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MiscIdeaMaker99 | 1 year ago

I've owned a Model 3 for years now, and FSD is scary as hell. We haven't paid for it -- and we won't -- but every time we get a free trial of it (mostly recently this past Fall), I give it a whirl, and I end up turning it off. Why? Because it does weird shit like slow down at an intersection with a green light. I don't feel like I can trust it, at all, and it makes me more anxious than just using standard auto-steer and cruise control (which still ghost breaks sometimes). I don't get why anyone uses FSD.

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jvanderbot|1 year ago

Don't even get me started. Here's a list of things my model Y regularly does:

- Try to accelerate to 45mph in a parking lot b/c it was within 10ft of the road

- Decelerate from highway speeds suddenly to 30mph, as though it saw something it might hit (I stopped it at 30-ish and hit the gas)

- Decelerate to 50mph because of "emergency vehicles" even though there were no vehicles around (sometimes it mistakes lights that strobe b/c they are seen through median dividers as "emergency lights")

- Take up two lanes because they gradually separated and the car thinks it should stay evenly between the left and right divider line

- choose absolutely bonkers limits, like 30mph on two lane country highways.

- Stop on the highway with a big red screen and a message that says "Take control now fatal error"

- Not so much a problem any more, but when I was first getting used to it, it would beep a message at me, then scold me for looking at the message (and not the road), then ask me to do some kind of hand grip on the wheel to prove I'm paying attention, but I have to look at the message to figure out what it wants.

My wife tells me "Just keep your foot on the gas to keep up the speed and your hands on the wheel to keep it in line" and I am just left wondering what FSD is for

robwwilliams|1 year ago

Drive from Memphis to Nashville in my “long range” Telsa 3 that has almost an amazing 160 mile range at 70 Mph. FSD would periodically do something crazy and then ask me why I disengaged, adding further excitement to my drive.

I am now absolutely convinced that we will have full self-driving from Tesla when we have a beautiful wall all the way from the east to the west coast along both the Mexican and Canadian borders. Both will be beautiful.

rmu09|1 year ago

My tesla model 3 on "autopilot" (just keep speed) will ghost break if it sees some cars merging into an adjacent lane. Really dangerous, nobody expects a car decelerating from 130kph down to 50 on the nearly empty Autobahn. My previous car (VW) got that right. Overall it is a nice car (with a massive and increasing brand toxicity problem), but how can one trust the "full self driving" if it can't/doesn't even keep speed in supposedly trivial cases where the driver has control?

edoceo|1 year ago

> what FSD is for

Hype & Marketing

ben_w|1 year ago

Eeesh. Yeah, I was afraid it might still be that bad after 10 years of between "this year" and "within three years".

At the time, 2016, I trusted their promotional video showing it driving hands-free; I'm not going to make the mistake of taking them at their word again after it was revealed to have not been as it appeared: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-faked-video-in-2016-pr...

> I am just left wondering what FSD is for

The vision and promise, or the actually demonstrated use case?

The demonstrated use case is to charge people more money for the same product.

The vision? That is exactly what Musk keeps saying: in principle, a self-driving car never gets tired or drunk, so it can be safer than the mean human even if it only operates at the level of the median human. And it wouldn't need to be limited to median human level, as the whole fleet could learn from every member, so gain experience a million times faster than any human.

But at this point, I'm sufficiently skeptical of all of this, that I think they (and everyone else) should be banned from direct observation of the entire fleet's cameras — it's a huge surveillance network operating on every public road and several private ones.

LeoPanthera|1 year ago

Why on earth are you using FSD in parking lots?

beretguy|1 year ago

I hope you guys got rid of your teslas. Preferably under press. They are a danger to people around you.

nprateem|1 year ago

It's for the share price. Just like it was for uber.

ipython|1 year ago

What’s amazing to me is that FSD to this day cannot recognize active school zones. Even my 6 year old Audi onboard cameras can do that. If you put FSD on and you go through a school zones, the Tesla will happily zip at full speed completely ignoring the school zone.

Gigachad|1 year ago

It's terrifying that companies are allowed to beta test buggy software out in the real world by shooting huge machines with sharp pointy corners through schools.

kypro|1 year ago

I hope this isn't too off-topic, but I'm always amazed at how many otherwise smart people hold the naive belief that FSD is remotely close because 99.9% of the time it works fine.

Self-driving in my opinion will require an AI that is, if not very close to, an AI capable of general intelligence.

Why?

Because in the real world to be able to drive a car as well as a human across all of the edge cases a human can you probably need something approaching general intelligence.

Humans understand that a person isn't just something with 4 limbs, but also can be that thing that looks like a white sheet with eyes by the side of the road on Oct 31st. And its these types of weird edge cases that humans instinctively understand because they have a deep world model to reason about which cannot be reasoned about by the narrow FSD AI systems we currently have.

When you think about what humans need to do when driving it's so much beyond just watching the road and turning a wheel that it seems almost absurd to imagine our current AI is anywhere near capable of handling all of the edge cases humans currently are.

And I also don't buy this argument that the goal should be to simply to reduce the total number of accidents per mile... I'd grant that it's very possible that FSD could reduce the total number of accidents per mile driven because most miles are driven in the much more narrow environment of highway driving. And here AI probably could do better job than a human on average when you factor into the equation human tiredness and distractibility. But no one is going to be comfortable with FSD occasionally plowing into a group of kids outside a school because statistically the total number of people who die in road traffic accidents is reduced on a per mile basis.

I'd be interested if anyone strongly disagrees.

rmu09|1 year ago

I think you can implement self driving without general AI, but it has to be really defensive, err on the cautious side, and that means it can't travel faster that 10 to 25 kph, like a bicycle basically. That car will have a "safe zone" around it, monitored with radar and/or lidar, and if anything enters just outside that "safe zone", the car stops before hitting anything.

The market for such cars would be very limited IMO.

sidibe|1 year ago

Totally agreed with the fist paragraph but after that you're ignoring the existence of Waymo today, which people generally feel comfortable in and around where they are. Elons marketing is so strong even the doubters feel like Tesla is the leader of the pack.

bmicraft|1 year ago

> But no one is going to be comfortable with FSD occasionally plowing into a group of kids outside a school because statistically the total number of people who die in road traffic accidents is reduced on a per mile basis.

I really don't see why not. Since those deaths must be counted too, if it still is safer with than in mind then it can't be something that happens even rarely.

KoolKat23|1 year ago

But when are these edge cases, are they like the edge cases when I need 4 wheel drive? Basically never and if I did need it I just wouldn't go there or would rent a car for the day or something.

CamperBob2|1 year ago

Most safety problems, including the child in a Halloween costume, can be solved by the advanced AI technique called "Don't hit anything. If it looks like you're about to hit something, slow down or stop."

Trouble is, when the company deliberately ties one hand behind its back by insisting on camera-only vision, it is never going to be perfect at not hitting stuff. Either multispectral imaging, radar, or lidar would help avoid edge cases like the Halloween costume. The camera might not even realize there's a three-dimensional object in front of it if there's snow on the ground. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

fredfoobar|1 year ago

It's so surprising to hear these issues with FSD and it makes me nervous even though I haven't encountered any problems in v13. I regularly use it back and forth between work and home and mostly rush hour with a lot of difficult merges and weird situations.

unregistereddev|1 year ago

I suspect part of the difference is what kind of roads you are on. Whenever I'm in the Bay area (or Southern CA in general), I'm amazed by the quality of the roads. The pavement is even and smooth and the lines are crisp, fresh paint that is easy to see.

Meanwhile in the Midwest, we have potholes, uneven roads, sometimes roads with different surfaces mixed together (gray concrete with black asphalt patches). Lines are often badly worn by the weather and road salt and can be quite difficult to see.

I strongly suspect with no evidence that FSD likely has more problems on roads that are in poor condition.

qubitcoder|1 year ago

I agree. I've used FSD v13 on a Model Y with hardware version 4 for a couple of months now. Checking my mileage, that's over 2,000 miles, most of which was with FSD enabled (road trips on interstates, backroads, two-lane country roads without lane markings, interstates, highways, etc.). It's been absolutely fantastic.

Even my parents and sister use FSD v13 regularly now in their Teslas.

It's come a long way from the early days when I first started testing it.

It makes me wonder how many people are using Autopilot (included as standard) instead of FSD on a newer Tesla with the new AI hardware?

It's pretty wild to be able to start from park. Tap a button, and go.

Just the other day, it managed merging onto the interstate and then immediately changing 7 lanes to the left to merge onto the next interstate exit heading north. It performed flawlessly.

shepherdjerred|1 year ago

I test drove a model 3 ~3 years ago and FSD was terrifying. I had no idea what it could or couldn’t do. IMO Hyundai (and others with similar features) have it perfect with adaptive cruise + active lane assist. I know exactly what it can do, it does 90% of the driving on long trips, and it doesn’t do so much that I’m tempted to put too much trust in it.

karlgkk|1 year ago

It's crazy, because any negative criticism of FSD will have a ton of fanboys pouring out of the walls to tell you how great it is, how great the latest update is, how your anecdotal "evidence" is not typical, etc.

Except all you have to do is go try it and it becomes clear to any layperson that it's probably getting there but, and this is really crucial, it's not there yet.

babypuncher|1 year ago

I feel like FSD has been "getting there" since before even Tesla started marketing it. I remember Google's early self driving cars and everyone thought they were only a few years away from being practical.

I think FSD definitely has utility, but not in the hands of laypeople. There are still far too many edge cases that it just doesn't handle well, and your average person can't be trusted to stay alert and attentive while using a feature so heavily marketed as not needing either of these things.

decimalenough|1 year ago

Which is why the fan boys always tell you that it's the next version that will fix all the bugs.

bdangubic|1 year ago

exactly... this is HN of course so I expect nothing less. my favorite is when I frequently (as early as couple of days ago) get comments like "go see some videos on youtube before commenting like that" :D soooo funny. the thing is absolute garbage but elon can sell garbage better than anyone that ever lived

shiftpgdn|1 year ago

I like that you've built a strawman for anyone who might disagree with you. "Oh there aren't any positive reviews they're just fanboys." You may as well write "Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong."

fredfoobar|1 year ago

I don't get it, what do you expect them to do? just reinforce your view? the data is pretty clear how many people use FSD without issues. What's equally weird is you guys preemptively smearing folks who defend FSD. I don't get it, nothing will make you guys change your mind I guess.

brightball|1 year ago

It’s a little hit or miss (pun intended). I’ve used it off and on in my model 3 for the past 2 years and the rate of improvement has been significant.

Still though it has quirks.

On long trips, I LOVE it. LOVE it. Being able to just tap in and relax, make phone calls, listen to an audiobook, etc is so nice. The first time I ever used it I had to leave early from the All Things Open conference in Raleigh because I was getting sick. Having it essentially drive me home for 5 hours when I wasn’t well, including stopping to charge, was a huge relief.

It’s also great in traffic jams where you’d otherwise be dealing with stop and go traffic until you get through it. Just tap in and relax til you’re on the other side.

Day to day driving, it’s a little more iffy. I’ve dealt with seemingly random slowdowns on otherwise empty roads. It feels odd especially because it’s sudden.

Early on it would have difficulty on roads without well marked lines too.

I’ve never felt like it was going to run into an object though. Usually it errs on the “too cautious” side and I just take over to get where I’m going quicker.

jimnotgym|1 year ago

> Being able to just tap in and relax, make phone calls, listen to an audiobook, etc is so nice.

My 12 year old Ford Focus does that

axus|1 year ago

I always slow down a little bit when speeding through intersections, just in case I need to react to someone illegally putting themselves in my path.

It was this guys fault for not monitoring the car, but also Tesla's for using a double-speak name like Full Self Driving.

If FSD is a statistically significant enough risk factor for injury above Teslas that don't use it, it should be banned.

bmicraft|1 year ago

Well, FSD it is officially in beta. Supposedly it would actually be safe once it reaches release; Which decade that might be, your guess is as good as mine.

leesec|1 year ago

I'm on AI4 v13 and havent had a safety intervention in several thousand miles. It's incredible and extremely smooth

halyconWays|1 year ago

While we're sharing anecdotes, I have FSD (13 now) on my model Y and love it. I was anxious at first and remain very guarded while using it (which you're obligated to do anyway) but it's taken away a lot of the tedium and fatigue of commuting and long highway driving. I occasionally use it door-to-door but often turn it off on certain roads, where I'll do a better job avoiding potholes, for example. It's not done anything unsafe, but it did change lanes once without signaling and I had to intervene. No one was around and the lines were hard to see, so perhaps that's why. Overall it feels like a far safer driver than a lot of people I've been in the car with.

chucknthem|1 year ago

I feel this way too. It was scary the first couple weeks, but I'm glad I gave it more of a chance. Over time you learn when to trust it and what situations it you need to take over, and then it just becomes a normal part of driving with less stress on me while my brain energy is spent looking for problems instead of keeping up with traffic or in the lane.

Really a human + AI hybrid experience.

shiftpgdn|1 year ago

I too have FSD 13 on my CT and use it for 99% of driving with no issues. I have done a number of long city to city drives (30-100+ miles) with zero interventions. The roads would be 10,000x safer if every car was using FSD, even in extreme edge cases like the original post.

jvanderbot|1 year ago

There are upsides, definitely. For slow moving traffic FSD can remove so much of the tedium of matching speed, spacing, or stop-and-go.

I like the level 1 to level 3 features: Lane keeping, emergency braking (when there's something there), adaptive speed control, etc. But a new minivan has all those too.

For long highway driving it does remove 99% of the things I hate, but there's 1% of the time it just annoys the hell out of me, and it tarnishes the whole experience.

scottlamb|1 year ago

> While we're sharing anecdotes, I have FSD (13 now) on my model Y and love it.

At what ratio of good anecdotes to bad anecdotes should we trust it? For me, the ratio has to be astonishingly high, such that if there are a few people in the discussion saying it did something suspect (much less dangerous), they're always going to be the ones I listen to. Not that I'm doubting your experience; it's just not enough to outweigh the other.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/937/