From China a bizarre solution to deceive the Autopilot camera and reduce warnings to the driver. An expedient born on social media and now a product, which reopens the issue of the balance between safety and invasiveness of driving assistance systems
Trick Tesla’s Autopilot for some peace of mind behind the wheel by cutting out those annoying “beeps”? There are those who have done it in a curious way, with plastic puppets. As often happens, social media has paved the way, and as often happens, the Chinese have found it. The reason is simple. Beijing’s regulations on driving assistance systems are more stringent than here, while the tolerance threshold for acoustic warnings is the same. Thus creativity has skyrocketed to the maximum, and with solutions for cheat the system the Chinese, exasperated by the Autopilot buzzers, have set up a business in monitoring.
FROM NICHE TO MARKET
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The solution to the “problem” of monitoring the level of attention is bizarre but – it seems – effective. It involves tricking the Autopilot system’s camera into alerting the driver when he becomes distracted placing a… fake, plastic head in front of him. A small reproduction of a person’s head like that of an ordinary doll, mounted on a support with a suction cup to attach it to the glass roof near the rear-view mirror, so as to have a credible “picture” for the Autopilot camera. Once the effectiveness has been tested, imagination has taken over: there are plenty of plastic puppets to deceive Teslas in Chinese e-commerce sites, with prices ranging between 10 and 40 euros also depending on the face they depict, from actors to celebrities. The niche market would quickly become a growth sector, also driven by a recent tightening of Chinese regulations on driving assistance systems which forced Tesla, last year, to update Autopilot to make monitoring of driver distractions more rigorous.
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SAFETY
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Problem solved? Partly. While on the one hand drivers who were seduced by the solution that is popular on social media now drive more calmly, in terms of safety the problem is not negligible. Tesla’s Autopilot, while effective, it remains a support system which requires active driver supervision. Warnings that call attention to those who are driving, in other words, exist for valid reasons, not at the whim of the regulator. What is certain is that when they become too many or invasive they end up being counterproductive, and the market always finds a solution in the end. Shareable or not, the Chinese story is proof of this.
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