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

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.

> 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.

This is what bugs me about ordinary autopilot. Autopilot doesn't switch lanes, but I like to slow down or speed up as needed to allow merging cars to enter my lane. Autopilot never does that, and I've had some close calls with irate mergers who expected me to work with them. And I don't think they're wrong.

Just means that when I'm cruising in the right lane with autopilot I have to take over if a car tries to merge.

While I certainly wouldn't object to how you handle merging cars (it's a nice, helpful thing to do!), I was always taught that if you want to merge into a lane, you are the sole person responsible for making that possible and making that safe. You need to get your speed and position right, and if you can't do that, you don't merge.

(That's for merging onto a highway from an entrance ramp, at least. If you're talking about a zipper merge due to a lane ending or a lane closure, sure, cooperation with other drivers is always the right thing to do.)