Tesla Autopilot Trainers Were Told To Ignore ‘No Turn On Red’ Signs: Report

The automaker reportedly wanted its driver assistance system to “drive like a human, not a robot that’s just following the rules.”

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Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Sep 13, 2024 at 3:48am ET

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A Business Insider report claims Tesla workers who label Autopilot videos were told to ignore specific road signs.
Signs banning U-turns and right turns on red lights were allegedly being ignored to make the car drive more like a human.

Tesla has allegedly told some of its employees working at a data annotation center that the Autopilot driver assistance system should ignore road signs banning U-turns and right turns on red lights, according to a report from Business Insider.

The report is based on interviews with 17 current and former Tesla employees who were tasked with labeling video clips gathered from customers’ cars to make Autopilot drive smoother and be less prone to making mistakes.

"I think the idea is we want to train it to drive like a human would, not a robot that's just following the rules," a former worker told Business Insider, referring to the company’s intention to train the system to ignore certain road signs. It goes without saying that this type of behavior from the car when Autopilot is enabled could lead to accidents, even though the system has safety nets in place, such as yielding to oncoming traffic and stopping completely if an obstacle is detected.

Back in July, Business Insider reported that workers who were tasked with labeling Autopilot videos were told to prioritize fixing flaws experienced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, as well as people who post videos of their vehicles navigating traffic hands-free on social media.

The people who were interviewed said that their workplace is constantly monitored by surveillance cameras and software installed on their computers that track their speed and keystrokes, Business Insider wrote. Some workers were reportedly told that they could be fired if they fell short by even five minutes of the minimum work time of five to seven hours, depending on the role.

Tesla's Autopilot advanced driver assistance system comes as standard and includes traffic-aware cruise control, automatic lane changes and automatic steering that follows the road ahead.

"You could spend eight hours a day for months on end just labeling lane lines and curbs across thousands of videos," one former employee said.

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Last year, a California resident sued Tesla in a prospective class action lawsuit after Reuters had unveiled that groups of the carmaker’s employees allegedly privately shared highly invasive videos and photos recorded by customers’ cars between 2019 and 2022. One of those clips involved a young boy on a bicycle getting hit by a Tesla.

After Reuters’ report, Tesla restricted access to clips outside of workers’ designated projects and added watermarks to some of the images to more easily track down which employees were sharing the videos and photos, several workers told BI.