The organisation has received a cease-and-desist letter from Tesla, which argues that the commercial ‘misrepresents’ test results and the performance of the company’s Full Self-Driving feature.
Dawn Project says that the Full Self-Driving function was properly enabled and that a professional test driver swore an affidavit that he did not touch the controls in any way so as to interfere with the operation of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software.
Supporters of Tesla have actually taken to the streets and used real children, in some extreme cases, to perform their own tests, only to discover that The Dawn Project’s findings were actually correct and repeatable on public roads.
The Dawn Project has now released a new video demonstrating once again that a Full Self-Driving Tesla would fail to detect and fail to avoid a small child on a real road in a real school crosswalk.
Whatever the situation, and a growing number if influential people are now expressing their support for The Dawn Project’s findings, shouldn’t Tesla be working on fixing the bugs that seem to be failing to identify children?
Just last week here in the UK, the government announced plans for the roll out of autonomous vehicles.
Generally welcomed, some critics said that while there were significant benefits from autonomous vehicles detailed studies were still required into how these vehicles interact with other road users and changing weather conditions.
In fact, there was a call for the better understanding of data and ‘complete clarity’ around legal responsibilities for users of self-driving vehicles so as to deliver the safe adoption of autonomous vehicles.
Clarity, transparency, and openness are all critical if we are going to embrace autonomous vehicles, so shouldn’t Tesla consider any independent criticism openly and honestly rather than attack those that appear to have exposed a particular safety defect?
