Autopilot Mistakes Moon for Orange Traffic Light


Occurred on July 22, 2021 / Granite Falls, North Carolina, USA

Info from Licensor: "I had just purchased the subscription to full self-driving through Tesla and wanted to go out and give it a try. I went to the local 4-lane Highway to try it out and noticed the car was hesitating a little bit like it was wanting to slow down where normally it would maintain my set speed perfectly if no cars are in front of me. The car would stay 1-2mph under what I set and would hesitate a little each time the yellow traffic light would pop up and it continued to pop up over and over again. I looked up and saw that the moon was dead ahead and nearly a full moon. Even though we are in North Carolina on the East coast we had been getting a thick haze from the smoke caused by the wildfires on the west coast so that made the moon a little more yellow/orange than normal. The moon was tricking the autopilot system into thinking it was a yellow flashing traffic signal."