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US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

(www.reuters.com)
410 points jjulius | 13 comments | 18 Oct 24 16:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.405s | source | bottom
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bastawhiz ◴[19 Oct 24 17:33 UTC] No.41889192[source]▶
Lots of people are asking how good the self driving has to be before we tolerate it. I got a one month free trial of FSD and turned it off after two weeks. Quite simply: it's dangerous.

- It failed with a cryptic system error while driving

- It started making a left turn far too early that would have scraped the left side of the car on a sign. I had to manually intervene.

- In my opinion, the default setting accelerates way too aggressively. I'd call myself a fairly aggressive driver and it is too aggressive for my taste.

- It tried to make way too many right turns on red when it wasn't safe to. It would creep into the road, almost into the path of oncoming vehicles.

- It didn't merge left to make room for vehicles merging onto the highway. The vehicles then tried to cut in. The system should have avoided an unsafe situation like this in the first place.

- It would switch lanes to go faster on the highway, but then missed an exit on at least one occasion because it couldn't make it back into the right lane in time. Stupid.

After the system error, I lost all trust in FSD from Tesla. Until I ride in one and feel safe, I can't have any faith that this is a reasonable system. Hell, even autopilot does dumb shit on a regular basis. I'm grateful to be getting a car from another manufacturer this year.

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modeless ◴[19 Oct 24 18:17 UTC] No.41889518[source]▶
Tesla jumped the gun on the FSD free trial earlier this year. It was nowhere near good enough at the time. Most people who tried it for the first time probably share your opinion.

That said, there is a night and day difference between FSD 12.3 that you experienced earlier this year and the latest version 12.6. It will still make mistakes from time to time but the improvement is massive and obvious. More importantly, the rate of improvement in the past two months has been much faster than before.

Yesterday I spent an hour in the car over three drives and did not have to turn the steering wheel at all except for parking. That never happened on 12.3. And I don't even have 12.6 yet, this is still 12.5; others report that 12.6 is a noticeable improvement over 12.5. And version 13 is scheduled for release in the next two weeks, and the FSD team has actually hit their last few release milestones.

People are right that it is still not ready yet, but if they think it will stay that way forever they are about to be very surprised. At the current rate of improvement it will be quite good within a year and in two or three I could see it actually reaching the point where it could operate unsupervised.

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1. jvanderbot ◴[19 Oct 24 18:28 UTC] No.41889593[source]▶
I have yet to see a difference. I let it highway drive for an hour and it cut off a semi, coming within 9 to 12 inches of the bumper for no reason. I heard about that one believe me.

It got stuck in a side street trying to get to a target parking lot, shaking the wheel back and forth.

It's no better so far and this is the first day.

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2. modeless ◴[19 Oct 24 18:29 UTC] No.41889602[source]▶
You have 12.6?

As I said, it still makes mistakes and it is not ready yet. But 12.3 was much worse. It's the rate of improvement I am impressed with.

I will also note that the predicted epidemic of crashes from people abusing FSD never happened. It's been on the road for a long time now. The idea that it is "irresponsible" to deploy it in its current state seems conclusively disproven. You can argue about exactly what the rate of crashes is but it seems clear that it has been at the very least no worse than normal driving.

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3. jvanderbot ◴[19 Oct 24 18:31 UTC] No.41889623[source]▶
Hm. I thought that was the latest release but it looks like no. But there seems to be no improvements from the last trial, so maybe 12.6 is magically better.
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4. modeless ◴[19 Oct 24 18:34 UTC] No.41889648{3}[source]▶
A lot of people have been getting the free trial with 12.3 still on their cars today. Tesla has really screwed up on the free trial for sure. Nobody should be getting it unless they have 12.6 at least.
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5. jvanderbot ◴[19 Oct 24 18:46 UTC] No.41889731{4}[source]▶
I have 12.5. maybe 12.6 is better but I've heard that before.

Don't get me wrong without a concerted data team building maps a priori, this is pretty incredible. But from a pure performance standpoint it's a shaky product.

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6. KaoruAoiShiho ◴[19 Oct 24 18:53 UTC] No.41889788{5}[source]▶
The latest version is 12.5.6, I think he got confused by the .6 at the end. If you think that's bad then there isn't a better version available. However it is a dramatic improvement over 12.3, don't know how much you tested on it.
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7. modeless ◴[19 Oct 24 19:08 UTC] No.41889893{6}[source]▶
You're right, thanks. One of the biggest updates in 12.5.6 is transitioning the highway Autopilot to FSD. If he has 12.5.4 then it may still be using the old non-FSD Autopilot on highways which would explain why he hasn't noticed improvement there; there hasn't been any until 12.5.6.
8. hilux ◴[19 Oct 24 19:18 UTC] No.41889978[source]▶
> ... coming within 9 to 12 inches of the bumper for no reason. I heard about that one believe me.

Oh dear.

Glad you're okay!

9. eric_cc ◴[19 Oct 24 20:15 UTC] No.41890441[source]▶
Is it possible you have a lemon? Genuine question. I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with FSD for the last several months and many thousands of miles.
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10. ben_w ◴[19 Oct 24 20:57 UTC] No.41890737[source]▶
I've had nothing but positive experiences with ChatGPT-4o, that doesn't make people wrong to criticise either as modelling their training data too much and generalising too little when they need to use it for something where the inference domain is too far outside the training domain.
11. kelnos ◴[20 Oct 24 08:23 UTC] No.41893857[source]▶
If the incidence of problems is some relatively small number, like 5% or 10%, it's very easily possible that you've never personally seen a problem, but overall we'd still consider that the total incidence of problems is unacceptable.

Please stop presenting arguments of the form "I haven't seen problems so people who have problems must be extreme outliers". At best it's ignorant, at worst it's actively in bad faith.

12. londons_explore ◴[20 Oct 24 10:30 UTC] No.41894414[source]▶
I suspect the performance might vary widely depending on if you're on a road in california they have a lot of data on, or if its a road FSD has rarely seen before.
13. dham ◴[20 Oct 24 21:36 UTC] No.41898678[source]▶
A lot of haters mistake safety critical disengagements with "oh the car is doing something I don't like or I wouldn't do"

If you treat the car like it's a student driver or someone else driving, disengagements will go do. If you treat it like you're driving there's also something to complain about.