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Comment by tedggh | Hacker News Reader

I got my first Tesla last year and my first trip with FSD was just after the launch of V13, so I could not compare it to earlier versions. But I was shocked by how good it was. I completed a 800 miles trip with a handful of interventions, most or all of them likely unnecessary. Even with rain the system worked well. I don’t understand how the system was not able to see this obstacle and slow down or change lanes. Did they have traffic tailgating? I can see some edge cases where there’s really no way to avoid something like this safely. In any case it’s pretty unfortunate and it will make me be even more cautious when using FSD.

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It's because anecdotal experience means very little. In ~2021, these vehicles could almost never make it from A to B without a safety-critical intervention.

That they can today doesn't mean they can do the same route 10,000 times without a safety-critical intervention. In fact, public tracking indicates Tesla's numbers are MUCH lower than that.

> Did they have traffic tailgating?

No. If you continue to watch the video after the collision, it's clear that there was no traffic tailgating. They even slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. No other cars.

I'm unsure why having traffic tailgating even factors into it. If you have to hit the brakes to avoid a collision in front of you, it's not your responsibility to deal with traffic behind you that wasn't at a safe distance; that's all on them.

It’s not like you would expect any inconvenience from being rear-ended or anything so why would you care?

The point is "If you *have* to hit the brakes to avoid a collision in front of you". Obviously if you have a tailgating idiot behind and you can avoid the collision in front without forcing them to rear-end you, then you do that; but that's not always possible, and in that case the blame is then entirely on the person who hit you from the rear, and *not* on you for rear-ending someone.

Also even if you don’t want to get rear ended. You can at least do moderate braking and hit the debris at a slower speed. Humans make these sorts of split second tradeoffs all the time on the highway.

> Obviously if you have a tailgating idiot behind and you can avoid the collision in front without forcing them to rear-end you

That kind of consideration is where having traffic tailgating factors into it. A risk of collision (or a minor collision) may be a better option than a certain (or worse) collision with the tailgating idiot.

When they first released V13, the highway stack was still the old C++ code. It wasn't until another four or five months that they switched it to a neural network. It doesn't seem like they've put much focus on it since then.

Tesla FSD still uses C++. What you're referring to is control policy code that was deleted. FSD also doesn't have a separate "highway stack" and hasn't since v12.

Even with traffic tailgating it would need to brake or go to then right. Your comment sounds like a Tesla ad written by someone from Tesla or a heavy, heavy fan boy.

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