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Comment by redox99 | Hacker News Reader

> The accident in the Bay Bridge tunnel has occurred with Tesla's Full Self-Driving Beta mode active indeed, just as the driver claimed.

This is almost certainly false. This kind of highway uses Autopilot, not FSD beta. In fact in the tweet that they show that simulates that same drive you can see on the screen that it's using Autopilot, not FSD beta.

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Thats an interesting claim, that the highway would trigger use of autopilot and not FSD. How do you know that? I think Tesla, who would know for a fact the status of FSD during this accident, might want to tweet that FSD wasn't on if it wasn't. But they haven't. Also, as a human, why would you hit the breaks in the fast lane with cars approaching? This does not happen very often, especially on the incredibly crowded Bay Bridge.

I actually was there at this accident and swerved just in time to miss the cars piling up (you can see my car in both videos of the accident just getting out). It was a truly scary thing.

FSD does not support highways yet, so it automatically switches to autopilot when you enter a highway. You can tell because they use completely different UIs, visualizations, settings, etc (FSD and autopilot are fully separate software).

Tesla has been promising FSD v11 which will support highways for a very long time already, but it isn't out yet.

So you're saying that it is literally impossible to use FSD on the bay bridge? If so, why hasn't Tesla pointed this subtlety out?

Literally impossible is kind of a strong statement, but yeah people have driven there and shown that it uses Autopilot there (because it's classified as highway on the map data), which is the expected behavior as FSD does not support highways yet.

Interesting, I wonder what the behavior is when someone turns FSD on when they are already on a highway as claimed in this case, as opposed to someone who has it on before entering. Maybe that's the issue, if you turn FSD on when already on a highway, the car starts FSD, senses its on a highway then given its programming that FSD should not operate on a highway, consequently hits the brakes? Tesla knows whatever happened in fact for sure.

You can't "choose" which one[1]. It's the same button/stalk. The car chooses by itself.

This is almost 100% the driver just confusing the name or a slip of the tongue, which is understandable. He bought FSD, he probably has it enabled and uses it, and knows that on highways the UI changes. Just doesn't know that when the UI changes it's the old autopilot.

[1] Technically you can disable FSD beta, thus it will always use autopilot

Regardless of how it actually works, wouldn’t a corporation have a very strict policy of never ever allowing any talk about ongoing situations like this on sm/marketing/pr channels?

Doesn't that make it even more unsafe? Two different systems that behave in different ways, one may require more intervention than the other. Car switches between the two when it wants and the driver is supposed to know the intricate differences between the two?

FSD beta, as the name implies, is for people that want to play with the experimental version. You have to request access to the beta, and then you may or may not be granted (although since ~1 month ago basically anybody that requests it will get accepted in a few minutes).

So it's kind of expected that its users are a bit more aware of it's intricacies.

Also, even though it switches and the UI is different, I don't think it makes much of difference as a driver. Both systems are Level 2 and require constant driver supervision.

Autopilot although much simpler, is more tried and true. The delays of FSD v11 are most likely because they are having trouble achieving equal performance to Autopilot on highways.

Your whole spiel about how people have to request access to FSD doesn't seem very relevant. The feature is being sold to the general public to be used on public roads. That means it has to be safe enough to be used by the general public on public roads, "beta" sticker or not, access request process or not.

Even if you buy FSD, you have to request it be in the FSD beta feature. If you aren’t in the FSD you get some features above non FSD like parking assist and summon. Everyone gets Autopilot which is really just the combination of adaptive cruise control and lane keeping.

https://www.notateslaapp.com/tesla-reference/878/tesla-fsd-b...

Humans do stupid stuff like hit the brakes and then get out of the car on a busy highway when road raging against someone who won’t let them pass.

Your counter claim is apparently false based on the attempt at recreation in this linked video. The driver engage FSD while driving into the same section of the Bay Bridge and tunnel

https://twitter.com/TeslaOwnersEBay/status/16140836244581253...

That's the very tweet I'm referring to. Look at the screen and you'll see it's autopilot, not FSD (ignore what they say).

All these names are confusing to be honest, so it's understandable that people mix them up.

I'm assuming most people are like me and don't give a shit weather it was FSD or Autopilot or some other software. The car software was driving.

Driver is still responsible for vehicles actions.

Both “Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving” both heavily imply otherwise, even if you’re technically correct.

Which is what makes these misleadingly-marketed features so controversial…

You can’t override erratic braking can you? There isn’t much the driver can do to stop that behavior

Push the gear stalk up

Twist the steering wheel against the direction the car is turning it

Tap the brakes

These all immediately drop out of AP.

The driver also has the option of pressing down on the accelerator to make the car go faster and cancel AP’s anomalous braking.

One situation I can think of is using Navigate on Autopilot and the car thinks the exit is much further along than it is, tries to take the “exit” which is actually a concrete wall, AEB kicks in due to imminent collision.

But then why haven’t other Teslas had the same issue there?

this is the exact kind of bullshit that corporations have gotten away with for too long. As a consumer, I do not give one flying fuck what the new hip-slang for computer vision is, call it "put your life in the hands of a company run by the most burned out divorced dad person of the year".

One claim is completely different than the other one and the truth is important here.

Not really. In this scenario there's no functional difference between these two supposedly distinct products.

They are two different products with two different tech stacks.

having "self driving" in the name is probably the cause of the confusion. As far as non technical people are concerned, tesla soft ware for driving the car engaged. Whether it was one product or another is immaterial to the fact that tesla software caused the crash

>As far as non technical people are concerned

But this is hacker news so for us, here, the distinction is important.

Which is what this whole absurd subthread is about. Redox pointed out that the article attributes the issue to the wrong product and you all are saying that it doesn't matter.

Well perhaps you are not interested in the topic and it doesn't matter for you. For me it matters.

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Imagine an article about a Google Chat issue was posted on hacker news. Redox99 points out that the issue is actually in Google Meet. And then you, bob and boucher appear and you reply that it doesn't matter which one it is, both are google chat apps. Well I believe it matters a lot.

The sub thread you replied to started with the poster literally saying “as a consumer…”. It was not a discussion of the technical minutiae, but of the overall situation

Finding out which system it was using is pretty much the first step of any kind of investigation, which this is.

As a consumer you probably would want to know if this is caused by the autopilot that you are using and have been using for years, or if it's the beta FSD that you have to opt in.

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