True but…there have been multiple incidents of Teslas on Auto Pilot on a freeway/highway not detecting fully stopped vehicles in their lane and crashing into them, often these have been emergency vehicles like fire trucks or police cars. See Tesla on Autopilot crashes into stopped police car just as it is being investigated for similar crashes(Editor’s note regarding an exception: With Autopilot on, if a car is stopped in front of you, your car will come to a stop as well. This is a core reason Autopilot is so nice in stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper traffic.)
My understanding is that the issue is that the forward radar was not capable of differentiating between something like a building or wall directly adjacent to the lane or a stationary object in the lane like a stopped vehicle. That is one of the reasons that earlier this year Tesla stopped installing radar in its cars and has shifted to a 100% camera-based system (Plus the ultrasonic sensors in the bumpers for lower speed object detection). See Tesla announces transition to 'Tesla Vision' without radar, warns of limitations at first
In addition Tesla recently announced a software upgrade that can detect the flashing lights used on emergency vehicles and that will cause the car to slow and potentially stop if the emergency vehicle is in the cars lane. See Tesla says Autopilot can now detect and slow down for emergency vehicles' lights at night
While I welcome these improvements, I always valued the forward radar for its ability to ”see“ through fog and heavy rain, sleet, or snow. Cameras can’t see through bad weather.
LIDAR sensors have the same limitations, though researchers are trying to solve that problem. See System Helps Self-driving Cars See in Fog
My personal opinion is that even when self-driving cars are demonstrated to be far superior to the average human driver, they are still going to be limited by bad weather conditions. Obviously I‘m not an expert and I could be completely wrong. For more about what Tesla is doing with cameras to see through fog, see Dr. Know-It-All Explains How Teslas Can See Through Fog
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