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Comment by hansendc | Hacker News Reader

I think the main point is to know the limitations of the technology and to deploy it appropriately. For instance, I don't rely on old-school cruise control to stop for small children, either, even though I engage it in school zones.

This isn't limited to "Tesla-tech". The same rules apply to ALL technology.

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"I think the main point is to know the limitations of the technology and to deploy it appropriately"

Where does Tesla provide a list of such limitations for it's customers, I am sure it would be extensively documented given that lives are at stake ?

Or should I find out those limitations myself, potentially killing a few children in the process?

> Where does Tesla provide a list of such limitations for it's customers,

One specific place is first sentence of the FSD Beta welcome email:

"Full Self-Driving is in limited early access Beta and must be used with additional caution. It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention to the road. Do not become complacent."

That's been my experience with it. Right now, the beta doesn't reduce my workload, it increases it. When I want to "just drive", I turn the beta off.

That said, Tesla can and should do more. They need to better frame the capabilities of the system, staring with the silly marketing names.

> It may do the wrong thing at the worst time.

So, basically, I need to somehow predict that FSD will do the wrong thing and react myself, _before_ the worst time, because the worst time is when it's already too late.

Or, in other words, whereas any other car manufacturer has fallbacks for when the driver is not doing what they're supposed to, Tesla treats the driver as the fallback instead. I just don't understand what is this magic that is supposed to allow the driver to predict incorrect AI behavior.

> So, basically, I need to somehow predict that FSD will do the wrong thing and react myself, _before_ the worst time, because the worst time is when it's already too late.

Don't confuse prediction and anticipation. Prediction requires that you know what's going to happen. Anticipation is getting ready for something that might happen. Anticipation is a normal part of defensive driving every day, not prediction.

Let's go back to defensive driving 101: defensive driving allows mistakes to be made. It allows bad things to occur and still recover from them safely. Bad things happen because of mistakes are made by humans in the car, humans outside of the car and also by the computer in the car. The change here is that you the computer is being given much more latitude to make mistakes. It does NOT grant the computer the ability to remove defensive margins from driving.

If you drive (regardless of FSD) with no defensive driving margins, you immediately enter "too late" territory whenever a mistake is made.

Definitely, and that's exactly why I claim this is not even close to FSD, and why I absolutely do not want this in my car.

If I have to be on the wheel and ready to react at any point in time, then I'd rather be the one driving and that's it.

I think regular "old" adaptive cruise control and lane assist are vastly superior to this. I am on the wheel and in charge for 99.9% of the time, as I should be regardless of FSD, and the technology saves me in the 0.1% when I am not.

FSD will never be FSD without a complete redesign of infrastructure, which will not happen in our lifetime.

What does FSD really give you, then? It doesn't reduce the mental toll of staying alert and anticipating the road. It's probably only safe to use on the highway. On the highway, it provides the same automated acceleration/braking you could get from radar-assisted cruise control you can find on any modern car. Like cruise control, it's probably a good idea not to rely on it to avoid large stationary obstacles like a turning freight truck. It does purport to control the steering wheel too, but you can't really trust it not to steer into highway medians either.

They should just rename it to something boring like "camera-assisted cruise control" and remove the beta label so everyone can use it.

That is what Tesla Autopilot is.

FSD is aiming for something a bit higher.

That's really a legal disclaimer, a list of limitations has to be sspesific to be usefull: don't use beyong X temperature range, beyong X speed, below X visibility,etc.

Find them yourself by RTFM maybe?

Tesla puts all the info you need in the owners manual, just like every other manufacturer with automated systems on their cars.

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-8EA7EF1...

There are dozens of warnings throughout the manual explaining limitations and cautions around using the systems.

Every other car I've owned with the same or similar systems has the same warnings littered throughout the manual.

> I think the main point is to know the limitations of the technology and to deploy it appropriately.

Such as, for example, by not calling it "autopilot" or "full self driving"?

It may work somewhat like airplane autopilot, but the environments are not comparable. A plane has nothing to hit but terrain which is easily identified and almost all other obstacles in the air are transmitting their position.

It's entirely deceptive.

In addition, pilots are required to have thousands of hours of training for that specific model airplane. I'm sure the limitations of autopilot come up.

Meanwhile, in most US states, an adult can walk into a DMV, demonstrate the ability to turn on the vehicle and do a 3-point/k turn, and walk out with a license.

And at least in one state, all a kid needs is their parent to tell the DMV they can drive

[0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32329549/georgia-no-drive...

That's not that bad, Belgium used to have no driving licenses for normal cars (everyone could drive) and the accident figures were similar to neighbour countries.

I'll give you FSD, but autopilot makes sense to me as someone familiar with aviation.

How about "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself."

Tesla Marketing: 2016

> Tesla Marketing: 2016

For reference, this same marketing video is still up on Tesla's site[1].

[1] https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware...

A small misunderstanding - "legal reasons" are that it is the person in the driver's seat who is legally liable for damage done while the car was driving itself, not Tesla.

Sounds like trash, but then that's not relevant to what I said.

The important thing here is that for over half-a-decade, Tesla has been lying to its customers about its capabilities.

When in actuality, Tesla will reliably crash into pedestrians and stationary firetrucks. To the point where people at other companies are confident to make live-demos of this at electronic shows.

---------

Calling it "autopilot" or "fsd" isn't the problem. The problem is that Tesla actively lies about its capabilities to the public and its customers. It doesn't matter "how" they lie or exactly what weasel words they use. The issue is that they're liars.

We can tell them to change their name or change their marketing strategy. But as long as they're liars, they'll just find a new set of weasel words to continue their lies.

Does autopilot make sense? Aviation autopilot seems to be many orders of magnitude more reliable than Tesla's autopilot.

In fact, autopilot in aviation contexts is regularly used when human pilots are worse, such as landing at airports that regularly experience fog & low visibility conditions. As in, autopilot is the fallback for humans, not the other way around.

Heck, aviation autopilot is now available for use in emergency landings ( https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/garmin-autoland-wins-202... ).

Compared to Tesla autopilot, these are seemingly two vastly unrelated situations.

Surely autopilot is an easier problem to solve compared to self-driving cars? Air traffic is controlled, road traffic is chaotic. Aerial vehicles move through what's essentially empty space with pretty much no obstacles, cars must navigate imperfect always changing urban mazes full of people whose actions are unpredictable.

And there is land infrastructure in place for autolanding, aiming localization etc.. Much different from roads.

Is the average purchaser of autopilot familiar with aviation and the technical capabilities of an autopilot in that context?

I’m not familiar with aviation and the only reason I’m aware that airplane autopilot is actually not a self-flying system is because of Tesla and their weasel excuses for their reckless marketing.

Does it? What’s the expected response time on disengagement for a plane?

FSD? Friendship drive?

People intuitively understand the capabilities of cruise control. Can the same be said if FSD?

Given the crashes with cruise control in bad weather, I think the level of understanding is likely fairly similar.

I am not seeing the relation between cruise control and crashes in bad weather?

If I bought something that says it can drive itself, then I expect I do not need to pay attention to the road because it can drive itself. Just like if my friend can drive themselves and I am a passenger, I can trust them to handle paying attention to the road.

To go out of your way and call something "full" self driving only indicates that I should have zero qualms about trusting that I do not need to pay attention to the road.

I'm guessing the 'bad weather' comment is referring to the common belief[1], possibly exaggerated[2], that cruise control can be dangerous and cause crashes when the road is slippery. Not sure what's changed with newer traction control systems. I'd have to believe this has gotten even less likely but I don't know; my cars are too old to even have ABS.

One of the anecdotes in the Jalopnik article mentions that the vehicle is a Town Car, which is significant because those are rear wheel drive and handle very differently from most cars on the road in slick conditions. I would certainly expect more issues with older RWD cars and trucks because they tend to fishtail and spin if the rear wheels are given power without traction.

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wild-when-wet/ [2] https://jalopnik.com/lets-debunk-the-idea-that-its-not-safe-...

Why would you ever engage cruise control in school zones?

I personally have a tendency to match the speed of the cars around me. IMNHO, most cars speed through school zones. I use cruise control as a tool to prevent me from accidentally matching the speed of the cars around me and breaking the school zone speed limit.

To avoid speeding. It can be hard to avoid accidentally speeding by 1-2 mph and enforcement is sometimes zero tolerance.

That's crazy, I've never seen anybody get a ticket for 1-2mph over the limit. Problems with that: cops would be wasting resources because 1-2mph over the limit isn't significantly dangerous. Also, the radar guns can't be easily calibrated to that level of accuracy.

If our local cops did this, I'd just make an online post about it so everybody knew the cops were doing it and then it would stop.

My experience (based on a few tickets and observing many cops) is that they don't really care unless you're about 10+ MPH over the limit and also doing unsafe things. That's not to say they don't snag people just driving 5MPH over the limit, but it's not a core activity unless the department is using tickets as a revenue source or trying to make some sort of weird point.

I was in a drivers education class (I’d rear ended someone, and was trying to keep points off my license), and we went around the room explaining what law we broke to wind up in the class. One attendee was there for 1 MPH over in a school zone. Was it probably racial profiling? Probably. But I now stick to exactly 0 MPH over in school zones, and have routinely seen police monitoring speed while dropping my kids off at school. There appears to be zero tolerance even for the most politically connected soccer mom.

Acknowledged. If I received such a ticket I would sign the form the officer gave me and then immediately protest (appeal) the ticket and go to court. In particular, giving a ticket for 1mph over the limit doesn't make sense because the marginal danger (IE, how much more dangerous it is) to drive 1 mph over the limit is tiny, it's 10-15 mph that is dangerous. The police actually have to make a case justifying the value of spending the time of stopping you.

I just looked into the details. In my state, CA, 1-15mph over the limit is specially treated, with one point that eventually gets cleared.

I'm amused because (as I mentioned) I live in a school zone and I just drove home at about 5mph, because the streets were so croweded that anything faster would have been impossible. A cop could not have parked in any location near my house because every spot was taken, and all sightlines were blocked by SUVs or buses.

> it's not a core activity unless the department is using tickets as a revenue source or trying to make some sort of weird point.

Or the officer is racist. I know we’re veering into very off topic discussion here but your experience and resulting list does miss a key component for an experience often described as “driving while black”. 1mph over the speed limit would absolutely see you get pulled over.

> If our local cops did this, I'd just make an online post about it so everybody knew the cops were doing it and then it would stop.

Either you have a very unusual constabulary, or this is wildly optimistic.

The local police were running a traffic light camera scam. Once it was made public, it was immediately stopped. https://padailypost.com/2019/07/12/city-ends-red-light-camer...

That’s a situation where the cameras were wrong and a court would have likely forced a change.

The scenario under discussion is a case where the police are within their rights. A simple blog post would never force any change in most municipalities, much less immediately.

I forgot to mention that cars don't really have high accuracy speedometers; they could be 10% off which could easily cause a conscientious driver to speed. What's the point of giving somebody a ticket for driving 26mph when their speedometer says 24? That's, like, just silly.

I’m not disagreeing with the premise that the police are being overzealous. I just find it hard to imagine a world where someone complaining about it online is guaranteed to result in changes.

In some locations the speed enforcement is autonomous.

>My experience...

Will of course be much different from someone who lives in a different locale or is a different ethnicity and/or social class than you.

>If our local cops did this, I'd just make an online post about it so everybody knew the cops were doing it and then it would stop.

Yeah, ok.

I've met a lot of people with inflated egos but believing you can dictate local law enforcement policy with your internet posts is on a whole nother level.

Autonomous? You mean, like a system that takes photos and sends you a bill? Yes, most such things were removed in our town after it turned out they were set wrong (sending tickets to people who didn't break the law).

Our city manager reads patch, reddit and other things for our town and occasionally engages with the community around policy. This is absolutely something where if you wrote a careful post on reddit saying "Hey, are our cops doing the right thing stopping people going 1mph near a school instead of stopping <whatever>"? There would be an argument, a few people would say 1mph is 1mph over the law, but really, the outcome would be that the ticket appeal would be approved and the cops in my town would be told not to do that.

Pointing out to somebody who says "in my experience" that others would have a different experience is pointless. I know that. If cops are giving people tickets for ethnicity (or even deadheads driving through georgia, which used to happen) that's an entirely different problem from pointless enforcement.

That is a non issue. If your speed variance is 2mph then drive 4mph under the speed limit.

With a 25mph limit and no significant traffic, that would be actively miserable.

I live on a road with two schools zones about a mile apart. I have had people pass me in the morning in the school zone! People do.not.care.

EDIT: Fixed "ppl" to "people".

This is a pet peeve of mine, but why use 'ppl' when you spell out every other word, and then spell out people in the end?

Edit: Yes, ppl bugs me and there is no rational reason why. Emphasis on 'pet peeve'.

Because typing on phones can be annoying and ppl is quicker than people. :)

Or maybe they were texting and using FSD ;)

That's not really valid in the age of Swype-style keyboards. Less effort to do one swipe than multiple taps to hit individual letters for txt type.

Also, if you text and drive I sincerely hope you hit a tree or something else solid that doesn't hurt the road traffic and pedestrians around you - alleged FSD or no, we don't have level 5 fully-autonomous cars yet and so not paying attention to the road is just as bad as drunk or drug driving.

Sure is valid. Not everyone likes the Swype style keyboards.

The FSD part was a joke. :)

Fixed it for you.

To make sure you aren't speeding?

I've never had trouble maintaining 1-2 mph under the limit. I just use less gas and look at the speedometer at times.

I agree with you. With a little bit of driving experience, you have a natural sense for what the safe speed is on a road, and that speed is almost always the speed limit, in my experience.

On a busy road with lots of pedestrians crossing, I naturally want to go much slower than I would on the same road if there were no other pedestrians or traffic. "School zones" just codify that into law - when you expect lots of kids to be crossing a road, the speed limit of the road should be lower.

The issue, for me at least, is the ambiguity. When is the school zone in effect? This creates a cognitive load. The road was clearly meant for 45 mph travel, because that is the normal speed limit. So if I let my "autopilot" brain take over, I will probably go over the 25 mph school zone limit.

It's a special case. So when I see a school zone, I unconditionally set the cruise control to be the school zone speed limit. This frees my brain from any congitive load about whether school is in session. It also guarantees that I am not influenced by the guy tailgating me.

The ability to set the speed of your car exactly, without monitoring, is really useful.

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