Hit a deer once, and found it deeply upsetting. I am looking forward to an autonomous future where deer are not hit.
My mom once hit a deer and it bounced off her car and landed on the next car. She overheard the driver talking to the police “it just… it just… it just came out of the sky…?”
We might have to look to a company other than Tesla for that.
Lol. Yes. I don’t think of Tesla as self-driving, despite literally being called that. They might get there later, or they might not.
I think Waymo is self-driving now, and probably already great at avoiding deer.
Unfortunately for deer, Waymo is not everywhere. They are increasing exponentially-- doubling every 6 months? maybe? But exponentials take forever.
There will need to be some degree of risk acceptance in this category. I grew up in a rural area - hitting deer or other animal life is sadly unavoidable in some cases when driving the speed limit on country roads or even highways. There is no programming that can take care of that 100% of the time. Deer particularly can jump from a hilly wooded area onto a roadway in an interval of time that just cannot be accounted for when a vehicle is going 40-50+ MPH. They simply are not visible until its too late, even wth automated cameras.
I suppose you could have a car drive well below the speed limit in places where visibility is hindered. But that’s probably an unacceptable use case in reality.
Yes, 100% is going to be almost impossible in some areas. It got me thinking about acoustic measures that could be switched on for heavily wooded areas to warn the deer. This study shows that 25,000 Hz is effective at repelling deer. However, it only works from about 100 feet, so not a lot of warning for a fast approaching vehicle.
There’s a reason that hitting a deer is generally considered a not-at-fault accident. Sometimes it’s just unavoidable.
It would be nice if autonomous vehicles weren’t a lot worse than people at avoiding wildlife, though.
Waymo:
Also Waymo:
Swiss Re have now looked at this: