Mark Rober just set up one of the most interesting self-driving tests of 2025, and he did it by imitating Looney Tunes. The former NASA engineer and current YouTube mad scientist recreated the classic gag where Wile E. Coyote paints a tunnel onto a wall to fool the Road Runner.
Only this time, the test subject wasn’t a cartoon bird… it was a self-driving Tesla Model Y.
The result? A full-speed, 40 MPH impact straight into the wall. Watch the video and tell us what you think!
As you say, it’s nice if there is an additional assistant, also for e.g. health emergencies.
That said: Driving assistants should only ever be that: assistants. They are not a replacement for safe and controlled driving. I know I’ve been an arsehole on some occasions when I had my driver’s license fresh, and I got lucky that I didn’t have any accidents until I learned to calm down and drive with respect for other people and animals. Just throwing that in here to say I don’t consider myself a saint. But anything “self driving” should be forbidden everywhere, unless it’s on rails that the vehicle can not reasonably escape even if it wanted to (i.e. trains).
Definitely a component of these safety systems needs to be actually effective driver monitoring. You have cars now doing gaze tracking, and tracking things like whether the person seems drowsy. Even while driving unassisted they will nag you if it can’t confirm your attention (I would get dinged sometimes on steep ramps because my arms would block the cameras while turning the wheel, it frankly trained me to reposition hands earlier just to not get the nag).
I used the lane centering to help my kid get used to the sense of correct positioning in the lane. Of course turning it off to make them do it manually, but kind of like training wheels when the kid was tending to push it almost over the passenger line.