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Comment by simondotau | Hacker News Reader

The article is hysterical clickbait nonsense and loaded with some very basic misunderstandings—seemingly including a fundamental confusion about what "beta" means. Even the headline is flat out false, because the FSD beta software contains numerous "safeguards".

Tesla has deployed this beta software to just 1000 customers who have demonstrated competence and level-headedness. The drivers are required to keep their hands on the wheel, the same as with the adaptive cruise / lane centering features available on many new cars.

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Yes, and Tesla also made sure that all the other road users around those 1000 beta testers opted in to being part of a development project. So all good.

I've lived in Paris for 15+ years, where many drivers are worst than FSD. I've watched hours of beta on Youtube. I never opted in, either.

Many human drivers don't care about cyclists safety: they overtake at high speed, sometimes within centimeters, and occasionally force us to change course or hit us (and don't stop to help unless we don't get up).

Yet, we don't make such drivers take an exam to check their skills/behavior because they passed one many years ago.

I'd like to know how many accidents have happened with FSD before we slow down self-driving (instead of the opinion of consumer groups who've always sided against this technology). Otherwise, we should put dangerous drivers out of the road _now_. We rarely do, even after they hit pedestrians or cyclists while texting, so I prefer we focus on improving driver assist systems and focus on actual accidents (instead of Tesla brushing against bushes).

You should have a camera and report those drivers to police.

I did! Multiple times, including one where I was hit from behind at high speed, injured, the driver stopped and left without helping. I file a claim ("contre X") at the police station and gave them the license plate (which they also heard when I called 911 right after it happened).

This went nowhere, because the police was overwhelmed (that was during the gilets jaunes movement, and the police was busy going after people for destruction of public properties... priority, priority...)

You drive around every day on roads with learners, unroadworthy vehicles with bald tyres, and the occasional angry psycho driving a stolen car. You didn't opt into any of that either.

Not exactly a good argument for Tesla. All of those ought to be illegal too, perhaps with the exception of learners out of necessity.

That wasn't an argument defending Tesla or an argument for what ought to be illegal. It was merely an argument against the silly notion that other drivers on the road didn't "opt in" to this. Of course they didn't "opt in"—because that's not how roads work. You share the road with a huge variety of different vehicles, being controlled in a huge variety of different ways. There's no "opt in" for any of it.

If you watch the video, it doesn't appear to contain safeguards against driving into oncoming traffic and parked cars.

Neither does every other car on the market.

For several years now, in the EU at least, all new cars need to have automatic emergency breaks. It's basically impossible to run into something, run someone over, etc. This kind of system reduces stress and gives at least me a certain peace of mind. In this regard Tesla self driving is a step backwards.

You seem to be confused about what AEB is and what it does. It is generally effective at braking for static or rapidly slowing vehicles ahead. Most AEB systems are not effective "safeguards against driving into oncoming traffic and parked cars". These would involve a steering intervention, not a braking intervention.

I assume AEB ignores a lot of stuff on purpose, otherwise it'd be braking due to things on the side of the road, and cars in the other lane on a curve that are heading straight towards you

Correct. Most AEB systems use a forward facing radar, which often receive spurious reflections from various street elements overhead bridges, overhead signage and manhole covers. As a result, most radar-based implementations will actively ignore completely stationary objects while driving at high speed.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-featu... has some more info, they will stop for things stopped in front of them, but only at city speeds, I assume because randomly braking at 60mph is bad

That is a good article which summarises the state of AEB and its general capability. It's worth noting that the most effective system they tested doesn't use radar at all, it was an entirely vision-based system: Subaru Eyesight. Worth remembering this when people agonise over Tesla ditching radar sensors on the Model 3.

I chose my parents' most recent new car precisely because of this—a 2019 model year Subaru Forester. Not only was the active safety top notch, its chassis tuning means that it's more capable of remaining composed after swerving to avoid an obstacle. (It was also one of the few vehicles which ticked every box for them.)

Here is the comparison I relied upon for that decision. (Yes, I am Australian.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs7PSpIMJYk

eyesight has stereoscopic vision, so can compute actual distances from obstacles from the input feed instead of faking it all with machine learning.

Well,the rest have radar, so that's not a problem.

"Stereoscopic vision works most effectively for distances up to 18 feet. Beyond this distance, your brain starts using relative size and motion to determine depth."

What has brain performance anything to do with the discussion at hand? Eyesight eyes are further apart than humans anyway.

That humans use size to determine distance when driving

If you're interested, Tesla's head of AI recently did a public presentation of their new vision based depth system. It's worth a watch if you find this stuff interesting and enjoy learning about the forefront of technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6bOwQdCJrc

A key takeaway is that they've been running this stack in shadow mode (validating output but not controlling the car) on everyone's Tesla for quite some time. Equivalent to 1000 YEARS worth of real world driving. And from this data they've proven it is now superior to radar in all circumstances.

being very suspicious about that talk, the output they show doesn't matches at all with the output people have extracted from running teslas - https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1412597377228226562 - specifically the 'trained' heath signature running horizontally across the dash.

It’s not going to match because it’s different data from a different ML model visualised in a different way. Weird that you’d expect it to.

Wait, yes they do. Every other car has a driver who, presumably, does not want to randomly veer off into concrete pillars or oncoming traffic like FSD seems to do with an alarming frequency. Humans are imperfect and make mistakes when distracted or driving illegally (under the influence of alcohol or drugs or without a license or with poor eyesight...) but the argument that a Tesla operating under FSD is just as safe as this most dangerous class of drivers is an extremely unconvincing one.

There are human drivers in Tesla vehicles too. And FSD beta isn’t doing anything fundamentally different than any other “regular” car with adaptive cruise and lane centring—it is steering, braking and accelerating based on conditions reported by sensors. The only difference is that the FSD beta is capable of doing this task in a wider variety of scenarios.

Why call it fsd when it can’t do fsd? Also if I need to watch my car driving, then why should I pay $199 a month for it rather than drive the car myself, or call an Uber.

Too many Tesla apologists around.

I'm not defending the FSD name. Personally I think the name is stupid.

I'm not defending the price. Personally I wouldn't pay for it.

For the record, I don't own a Tesla vehicle. I don't know anyone who owns a Tesla vehicle. I don't own TSLA stock (or any other individual stock or derivatives). I've never driven a Tesla vehicle or even sat inside any Tesla vehicle.

When does it cross the line from "bad naming" to "fraud"? If I call my product a "life jacket" and you wear it while out on the water but all it does is make you sink faster it's not just a bad name.

So long as Tesla correctly explains what FSD does to its paying customers, then it is not fraud. It is inconceivable that anyone could go through the Tesla buying process and check the box for "FSD" without reading the clear description of what the feature actually is. This isn't like installing iTunes, it adds $8k to the purchase price of the car and it's not optioned by default.

It's true that some people who haven't purchased a Tesla vehicle might be misinformed about FSD. But it's not fraud if they aren't customers.

I don't like the FSD name and I think Tesla should change it. But I can see how people can come to different conclusions about it. The word "full" can mean very different things depending on how you think about the word and the context of its use. The two extremes:

MAXIMALLY NARROW — "Full" self driving means the car can reliably control the vehicle perfectly in all circumstances, on all road surfaces, at all times, in all conditions. This is something that most HUMANS are incapable of, by the way. So under this definition, most humans aren't "full" drivers either.

MAXIMALLY BROAD — "Full" self driving can perform the "full" set of driving tasks, imperfectly, in certain circumstances, on some road types, only at some times, only in some conditions. Doesn't even mean it can drive in these limited situations well, only that it can drive them.

Most people would agree that a realistic definition fits somewhere between those extremes. But there's no question that FSD satisfies the maximally broad definition.

They call it “potentially FSD” in Germany because they got sued for false advertising by the consumer protection agency and they lost.

They call it FSD in the US because nobody has won a lawsuit against them yet. Doesn’t the US have customer protection agencies ?

>Tesla has deployed this beta software to just 1000 customers

Source? As far as I know, thousands of Tesla employees are in the beta but only dozens of non-Employees have been enrolled to the program and had one on one conversations with Tesla employees.

I've seen plenty of videos already with users taking their hands completely off the wheel?

FSD or Enhanced Autopilot?

FSD videos -- hands off, car does something dumb and they grab the wheel.

In every car on the road, it is possible for the driver to take their hands completely off the wheel. The only variable between cars is how long until there are consequences. In most cars, the consequences would be somewhere between immediate and imminent.

In the case of any vehicle with adaptive cruise control and lane centring features, this could be anywhere from many seconds to many minutes.

In the case of a Tesla with Autopilot engaged, no hands on the steering wheel for 30 seconds will—if there haven't been any consequences prior—result in the car turning on the hazards, slow down and then stop.

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