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Comment by MarkMarine | Hacker News Reader

I can’t imagine there is a way to get a refund, but if I could I would. 10k on something they won’t even let me beta test because where I live triggers incorrect forward collision warnings too frequently for my driving to be considered good enough. I was skeptical but paid up front, and I’m pretty sure I got taken

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I don’t think the “safety score” has much to do with safety. I suspect it’s a way to ensure that only the most obsessed/devoted fans will get access to the beta, since there seems to be no way to get a high enough score through normal driving in a populated area. You basically have to be willing to devote a ton of time to “gaming” your score, rather than just driving places.

Which skews your dataset. People are getting trained to operate Autopilot rather than generally drive safe.

Procrustean bed, hooooo!

Yup. The simplicity of the system, combined with the fact that the method of calculating the score is publicly available, means that it encourages drivers (in some circumstances) to drive less safely. It also doesn't include rapid acceleration or speeding despite those being pretty good predictors of purposeful unsafe driving, probably because those are part of the reason you buy a Tesla in the first place.

Beyond that, the way it is calculated makes it less of a safety score and more of a risk score; it can't distinguish between a person driving effectively in a risky environment (safe) and a person creating a risky environment (unsafe). Some portion of the testers are then people who actively avoid safe defensive driving techniques in risky environments to maintain their safety score. That type of person is the absolute last person you want testing an autonomous system.

This video is a great overview of FSD beta safety, I've linked to the section specifically about the safety score: https://youtu.be/sHyOL_vDQMQ?t=801

It’s plausible that the goal isn’t to select for safety at all — the goal could be to select for drivers for whom, for whatever reason, FSD has a chance of actually working.

> they won’t even let me beta test because where I live triggers incorrect forward collision warnings too frequently for my driving to be considered good enough

WTF. And I guess they will still compare "Autopilot" accidents with your average driver's, when they are literally combing (supervisor) drivers for their skill?

Combing drivers for their skill and their driving routes for how easy it would be for FSD to drive through.

It’s their crap tech that can’t tell an overhead bridge from a real obstacle.

Talk to a lemon law attorney. If your car doesn't do what it's supposed to do, it might be a lemon, or at least lemon adjacent enough to be handled by such an attorney. Don't fight with Tesla on Twitter.

You need to set your forward collision warnings to 'early'. The safety score ding happens at medium. If you have it set to 'late', you will get dinged and never even know it until later.

"You need" to buy a different car.

I’ve got a baby in the car, the noise of the alert wakes him up. It’s for a bridge at the top of a hill on my way home, triggers every time. It’s not valid

Sue, I guess. Seems like they would settle quickly because fighting tens of thousands of lawsuits would look bad. And, maybe anyway cost more than settling.

That's why they hired the 'hard core street fighter litigation team'…

But he promised to use them only for good, not for evil! (I may have just strained my eye-rolling muscle)

Unless Tesla owners agreed to Forced Arbitration with Tesla, when buying their vehicle.

IANAL, but I expect that the killer lawsuit will come from the estate of someone killed by a Tesla who doesn’t own a Tesla. No contract = no arbitration or much leeway for Tesla to claim that the driver should have known better.

The fact the arbitration is even a short circuit for the courts is absolutely ludicrous.

That probably will not get this unhappy customer his "FSD" fee back.

No, but a $5bn personal injury case might actually get Tesla’s attention.

I’m not at all familiar with the relevant law, but I imagine the FTC could sue to force a refund of the FSD charges.

I think for the money I’d be in small claims court against the skill of Tesla’s legal team, I’ll get washed so I don’t think it’s worth my time. Honestly, I didn’t even want full FSD. Tesla dropped the price of my car by 10k after I’d purchased but before I took delivery, they gave me this as a way to smooth it over so I didn’t just cancel my delivery, eat the 2k fee and re-order saving myself 8k. I didn’t trust Musk to deliver on his promises, but that was 2018-19. In my wildest dreams I didn’t imagine it would be 2022 and they just fired the team doing it, and I still don’t even have access to a beta test.

Common practice among corporations in small-claims court is to default, because just showing up would cost more. It is worth a try.

Rome?

Once in rome I saw a car parked, a car crashed into it for some reason, and the driver just left the car in the middle of the road, crashed into another car.

I do have a photo of that somewhere.

That’s just normal parking.

Marin, CA

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