That’s Boing Boing’s job.”
I gotta say, this feud with Tesla has gotten weird at this point.
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That’s what I call profoundly fuzzy logic.
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OK cool, so we discover the problem and a patch is issued to solve the problem.
Meanwhile thousands of human drivers entirely ignore speed limit signs day after day and there’s no patch for that.
What exactly are we arguing here?
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There is a stop sign near me that’s been altered to read: “STOP Trump!”, what could possibly happen?
Clearly testing hasn’t been done outside a test track.
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The claim that fully autonomous driving is “just around the corner”?
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Tesla’s newer models use proprietary cameras, and MobilEye EyeQ3 has released newer versions of its cameras that McAfee tested and said were not fooled by the modified sign.
It’s great that the aforementioned Tesla EyeQ3 camera weren’t fooled. The sign modification, though, was crude and appeared so. But what if the modification was much more sophisticated, making the “3” appear exactly like an “8”; they should have tested for that.
Anyway, I encourage the curious to read the entire BI article; there’s a lot more to all the drama.
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I would think it’s using both, and if the speed limit is hugely different from the sign compared with GPS data it would warn the driver and abort or at least fail over to whatever is slowest. (At least that’s how I’d design it.)
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What happens if you change the speed limit sign to 88 mph?
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