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Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

"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?

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> 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.

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