Mark Rober just set up one of the most interesting self-driving tests of 2025, and he did it by imitating Looney Tunes. The former NASA engineer and current YouTube mad scientist recreated the classic gag where Wile E. Coyote paints a tunnel onto a wall to fool the Road Runner.
Only this time, the test subject wasn’t a cartoon bird… it was a self-driving Tesla Model Y.
The result? A full-speed, 40 MPH impact straight into the wall. Watch the video and tell us what you think!
Maintaining a stopping distance like that is nigh impossible in a dense urban area. You’d be constantly cut off and causing tons of traffic.
Really? I do it pretty frequently without issue…
You definitely do not.
Okay, random Internet person I’ve never met, you clearly know my driving habits and how things go when I’m commuting better than me.
I know math, so let’s do some of that:
The braking distance of a typical sedan at 70mph is 210 feet. Add another 70 feet for a reaction time and you’re talking about an entire football field of following distance. And that’s assuming you drive a sedan.
There’s simply no way you can maintain that in a dense urban environment. Other drivers will cut in front of you like a waterfall. It’s nothing to do with what kind of person you are.