Comment by maxcan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxcan | Hacker News Reader

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This is relatively consistent with my experience using the FSD Beta in and around Miami with one major caveat.

With two exceptions, all of my disengagements have been "quality of life" disengagements where I disengaged for reasons other than safety:

* to take a different route or get in the correct lane * to be polite / courteous to a pedestrian who wasn't yet in the crosswalk * to move more quickly through a construction zone or other traffic irregularity.

In none of those cases did I believe that the car was going to cause any risk of an accident, at best there was risk of pissing someone off (which, to be fair, in a city like Miami with far more firearms than judgement could be fatal, but not due to car at all). So yes, these are disengagements, but they weren't dangerous.

There is one case where I do get dangerous disengagements. At the intersection pictured below, when I'm in the position of the white van, sometimes tesla will mistake a green on the far traffic light (which is for the other road, intersecting at a sharp angle) for my road and proceed if it is green even though it is red. Happened twice, haven't noticed on the last version yet. Intersection here: https://www.google.com/maps/@25.750348,-80.2061284,3a,75y,26...

The original data source of all this breaks this out into "Critical Disengagements" (CDE) and Non-Critical.

  * Critical: Safety Issue (Avoid accident, taking red light, unsafe action)
  * Non-Critical: Non-Safety Issue (Wrong lane, driver courtesy, merge issue)

That both Fred from Electrek and Taylor from Snow Bull ignore this distinction shows me their intent is less than neutral.

Looking at the original data sources [1], FSD seems to be improving over time at the metric that matters most:

  * City miles per CDE have gone from ~50 to ~120. 
  * % of drives over 5 miles with no CDE have gone from 72% to 93%.

I've been pleasantly surprised that human oversight while the software improves seems to be a viable approach. FSD doesn't appear particularly close to Waymo/Cruise at the moment, but it's not as if they are crashing left and right (you'd certainly hear about it if they were).

Personally I have it, I don't find it enjoyable to use -- but I also don't feel unsafe when using it. Highway autopilot on the other hand I find immensely reliable and valuable.

[1] https://www.teslafsdtracker.com/ https://twitter.com/eliasmrtnz1

It's sort of meta to this whole discussion, but it has been interesting to see "journalists" like Fred Lambert and the evolution of their coverage.

Fred was an early Tesla fanboy and investor; he used to gush over Tesla and Elon Musk in his writing at Electrek. It seemed like most of the time when Tesla was mentioned in an article, he also mentioned TSLA, the stock ticker...but he didn't seem to do that as regularly for say, Ford or GM.

It was rumored that Fred had a direct line to Elon and there were also occasionally public Twitter interactions between the two, but Fred gradually become more critical of Elon, especially over FSD stuff. After one critical article, Elon blocked Fred on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fredericlambert/status/14176561698297487...

Fred certainly hasn't forgotten about it: https://twitter.com/FredericLambert/status/15186308301381795...

So, Tesla fanboy/blogger comes up with some valid criticism, Elon cuts him off, which in turn probably makes him more critical of Tesla/Elon.

Can you speak a little more about your experiences in Miami? I'm reading this thread and the comments are abstract; I wonder if it does better in specific situations.

I tend to drive on 95 north, in Brickell, Downtown, Little Havana, on the 395 and 112, Miami Beach, north Miami (up to 100th), and to the airport. If it can handle these places it seems like it's something to consider.

Highways are a dream, works fine.

For the most part it works fine in Brickell and downtown. I put a link to a street view of one tricky intersection above. It also struggles here when you're trying to go south on Miami Ave:https://www.google.com/maps/@25.7626232,-80.1929899,3a,75y,2... basically where the black car is going south it needs to follow the street in a 90deg curve to the right then immediate left at the stop sign. Sometimes it tries to just go straight there, i.e. to where the truck is.

Also, i do often need to "intervene" by pressing the accelerator since the car is a bit to passive for the typical lunatic miami drivers.

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