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Comment by jfoster | Hacker News Reader

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jfoster·

1. A driver who drove off after an accident claims they were using Autopilot at the time.

2. The road photographed in the article isn't a highway, and so I'm not sure it would be accepted by regular Autopilot.

3. Whilst FSD might accept that road, FSD isn't available in Australia.

I think the driver's claim that Autopilot was in use needs to be questioned.

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Autopilot operates on normal roads. It’s essentially lane following and dynamic cruise control.

Melbourne doesn't generally have what Autopilot would consider "normal" roads, though. The incident involved someone getting off a tram, so the road would have looked something like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_East,_Victoria#/medi...

In the future, perhaps Teslas will handle this well, but you only need to watch a few videos of them encountering similar markings on YouTube to know that this type of road currently results in massive confusion for a Tesla.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbSDsbDQjSU

Elon just posted even FSD beta doesn’t handle streetcars (trams?) in Canada very well. So it’s probably a big gap in their training set… I guess SF trolleys are quite different or mapped or something.

Yeah, it probably views them as a big truck or something. In any case, I would be really surprised if regular (non-FSD) Autopilot would be happy with the markings on a Melbourne street that has tram lines.

It’s hit and miss for sure. Sometimes it sees the track as the line, or the centre line or the yellow line. The car basically starts steering erratically as it adjusts to what it thinks is the centre.

No excuse to be using autopilot passed a stopped tram… As a normal driver you’d never full speed passed a stopped tram even if it’s doors were closed, as it doesn’t take long for them to open.

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