Update April 15, it ran a red light and killed two:
Atlanta police said a Tesla carrying five people crashed into the side of a box truck after running a red light at the intersection. Police said the 21-year-old man driving the Tesla and a 23-year-old woman riding in the car were not alert, conscious or breathing, and were pronounced dead at the scene. Their names have not been released.
The video news from Georgia shows a Tesla tried to drive under a truck trailer again.
One person is dead and others are critically injured after a multi-vehicle crash in Midtown Monday morning. Piedmont Avenue and Monroe Drive are shut down in both directions as emergency crews respond to the scene outside of Smith Park. One of the vehicles appears to be a white Tesla and another is a box truck.
Source: Atlanta News First
Ran a red light and crashed into the broadside of a huge truck? Same thing that happened yesterday in California.
These crashes have hallmarks of Tesla’s rough and early “AI” system getting worse by the day.
Crosswalk robots, meant to inform the public of when it’s safe to avoid being killed by road robots, were modified to mock Zuck and Musk with satirical messaging.
For example:
…Saturday morning at the corner of Arguello Street, Broadway and Marshall Street in Redwood City, a voice claiming to be Zuckerberg says that “it’s normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And I just want to assure you, you don’t need to worry because there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.”
Or this one:
You know, people keep saying cancer is bad, but have you tried being a cancer? It’s f—— awesome.
The future is here!
I mean hear for yourself, in front of the iconic Palo Alto Apple store:
Something doesn’t add up again with Tesla, given one just accelerated against a red light straight into the side of a giant bus.
A man and his passenger in a speeding Tesla were killed Saturday when the car ran a red light in Fullerton, triggering a crash that involved an Orange County Transit Authority bus, authorities said.
Moral of this story may be that riding the bus gives some protection from Tesla operating as a constant public safety threat.
Velasquez was killed on impact. Her boyfriend was transported to the hospital, where he died the next day. His identity has not been released by the coroner’s office.
“Angy had just turned 21,” said Stephanya Cabanas, a family friend. “She was so young, so beautiful, so bright.” Velasquez was also a young mother of a 5-year-old son.
“She had so much to live for and it’s just so unfortunate because now he won’t be able to see his mother grow with him,” Cabanas said. “It just happened so suddenly and so we are just trying to take it day by day. We are so broken about this loss. She was a very special person to us. She was a mother, a sister, a friend, and that’s just something so devastating.”
What they are saying certainly makes a lot of sense, when you think about the mechanics behind a grasshopper being able to fly, versus a … fly.
Insect-scale robots face two major locomotive challenges: constrained energetics and large obstacles that far exceed their size. Terrestrial locomotion is efficient yet mostly limited to flat surfaces. In contrast, flight is versatile for overcoming obstacles but requires high power to stay aloft. Here, we present a hopping design that combines a subgram flapping-wing robot with a telescopic leg. Our robot can hop continuously while controlling jump height and frequency in the range of 1.5 to 20 centimeters and 2 to 8.4 hertz. The robot can follow positional set points, overcome tall obstacles, and traverse challenging surfaces. It can also hop on a dynamically rotating plane, recover from strong collisions, and perform somersaults. Compared to flight, this design reduces power consumption by 64 percent and increases payload by 10 times.
I wrote about this briefly back in 2018, in reference to 1970s research, given the challenges with insect-sized flying robots.
The Insectothopter was plagued by inability to fly in actual weather, as even the slightest breeze would render it useless.
