How will Tesla's full self-driving system react to a deer in the road?
It seems like technology is advancing at light speed these days with Tesla CEO Elon Musk's electric cars and trucks seemingly always in the headlines. Many are saying that autonomous driving and fully autonomous vehicles are the way of the future, making human drivers obsolete. Of course, we understand if you're a little skeptical of that.
For many country guys and gals, they were probably wondering what would happen the first time one of these vehicles running their car on autopilot would react if a big buck just happened to run into the road.
Back in October, the company started their Tesla FSD beta. FSD stands for "full self-driving." The company got a little backlash when it was revealed that this new Tesla software update still needs a human at the steering wheel to supervise, but beta testers have been already putting the program through the paces.
Most notably, a recent video from YouTube user Dirty Tesla reveals how Tesla's autopilot handles a deer in the road.
Honestly, we didn't know much about these electric vehicles or their unique driving visualization software until we heard about this viral video. It's amazing how it recognizes things like traffic lights and stop signs. The driving software also recognized the deer, albeit as a pedestrian. The car adjusted to avoid the animal. Of course, one could argue that was the wrong thing to do. Many people say you shouldn't "veer for deer." Sometimes animals can be indecisive and may turn and go back the way they came. We would have been interested to see how Tesla's FSD beta handled that scenario.
Personally, we think Tesla cars and these types of driving features have a long way to go before we see them on the road beyond just a beta test. And we certainly don't see ourselves as Tesla owners anytime soon. Still, it's interesting to see automakers experimenting with this stuff. We'd love to see functionality that spots and recognizes deer on the roadsides before our headlights hit them. It would go a long way to avoiding collisions, injuries and worse on the backroads of America.
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
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