When I cover Muddycap’s quirky chair designs, I’m usually of the opinion that they definitely need to be built out as prototypes. This one, I’m sort of on the fence. Now here’s the deal, I love the designer’s Traffic Light Bench, it’s cool, edgy, creative, and just has enough whimsy to charm everyone who sees it. Like every single Muddycap design I’ve covered on this website, it’s uniquely brilliant and captures the designer’s eccentric vision perfectly. However, it does impair the vision of another subset of characters – self-driving cars.
I vaguely remember reading a few years back that most self-driving cars today can’t tell the difference between a traffic stop light and a red balloon. Something about how they look makes their difference imperceivable to a self-driving vehicle. As unintended as that was, some people have even weaponized this blind spot in EVs to prank car companies by simply either installing their own fake lights on their yards, or even wearing shirts with graphics of traffic lights. Apparently this works when it comes to fooling cars that rely on complicated algorithms rather than common sense. Besides, if your car doesn’t have LiDAR (yes you, Tesla), telling the difference between a real traffic light and a photo of a traffic light can get a tad bit more challenging.
Designer: Muddycap
Muddycap’s Traffic Light Bench is a 3-seater, designed to look like a set of traffic lights hanging off a light pole. Each light is technically a seat, or rather, the light’s sunshade is a seat, while the light is a backrest. From afar, the bench honestly looks like a perfect replica of a traffic light. Although, for the sake of functionality, Muddycap shifted the sun-covers to the bottom, creating comfortable, curved seats in the process.
The avant-garde furniture designer has amassed nearly 300k followers on his Instagram. There’s not a single selfie, not one video. Just a series of carousel-style posts with images of creatively visualized chairs. Everyone who follows Muddycap agrees that they’re one of the most creative, talented furniture artists on the app. “You deserve a showroom,” says one commenter. To be honest, I’d love to see some of their pieces built out as real prototypes you can sit on.
However, what I’m more interested to see is the effect this particular light has on self-driving vehicles. Current autonomous cars tend to overcorrect or err on the side of caution. They’ll stop and park themselves on the side rather than disobey the law. They’ll get stuck in a feedback loop if someone pranks them with wrong road lines. You can literally trap a car simply by placing traffic cones around it.
So I wonder whether this light will have a similar ‘disarming’ effect on self-driving algorithms. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, a human will probably stop and admire this bench for what it truly is – creatively visualized roadside furniture. A car will probably stop and stare at this bench too… however, not for the same reasons.
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