- Try to accelerate to 45mph in a parking lot b/c it was within 10ft of the road
- Decelerate from highway speeds suddenly to 30mph, as though it saw something it might hit (I stopped it at 30-ish and hit the gas)
- Decelerate to 50mph because of "emergency vehicles" even though there were no vehicles around (sometimes it mistakes lights that strobe b/c they are seen through median dividers as "emergency lights")
- Take up two lanes because they gradually separated and the car thinks it should stay evenly between the left and right divider line
- choose absolutely bonkers limits, like 30mph on two lane country highways.
- Stop on the highway with a big red screen and a message that says "Take control now fatal error"
- Not so much a problem any more, but when I was first getting used to it, it would beep a message at me, then scold me for looking at the message (and not the road), then ask me to do some kind of hand grip on the wheel to prove I'm paying attention, but I have to look at the message to figure out what it wants.
My wife tells me "Just keep your foot on the gas to keep up the speed and your hands on the wheel to keep it in line" and I am just left wondering what FSD is for
Hype & Marketing
Musk has been lying about FSD for a decade and the lies boosted the stock price as intended:
https://electrek.co/2024/08/24/tesla-deletes-its-blog-post-s...
It turns out lying works.
See also: https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study#v=2024:~:...
It's also interesting in the context of this argument that they exclude models older than 2018.
“I wonder” is facetious here. Of course driver behaviors are influenced by Tesla marketing and design choices, and of course Teslas being the Most Dangerous Car Brand is an indication that Teslas are inherently unsafe and have design flaws.
But Porsche doesn’t claim to be The Safest Car Brand Ever and doesn’t claim to be making cars that can be put into a mode where it Full Self Drives?
Weird ask imo.
I am now absolutely convinced that we will have full self-driving from Tesla when we have a beautiful wall all the way from the east to the west coast along both the Mexican and Canadian borders. Both will be beautiful.
At the time, 2016, I trusted their promotional video showing it driving hands-free; I'm not going to make the mistake of taking them at their word again after it was revealed to have not been as it appeared: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-faked-video-in-2016-pr...
> I am just left wondering what FSD is for
The vision and promise, or the actually demonstrated use case?
The demonstrated use case is to charge people more money for the same product.
The vision? That is exactly what Musk keeps saying: in principle, a self-driving car never gets tired or drunk, so it can be safer than the mean human even if it only operates at the level of the median human. And it wouldn't need to be limited to median human level, as the whole fleet could learn from every member, so gain experience a million times faster than any human.
But at this point, I'm sufficiently skeptical of all of this, that I think they (and everyone else) should be banned from direct observation of the entire fleet's cameras — it's a huge surveillance network operating on every public road and several private ones.
Self-driving in my opinion will require an AI that is, if not very close to, an AI capable of general intelligence.
Why?
Because in the real world to be able to drive a car as well as a human across all of the edge cases a human can you probably need something approaching general intelligence.
Humans understand that a person isn't just something with 4 limbs, but also can be that thing that looks like a white sheet with eyes by the side of the road on Oct 31st. And its these types of weird edge cases that humans instinctively understand because they have a deep world model to reason about which cannot be reasoned about by the narrow FSD AI systems we currently have.
When you think about what humans need to do when driving it's so much beyond just watching the road and turning a wheel that it seems almost absurd to imagine our current AI is anywhere near capable of handling all of the edge cases humans currently are.
And I also don't buy this argument that the goal should be to simply to reduce the total number of accidents per mile... I'd grant that it's very possible that FSD could reduce the total number of accidents per mile driven because most miles are driven in the much more narrow environment of highway driving. And here AI probably could do better job than a human on average when you factor into the equation human tiredness and distractibility. But no one is going to be comfortable with FSD occasionally plowing into a group of kids outside a school because statistically the total number of people who die in road traffic accidents is reduced on a per mile basis.
I'd be interested if anyone strongly disagrees.
Trouble is, when the company deliberately ties one hand behind its back by insisting on camera-only vision, it is never going to be perfect at not hitting stuff. Either multispectral imaging, radar, or lidar would help avoid edge cases like the Halloween costume. The camera might not even realize there's a three-dimensional object in front of it if there's snow on the ground. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I have a Y with FSD. I think that underplays it a little. Yes, they don't have LIDAR, but LIDAR is very expensive and fragile. I can understand that.
But they also removed the windscreen rain sensors in favour of using the cameras. Consequently you can be driving down the highway on a clear day, and the windscreen wipers will start. They also don't have ultrasonic distance sensors. Consequently the car won't warn you about short bollards at the corners of the car. It seems to be completely unaware of them.
Unlike LIDAR these sensors cost almost nothing, and these are high end cars. Keeping them until they have the camera version reliable would seem prudent. In fact they could have used them to improve the camera version, by say comparing what the rain sensor said to the camera output. It's seems like they've allowed an AI religion to cloud their engineering decisions.
The market for such cars would be very limited IMO.
I really don't see why not. Since those deaths must be counted too, if it still is safer with than in mind then it can't be something that happens even rarely.
Really?:
https://youtu.be/OIjp_NyAfMw?t=269
https://youtu.be/tax1THe_VO0?t=412
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pU1mpmOa6RM
https://youtu.be/pHLPu6_tIag?t=128
https://youtu.be/-NwhtNjc4N8?t=30
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OS_SiMZkc00
Even my parents and sister use FSD v13 regularly now in their Teslas.
It's come a long way from the early days when I first started testing it.
It makes me wonder how many people are using Autopilot (included as standard) instead of FSD on a newer Tesla with the new AI hardware?
It's pretty wild to be able to start from park. Tap a button, and go.
Just the other day, it managed merging onto the interstate and then immediately changing 7 lanes to the left to merge onto the next interstate exit heading north. It performed flawlessly.
Meanwhile in the Midwest, we have potholes, uneven roads, sometimes roads with different surfaces mixed together (gray concrete with black asphalt patches). Lines are often badly worn by the weather and road salt and can be quite difficult to see.
I strongly suspect with no evidence that FSD likely has more problems on roads that are in poor condition.
I say that in the most innocent, sorta joking way possible considering I curse those very roads at every turn. Maybe I have to break out of the bubble!
"Tesla Plans Robotaxis in Texas by June, in a State with No Regulations" - https://www.auto123.com/en/news/tesla-robotaxi-texas-regulat...
Except all you have to do is go try it and it becomes clear to any layperson that it's probably getting there but, and this is really crucial, it's not there yet.
I think FSD definitely has utility, but not in the hands of laypeople. There are still far too many edge cases that it just doesn't handle well, and your average person can't be trusted to stay alert and attentive while using a feature so heavily marketed as not needing either of these things.
...and that turned out to be a little optimistic, but they really are "there" now IMHO in San Francisco. I rode in one for the first time last year. Subjectively, I felt safer moving through San Francisco traffic in the self-driving car than I do when I'm driving there myself or when I'm being driven by a human in a Lyft. It was attentive, cautious, and smooth, and I got there in a reasonable time with no fuss. And crucially, I see a notable lack of stories about it making dangerous decisions, despite the total passenger miles.
Why is Waymo there now and not Tesla? I think a combination of factors, including: (a) the head start, (b) the willingness to use LIDAR and RADAR to overcome limitations, (c) the focus on self-driving (they design and operate self-driving systems; they don't manufacture electric cars), (d) the service model (easier problem to focus on a mapped region with good weather and monitor everything vs. sell a car expected to work anywhere/anytime without (as much?) telemetry), (e) frankly, caring more about safety and less about hype. Of those differences, the "head start" one is shrinking relatively speaking, but the others will likely remain significant enough that I don't expect to trust Tesla's systems any time soon.
What data? The data Tesla chooses to share with you?
It wouldn't surprise me to find out this incident had FSD disengage moments before colliding with the pole, thus continuing 100% FSD safe driving.
2) This is only the data Tesla chooses to share, at times when Tesla chooses to share it.
They could have other auditors validate the data. They could release full datasets on regular schedules. They could do a lot of things, but they don't. They give little highlights of results without explaining methodologies. They pick seemingly random timeframes. They're not open with this information in the slightest.
Serious question - what data? And who is supplying that? Tesla? And what is the emotional human equivalent for the level of confidence that we should assume is "safe"? 1% error rate? 0.5%? 0.00001%?
Still though it has quirks.
On long trips, I LOVE it. LOVE it. Being able to just tap in and relax, make phone calls, listen to an audiobook, etc is so nice. The first time I ever used it I had to leave early from the All Things Open conference in Raleigh because I was getting sick. Having it essentially drive me home for 5 hours when I wasn’t well, including stopping to charge, was a huge relief.
It’s also great in traffic jams where you’d otherwise be dealing with stop and go traffic until you get through it. Just tap in and relax til you’re on the other side.
Day to day driving, it’s a little more iffy. I’ve dealt with seemingly random slowdowns on otherwise empty roads. It feels odd especially because it’s sudden.
Early on it would have difficulty on roads without well marked lines too.
I’ve never felt like it was going to run into an object though. Usually it errs on the “too cautious” side and I just take over to get where I’m going quicker.
My 12 year old Ford Focus does that
It was this guys fault for not monitoring the car, but also Tesla's for using a double-speak name like Full Self Driving.
If FSD is a statistically significant enough risk factor for injury above Teslas that don't use it, it should be banned.
I like the level 1 to level 3 features: Lane keeping, emergency braking (when there's something there), adaptive speed control, etc. But a new minivan has all those too.
For long highway driving it does remove 99% of the things I hate, but there's 1% of the time it just annoys the hell out of me, and it tarnishes the whole experience.
Really a human + AI hybrid experience.
At what ratio of good anecdotes to bad anecdotes should we trust it? For me, the ratio has to be astonishingly high, such that if there are a few people in the discussion saying it did something suspect (much less dangerous), they're always going to be the ones I listen to. Not that I'm doubting your experience; it's just not enough to outweigh the other.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/937/