In the spirit of the You Make The Call threads I propose this:
The GDC has defined the TUNNEL as PART of the TOWER and as such a tunnel robot may not touch the opposing team’s tunnel walls if it tries to go through during the FINALE.
The scenario is quite simple: Bluateam’s robot drives through Redateam’s tunnel with 15 seconds left in the match. Bluateam’s robot is not unusually small but rather looks to have little clearance. For this example let’s just say that from the distance observing from the side of the field it looks like less than 2” on each side and the top. Bluateam drove through the tunnel just fine and did not appear to crash into the tunnel upon entry or exit.
Now pretend to be a referee. You have no magical X-Ray superpowers like Superman. You can’t see EXACTLY what Bluateam’s robot did for the short period of time it was in the tunnel. You clearly have to make a judgment call as to whether or not to asses a penalty.
Do you:
A) Adopt a “zero tolerance” policy and assume that no driver is that good especially since it is down field and the driver can’t see all that well. If a robot tries to go through the opposing tunnel you are just going to have to assume it hit the wall and asses a penalty everytime.
Or
B) Adopt a “innocent until proven guilty” policy and assume that since you couldn’t actually see the contact inside the tunnel then you have no option other than to give Bluateam the benefit of the doubt and not asses a penalty.
Now let’s complicate the issue. According to <G13> Redateam can’t go crashing into Bluateam causing Bluateam to contact the wall and incur a penalty. If you were a referee watching this scenario how do you determine if Bluateam would have made it safely through without touching the walls if Redateam hadn’t crashed into Bluateam as they were entering or exiting the tunnel?