Turns out it’s easy to trick human drivers with 75 cent balloons and cheap paint
Researchers at Wasilla, AK’s Bush University, studying dangerous situations that are not really dangerous, were able to trick over 98% of human drivers using nothing more than cheap 5’ tall latex balloons painted with inexpensive children’s paints to look like pedestrians and in some cases, bushes.
During the daytime, most drivers could easily recognize the balloons as non-hazardous, harmless items and typically laughed after slowing down and nudging them aside and safely continuing their journey. However, in dark conditions, drivers did not have as much warning and these harmless decoys created very dangerous situations when human drivers mistook them for real threats and suddenly swerved or slammed on their brakes.
“The humans were completely unable to distinguish that these balloons were completely harmless items until after they had potentially deadly reactions to the phony hazards.” said head researcher Bubba Neanderthal. He continued “Autonomous cars using radar could easily determine these balloons did not present a real hazard and continued on their way without taking evasive action”. However, in dark conditions, human drivers, in contrast, either swerved into oncoming lanes of traffic or slammed on the brakes creating hazardous situations in 92.8% of all encounters in the dark.
The researchers plan to study ways to mitigate the dangers caused by inexpensive decoy balloons over the next year. They fear terrorists could wreak havoc on American roads using only inexpensive balloons and cheap children’s paints. Neanderthal’s head research assistant, Red Odin, commented: “Obviously, when autonomous cars with radar are more ubiquitous the threat posed by human drivers being punked by terrorists will decline but, until that happens, we should remain vigilant against such vulnerabilities within our nation’s transportation infrastructure.”
