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

(www.reuters.com)
410 points jjulius | 3 comments | 18 Oct 24 16:01 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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pbasista ◴[19 Oct 24 21:07 UTC] No.41890801[source]▶
> I'm grateful to be getting a car from another manufacturer this year.

I have no illusions about Tesla's ability to deliver an unsupervised self-driving car any time soon. However, as far as I understand, their autosteer system, in spite of all its flaws, is still the best out there.

Do you have any reason to believe that there actually is something better?

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1. bastawhiz ◴[20 Oct 24 01:06 UTC] No.41892086[source]▶
Autopilot has not been good. I have a cabin four hours from my home and I've used autopilot for long stretches on the highway. Some of the problems:

- Certain exits are not detected as such and the car violently veers right before returning to the lane. I simply can't believe they don't have telemetry to remedy this.

- Sometimes the GPS becomes miscalibrated. This makes the car think I'm taking an exit when I'm not, causing the car to abruptly reduce its speed to the speed of the ramp. It does not readjust.

- It frequently slows for "emergency lights" that don't exist.

- If traffic comes to a complete stop, the car accelerates way too hard and brakes hard when the car in front moves any substantial amount.

At this point, I'd rather have something less good than something which is an active danger. For all intents and purposes, my Tesla doesn't have reliable cruise control, period.

Beyond that, though, I simply don't have trust in Tesla software. I've encountered so many problems at this point that I can't possibly expect them to deliver a product that works reliably at any point in the future. What reason do I have to believe things will magically improve?

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2. absoflutely ◴[20 Oct 24 01:34 UTC] No.41892206[source]▶
I'll add that it randomly brakes hard on the interstate because it thinks the speed limit drops to 45. There aren't speed limit signs anywhere nearby on different roads that it could be mistakenly reading either.
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3. bastawhiz ◴[20 Oct 24 03:07 UTC] No.41892575[source]▶
I noticed that this happens when the triangle on the map is slightly offset from the road, which I've attributed to miscalibrated GPS. It happens consistently when I'm in the right lane and pass an exit when the triangle is ever so slightly misaligned.