Tesla's self-driving tech's 'failure' to detect kids on road sparks row

After a road test on Tesla's self-driving technology found that its Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology allegedly failed to detect children in the road, reports now surface that the test was a "smear campaign started by a California billionaire running for Senate" as the driver "never engaged FSD Beta" during the road test.

According to a safety test conducted by the Dawn Project, owned by Dan O'Dowd who is a self-described billionaire and founder of Green Hills Software, the latest version of Tesla FSD Beta software repeatedly hit a stationary, child-sized mannequin in its path.

The Guardian reported that a professional test driver found that the FSD software "failed to detect the child-sized figure at an average speed of 25mph and the car then hit the mannequin".

Now, Electrek reports that there was a real problem with the test, amid the world of war over social media platforms over the FSD and its alleged failure to detect kids on the road.

"They never activated Tesla's FSD Beta in the test. The vehicle does appear to be equipped with FSD Beta, or at least FSD Beta visualisation, but it clearly wasn't activated in the test video," the report mentioned late on Wednesday.

The video titled "The Dangers of Tesla's Full Self-Driving Softwarea was released by the Dawn Project.

Musk said on Thursday: "The Guardian swallows scam video hook, line and sinker!"

According to the report, under the protection of political ads, O'Dowd invested several million dollars in "an ad campaign to attack Tesla's Full Self-Driving Beta programme with the goal of having it banned from public roads in the US".

The Dawn Project later released additional footage that doesn't appear in its ad.

"However, the footage is inconsistent with the results published about the test and in the ad," the report noted.

Meanwhile, former US presidential candidate Ralph Nader has called Tesla's FSD technology as one of the "most dangerous and irresponsible actions" by a car company in decades.