And the rear of a dry van truck is 8 1/2 feet wide by 13 1/2 feet high, so if it can't detect that, how is it supposed to avoid another car, let alone a pedestrian?
This case (truck perpendicular to travel path) should literally be the easiest test case for object detection, other than larger stationary objects like buildings and bridges.
I seem to recall that the last time this scenario (truck across the path of travel, although in that case it wasn't moving) led to an accident, the Tesla mistook it for a bridge.
I suspect this is going to be a perpetual problem for vehicles without lidar, but I'm not particularly clueful.
Tesla is pushing the bounds of the signal they can extract from the forward facing radar (as a result of the first Autopilot trailer accident resulting in a death).
That's interesting. I can imagine, lacking real depth information, why that would happen. Especially for specialty trailers, like the ones that pull logs or wind turbine blades... where there's a large open area under the cargo.
This case (truck perpendicular to travel path) should literally be the easiest test case for object detection, other than larger stationary objects like buildings and bridges.