A Tesla Model 3 in China was caught on video smashing into a fake pedestrian in an automatic braking test

A widely shared clip on Twitter appears to show a Tesla Model 3 dramatically failing an automatic braking test in China.
In the clip, originally posted to the social media site Weibo, a simulated pedestrian on a controlled path is mowed down by the car.
In the US, AAA has found major flaws with many automakers’ emergency braking software, including Tesla.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Tesla’s automatic braking apparently wasn’t enough to save a simulated pedestrian in China.

Video from social media site Weibo, posted to Twitter this month, shows a stuffed dummy on a track walking in front of a quickly accelerating Model 3. It doesn’t end well for the inanimate walker.

—Stultus (@StultusVox) September 20, 2020

Jalopnik first spotted the video. Tesla didn’t respond to questions about it.

It’s not clear who organized the event where the clip was taken, but it appears to be similar in form to tests conducted by AAA in the US in 2019.

The automobile association used 2019 model-year cars, including the Model 3, to test different manufacturers’ automatic braking technology. Like the Chinese dummy, these faked pedestrians didn’t fare well either.

Despite the increasing prevalence of these technologies, pedestrian deaths in the United States hit a 30-year high in 2019.

CEO Elon Musk, who has pushed back against criticism of Tesla’s Autopilot, said this month that a new version of the software was coming by November, including the much-anticipated launch of “full self-driving,” a feature the company has long touted.

“We had to rewrite everything, labeling software, just the entire code base, it took us quite a while,” Musk said of the forthcoming beta release. “I call it like 4D in the sense that it’s 3-dimensions plus time. It’s just taken us a while to rewrite everything. It’s amazing. Yes. It’s just — it’s clearly going to work.”