> the self-driving feature had “aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact”
It seems right to me that the self-driving feature aborts vehicle control as soon as it is in a situation it can’t resolve. If there’s evidence that Tesla is actively using this to “prove” that FSD is not behind a crash, I’m happy to change my mind. For me, probably 5s prior is a reasonable limit.
Also, Tesla routinely claims that "FSD was not active at the time of the crash" in such cases, and they own and control the data, so it's the driver's word against theirs. They most recently used this claim for the person who almost flew off an overpass in Houston because FSD deactivated itself 4 seconds before impact[1]. They used it unironically as an excuse why FSD is not at fault, despite the fact that FSD created the situation in the first place.
[1] https://electrek.co/2026/03/18/tesla-cybertruck-fsd-crash-vi...
> because FSD deactivated itself 4 seconds before impact
This isn't accurate. The driver deactivated FSD 4 seconds before impact. Don't get me wrong, the video looks pretty much like FSD wouldn't have been able to do anything better than the driver did, but she didn't give it a chance.
in the BEST CASE, this is a confluence of coincidences. Engineering knows about this and leaves it "low prio wont fix" because its advantageous for metrics.
In the worst case, this is intentional.
In any case, the "right thing to do" is NOT turn off the cameras just before a collision, and yet it happens.
This is also Safety Critical Engineering 101. Like.... this would be one of the first scenarios covered in the safety analysis. Someone approved this behavior, either intentionally, or through an intentional omission.
Source for autopilot being disabled “seconds before a crash” also disabling cameras? (Sorry if I missed it above.)
How is a car supposed to pre-empt when it is in a situation that is to challenging for it to navigate? Isn't it the driver who should see a situation that looks dicey for FSD and take control?
It seems to me FSD for Tesla is not ready to go into Prod as it is now.
How does a driver judge what is and is not "dicey" from the FSD's perspective?
If you don't have confidence in FSD, then you wouldn't use it in the first place. If you do have confidence, then why would you ever (or how often) would you take over?
Is there some kind of 'confidence gauge' that the FSD displays in how well it thinks it can handle the situation? If there is/was, perhaps the driver could see it dropping and prime himself to take over.
By anticipating further ahead. If it finds itself into a situation that it can't get itself out of, it means it should have made more defensive choices earlier or relinquish control earlier. And if it doesn't have either the reasoning capacity or the spatial awareness data to do that, it is not fit for general usage and should be pulled.
I agree you right in that's what you expect to happen.
The former is to be expected. The latter seems likely to potentially make an already dangerous situation worse by suddenly throwing the controls to an inattentive driver at a critical moment. It seems like it would be much safer for the autopilot to continue doing its best while sounding a loud alarm to make it clear that something dangerous is happening.
This is essentially what FSD does, today. When the system determines the driver needs to take over, it will sound an alert and display a take-over message without relinquishing control.
That's still not a good look.
And it does mean that FSD isn't to be as trusted as it is because if the car is putting itself in unresolvable situations, that's still a problem with FSD even if it isn't in direct control at the moment of impact.
For normal incidents, 2 seconds is taken as a response time to be added for corrective action to take effect (avoidance, braking). I’d expand this for FSD because it implies a lower level of engagement, so you need more time to reengage with the car.