It's not. Driving is whatever has ultimate responsibility for the vehicle and its occupants. If a cop pulls you over while FSD is enabled, it's not Tesla who's paying the ticket. If FSD has an issue, you're the driver who has to respond.
Think of FSD as a very nice cruise control. You're still driving, even if you aren't touching the wheel.
I don't see why self driving couldn't just be steering and pedals. It would be pretty limiting but it would be able to drive itself in a circle at least.
Here Tesla makes it clear to people who turn on “Full self driving” the driver must maintain supervision and thus responsibility. As such it’s Tesla’s choice that they aren’t selling self driving cars.
It wouldn’t be such a big deal if some random engineer said they’d eventually do X, but when it’s the CEO repeatedly saying the same across many public appearances that’s as binding as a Super Bowl advertisement.
Let me state it a little more clearly: the driver is the component in the vehicle system design that's ultimately responsible for ensuring the safety invariants are maintained. In a normal car, that's clearly the human in the driver's seat. Less obviously, the same is true of a Tesla with FSD. If we move that human to a remote control room, they're still the driver even if they're not physically in the vehicle.
It's only when the computer itself becomes responsible for maintaining system safety that it becomes the driver. Waymo is an example. Waymo also employs people in a remote call center, but those humans aren't responsible for safety and hence aren't drivers. But a Waymo employee out on the street using their <5mph remote control mode is driving it, because they've taken on the safety role again.
Legal liability can follow from this, but it's a much more complicated classification that I don't expect to ever have a singular answer, or even a knowable answer in many cases.
Self driving cars are supposed to obey the same rules as human drivers.
A car being driven autonomously doesn't imply much about the quality of that driving. They're still going to make bad decisions and have accidents, just like humans do (a friend of mine died slamming their car into a tree). There is probably some minimum where we'd say that it isn't really driving because it can't do anything right, but modern self driving systems are past that.
Only that’s not what they’re selling us - they say autonomous cars are safer than humans, fewer accidents per mile driven, faster reaction times yadda yadda. I think this implies quality and not respecting speed limits is not something that sounds very high-quality. At least not while they have to share the road with humans.
> (a friend of mine died slamming their car into a tree)
Autonomous cars can run headlong into concrete walls and still be substantially better drivers than humans. There is no inherent contradiction there at all. They can speed and still be more law-abiding than humans too, humans get pretty casual about speed limits. I don't think you've grappled with just how bad humans are at operating rolling tin cans travelling at speeds evolution has not prepared us to move at. We're really bad at it. Autonomous cars aren't ever going to be perfect, they are merely a better alternative than humans.
"Tesla FSD is invulnerable to tricks" is a pretty strong claim.
And footnote 2 on that page says:
2 DRIVE PILOT is an SAE Level 3 (conditional automated driving) system: the automated driving function takes over certain driving tasks. However, a fallback-ready user is still required. The fallback-ready user must be ready to take control of the vehicle at all times when prompted by the vehicle. Availability and use of DRIVE PILOT on freeways depends on options, compatible wireless networks, countries, states and relevant laws. Service subject to change at any time without notice. Mercedes me connect Terms of Use apply. Please refer to the Operator's Manual for additional instructions and limitations.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39481699/what-happens-if-...
AFAICT from a public search, this is the current 'drive pilot' legal terms:
https://www.mbusa.com/en/legal-notices/drive-pilot
Section 5: "...the individual using DRIVE PILOT Subscription Services becomes the fallback-ready user". That is not full liability. Full stop. I will not use drive pilot.
Additionally:
Section 6: This is a legal arbitration clause. It's a red flag to me as I believe this is a move by the legal system to contractually operate outside of the u.s. constitution. I realize this is more a personal opinion, but, regardless, this will always be a barrier, for me, to what some in industry call "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)".
Those are cars with the "HW4" FSD hardware, which was released in Mar 2023.
There were a lot of cars sold with "HW2" (nVidia-based) and HW3 (Tesla silicon). Those cars, apparently cannot be upgraded to HW4 because of physical size differences between the units. HW2 was able to be upgraded to HW3.
Those videos you are talking about seeing do not represent the FSD experience for all, or possibly even most, Tesla FSD vehicles in the wild.
Jan 10, 2016: In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY
Jul 16, 2019: If we make all cars with FSD package self-driving, as planned, any such Tesla should be worth $100k to $200k, as utility increases from ~12 hours/week to ~60 hours/week
These aren't moving goalposts by antis, this are the expectations set by Elon Musk himself when advertising his products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
Also a school zone is one of the most basic things the car should be able to handle. If it can’t do that, it’s not ready for public use.
Humans don't always follow the law driving through school zones. And when humans speed through a school zone, the human is definitely driving the car. Are we ready to let humans drive on public roads?
The argument has to go into the magnitude of the problem to get anywhere meaningful.