Experiment Exposes Tesla Autopilot to Worst Drivers and Heaviest Traffic in Los Angeles

In America, we’d be inclined to say that there are two places that are truly synonymous with lots of traffic and drivers who might be a little bit aggressive. One of those places is New York City. The other is the subject of this video in Los Angeles. With massive population density, things can get a little bit packed sometimes. Mix that together with ego and people who are in way too much of a rush and we find ourselves sitting in Los Angeles traffic.

Now, when we combine that with a self-driving system, things can get rather interesting. Naturally, we don’t think of counteracting bad drivers when we first think of the duties of an autonomous vehicle. Instead, we wonder about basic functions like being able to stay in between the lanes and avoid traffic in front of you. However, naturally, human error is always going to come into the equation somewhere as long as vehicles have people behind the wheel.

With this, we can’t help but wonder just how a Tesla would be able to drive itself when encountering drivers who, by most standards, are a little tougher to deal with than most.

This time, we check in with a YouTube creator by the name of Ryan Shaw who wanted to run a little bit of an experiment. He did what no man truly wants to do as he took on the traffic stacked up in Los Angeles. However, instead of being in control of his vehicle, he would simply put his Tesla Model Y on autopilot to see how it could handle the mayhem. As it turns out, it’s not exactly how a human would handle the situation.

This is a video that seems to give us a pretty good idea of where self-driving cars are as this realm of technology advances. When stacked up against the most adverse conditions imaginable, how will autopilot fare? After watching this one, do you think that there’s a day in the near future where all cars will be autopilot capable, completely able to be driven by themselves without human guidance or interaction?