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Tesla Autopilot on the Streets of Vietnam Is Pure Informational Overload

A lot has been said about Tesla's advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) that it continues to call "Autopilot." As is the case with most things in life, some of it was good, and some of it was bad.
Tesla Autopilot vs the streets of Ho Chi Minh City 20 photos
Photo: YouTube screenshot
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Generally speaking, people tend to agree that the Autopilot—or the Full Self Driving (FSD) suite offered now by Tesla—is the best ADAS around, though reaching a consensus on how far behind the other manufacturers are proves to be a lot more difficult. Tesla fans veer toward light-years, while more sensible people argue it might be more the case of them not wanting to take the risk rather than lacking the technology.

Whatever the case, if you were dropped on Earth today and browsed through the media looking for information on such systems, you might come away with the impression that the Autopilot isn't just the best, but maybe even the only one. Credit to Tesla's PR department where it's due. Oh, wait.

However advanced we might think the Autopilot (or any other similar system, for that matter) is, the truth is it's only any good in regular, "western" conditions. To function, it needs a clear, well-signaled infrastructure and a certain degree of predictability. Throw it on an unmarked road or on a street where nobody else minds the lane markings, and trying to read what's happening around the vehicle would be like me trying to read old Sanskrit.

We tend to forget (or, frankly, choose not to care) that not all cities in this world have equally developed infrastructures and not all drivers have the same level of road manners. Simply put, traffic isn't the same everywhere in the world, and a self-driving system will have to accommodate all situations before it can call itself that.

This clip of a Tesla Model X driving through Ho Chi Minh City's streets is a perfect illustration of the Autopilot's limitations in this sense. Surrounded by scooters and mopeds that zipped by as the four-wheeled vehicles were gridlocked, the system tried to cope for a while before acknowledging defeat and calling it quits.

And that's the problem: the AI driver has a luxury we, humans, don't have: it can go "I don't want to do this anymore right now" and pass control over to the human driver. Ironically enough, that's the exact opposite of the reason these systems were created in the first place, which was to take control when we didn't feel like driving. Well, just in case more proof was needed, it's pretty clear we're not there yet.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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