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The reason Tesla does not fall under this legislation seems pretty simple to me, but IANAL… The law applies to vehicles with the "capability to drive a vehicle

by zaroth 5y ago

The reason Tesla does not fall under this legislation seems pretty simple to me, but IANAL… The law applies to vehicles with the "capability to drive a vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator". Tesla FSD does not have this capability. If the driver does not consistently demonstrate that they are actively monitoring the vehicle and in physical control, then the “AutoPilot(TM)” feature deactivates. ”An autonomous test vehicle does not include vehicles equipped with one or more systems that provide driver assistance and/or enhance safety benefits but are not capable of, singularly or in combination, performing the dynamic driving task on a sustained basis without the constant control or active monitoring of a natural person.”

_jal 5y ago
I guess Tesla feels you can "actively monitor" from the back seat? Or did those people defeat some safety?
- zaroth 5y ago
  Yes they weighted the seats, slipped out from a seatbelt, and weighted the steering wheel. Newer software released in the last couple months also adds some kind of gaze tracking using the interior camera - because the car now alerts constantly if I am looking at my phone and will disengage auto-pilot and put me in the penalty box if I keep doing it. I don’t know how that tech would react if it didn’t see a human in the drivers seat at all, but I imagine ultimately that will be another safety measure. Tesla has a lot of incentive to cut down on these types of pranks. For those that don’t know, disengage keeps autopilot running but with an extremely annoying alarm and massive red warning on the display, and as soon as you take over the penalty box means you can’t re-engage “AutoPilot(TM)” until the next drive.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    There is another way to get it to stop alarming. Don't look at your phone while you're driving.
  - tmp_anon_22 5y ago
    Please don't look at your phone while actively driving.
    - zaroth 5y ago
      Thank you, I know that. I’m just explaining how I know the technology works, which is interesting and relevant in this context, not looking for driving tips. But you bring up a great point! Very interestingly, the current version of the software will alert just as much and in exactly the same way when it detects the driver looking at their phone, whether the car is at a complete stop or driving freely down the highway.
      - UncleEntity 5y ago
        > whether the car is at a complete stop or driving freely down the highway. I’ve seen the police on off ramps looking for people texting or whatever while they are stopped to give them tickets. Not that it matters in the context of TFA but in certain (most?) jurisdictions it isn’t legal at all.
      - tmp_anon_22 5y ago
        My comment was more condescending then I intended, I appreciate the additional context.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  One guy had this foot on the wheel from the back seat. Not sure how/if they defeat the face/eye detection.
  - maxdo 5y ago
    that was old tech, and it's not part of the BETA topic is about
akira2501 5y ago
So, in summary Tesla "fully self driving" does not actually have the capability to "fully self drive." It seems like the hazy marketing around this feature hasn't been a great idea.
- darknavi 5y ago
  Other than the latest, bleeding edge beta ("FSD Beta") FSD is vaporware. Autopilot on the other hand is a pretty good driver assist (lane keeping, TACC, etc.).
  - zeusk 5y ago
    From one of the previous threads on FSD > Tesla has so many versions of "FSD" or Full Self Driving because they keep shifting the post for what exactly is Full Self Driving. > What even is FSD compared to SD, where did the need to tack on "Full" come from? And I bet it's because of them calling their lane assist cruise "Autopilot" which implies self driving.
- zeusk 5y ago
  I'd say the marketing has been perfect, the haze confuses both the consumers and regulators believe whatever they want to believe.
- ajross 5y ago
  This is just a semantic argument about what "capability" and "autonomous" means. The system is obviously capable of autonomously navigating in an engineering sense, because that's what it does. The system as deployed ("FSD beta") also requires a human driver, and actively monitors for driver attention. So it is not actually operating autonomously. It seems that the spirit of the law is to disallow unregulated testing of cars that are actually operating autonomously. Cars with a human in the loop don't really seem to be what the regulations were thinking of. The letter-of-the-law argument would seem to disallow any sort of uncommanded control by the vehicle, including lane assist and 1970's cruise control. And that's not right either.
FabHK 5y ago
The article addresses that explicitly. Basically, the DMV is saying "oi, if you're testing a system that's capable of driving by itself, you have to follow certain rules"! Then you reply "No, we're still testing it, and it requires human supervision, so it's not capable of driving by itself, so the rules don't apply!" > "FSD" is aspirationally an automated driving system. The name unequivocally communicates Tesla's goal for development, and the company's "beta" qualifier communicates the stage of that development. Tesla intends for its "full self-driving" to become, well, full self-driving, and its limited beta release is a key step in that process. > Tesla's "FSD" has the "capability to drive a vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator," but it does not yet have the capability to do so safely.
- paxys 5y ago
  I think the "loophole" here is that - despite the marketing claims - Tesla is NOT testing a system which is designed to run without active monitoring by a human. This is unlike Cruise, Waymo etc. who do fall under this law.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Marketing is admissible in court as evidence of intent.
    - paxys 5y ago
      That would be the case if they didn't also have controls in place to prevent the driver from disengaging while autopilot was active.
      - bagacrap 5y ago
        are you suggesting any developer of autonomous driving systems can straight up ignore this law as long as they make sure the system requires the presence of a human?
        deleted 5y ago
jasonhansel 5y ago
I suppose it depends on what "capable" means. If you mean that a Tesla with FSD can be used to drive without human control, then that is definitely true since the tests for driver alertness can be bypassed. If you mean that a Tesla with FSD has the level of technological sophistication needed to drive autonomously, that is also true: if you bypass the checks for driver alertness, the Tesla can continue driving (albeit not safely). This is well beyond the range of most "driver assistance" technologies. If you mean that a Tesla can drive autonomously without bypassing any checks for driver alertness, then no, it cannot, but only assuming these checks never fail and are always sufficient to prevent it from being used without active monitoring. Tesla's case seems weak here, in that it relies on an extremely narrow interpretation of the law, according to which a system that can drive autonomously but tries to prevent you from doing so is not considered truly autonomous. But IANAL, so perhaps Tesla has a better case than I'd assume.
- ajross 5y ago
  > Tesla's case seems weak here, in that it relies on an extremely narrow interpretation of the law, To be clear: there is no case, nor has Tesla tried to make one. The linked article is an opinion essay by an academic in the field. The CA DMV hasn't said anything. For myself: I'd argue that we have ~23k FSD beta vehicles on US roads now that have been driving for 3-4 months and that if we're really concerned about the safety of the system (vs. getting into semantic arguments about the statute language of some random law) we should just go get the data and see. By my math that's going to be something in the tens of millions of miles now. That should be well above the noise floor.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    How are "we" going to go get the data? Tesla isn't exactly open about these things. (no, marketing numbers aren't enough)
    - ajross 5y ago
      The subject being discussed is literally the regulatory authority of the California Department of Motor Vehicles. You don't think they track accidents statistic? I mean, if someone was coming along from the DMV and saying "here's a report showing a 95% confidence of a higher than average accident rate among FSD beta vehicles" then I'd be first in line to admit that, yes, we should probably halt deployment while we figure out what's going wrong. But that's not what's happening here at all. The people with the data are silent, which tells me something that confirms my priors as a FSD beta tester: this system as deployed is safe. It is.
jdavis703 5y ago
CHP has alleged cases of drunk or sleepy drivers who disabled the dead man’s switch and were somehow in a full self-driving mode. Because people who presumably aren’t mechanics or automative engineers can enable an unsupervised self-driving mode, it seems like it might fall under this law.
- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
  CHP has even dealt with one guy who has been arrested multiple times for letting his Tesla drive itself down the interstate while he (the only occupant) was sitting in the back seat. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/05/11/backseat-driver-chp-arrests-man-in-back-of-tesla-on-suspicion-of-reckless-driving-again/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/05/11/backseat-driver-chp-a...
  - somethoughts 5y ago
    Yes perhaps to further analogy at the extreme end - it could be seen analogous to if a caffeinated-weed-vodka energy drink company claimed its caffeinated-weed-vodka enhanced your driving ability and claimed to have internal metrics suggesting it worked, marketed the heck out of their "super alert" drink and wink-wink encouraged people to test it on the road but first to go to e-sign some click through waivers on their website.
  - axiak 5y ago
    just reading this now... this person wasn't even using FSD, but was using autopilot...
- adrr 5y ago
  Put an ankle weight on the steering wheel.
ncr100 5y ago
This is how it fails: Turn the system on, keep a finger touching the steering wheel, then close your eyes. Boom.
- ajross 5y ago
  In fact no. It actively monitors driver attention with a camera. If you close your eyes or look down at your phone for more than a few seconds, the car will shriek at you, lock you out of autopilot for the drive[1], and if you don't take manual control will bring the vehicle to a stop. Recent versions have in fact been tuned to be too sensitive and people have been complaining about false positives. I do wish people would spend some time actually investigating how this system works before pontificating about it. It's not done. But it's far, far closer to done than you seem to want to believe. [1] And after three such events kick you out of the beta program entirely.
  - lolc 5y ago
    I can follow the argument on how FSD does not fall under the law because of its requirement for driver attention. I do wonder how much water that holds, but that is for another thread. What I'm curious about is what you mean by "done". You mean an autonomous Tesla that can drive without human supervision? Is Tesla close to that in your view? On what type of roads?
  - tommoor 5y ago
    Is this a recent change? There are many videos online of Tesla's "driving" with no-one in the driver seat. One tester in the bay area even had his car seized[1] [1] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/backseat-tesla-driver-unapologetic-after-arrest-for-reckless-driving/2544875/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/backseat-tesla-driver-...
    - nbutyllithium 5y ago
      It's specifically enabled for those enrolled in the full self driving beta (and only while it's enabled). As far as I know it's not yet made its way to those who just use autopilot which is what was used with that remarkably dangerous backseat stupidity. Edit: Zaroth's comment makes it sound like it's now enabled for normal autopilot use as well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29598520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29598520

by zaroth 5y ago

_jal 5y ago

I guess Tesla feels you can "actively monitor" from the back seat? Or did those people defeat some safety?

zaroth 5y ago
Yes they weighted the seats, slipped out from a seatbelt, and weighted the steering wheel. Newer software released in the last couple months also adds some kind of gaze tracking using the interior camera - because the car now alerts constantly if I am looking at my phone and will disengage auto-pilot and put me in the penalty box if I keep doing it. I don’t know how that tech would react if it didn’t see a human in the drivers seat at all, but I imagine ultimately that will be another safety measure. Tesla has a lot of incentive to cut down on these types of pranks. For those that don’t know, disengage keeps autopilot running but with an extremely annoying alarm and massive red warning on the display, and as soon as you take over the penalty box means you can’t re-engage “AutoPilot(TM)” until the next drive.
- jedberg 5y ago
  There is another way to get it to stop alarming. Don't look at your phone while you're driving.
- tmp_anon_22 5y ago
  Please don't look at your phone while actively driving.
  - zaroth 5y ago
    Thank you, I know that. I’m just explaining how I know the technology works, which is interesting and relevant in this context, not looking for driving tips. But you bring up a great point! Very interestingly, the current version of the software will alert just as much and in exactly the same way when it detects the driver looking at their phone, whether the car is at a complete stop or driving freely down the highway.
    - UncleEntity 5y ago
      > whether the car is at a complete stop or driving freely down the highway. I’ve seen the police on off ramps looking for people texting or whatever while they are stopped to give them tickets. Not that it matters in the context of TFA but in certain (most?) jurisdictions it isn’t legal at all.
    - tmp_anon_22 5y ago
      My comment was more condescending then I intended, I appreciate the additional context.
tshaddox 5y ago
One guy had this foot on the wheel from the back seat. Not sure how/if they defeat the face/eye detection.
- maxdo 5y ago
  that was old tech, and it's not part of the BETA topic is about

akira2501 5y ago

So, in summary Tesla "fully self driving" does not actually have the capability to "fully self drive." It seems like the hazy marketing around this feature hasn't been a great idea.

darknavi 5y ago
Other than the latest, bleeding edge beta ("FSD Beta") FSD is vaporware. Autopilot on the other hand is a pretty good driver assist (lane keeping, TACC, etc.).
- zeusk 5y ago
  From one of the previous threads on FSD > Tesla has so many versions of "FSD" or Full Self Driving because they keep shifting the post for what exactly is Full Self Driving. > What even is FSD compared to SD, where did the need to tack on "Full" come from? And I bet it's because of them calling their lane assist cruise "Autopilot" which implies self driving.
zeusk 5y ago
I'd say the marketing has been perfect, the haze confuses both the consumers and regulators believe whatever they want to believe.
ajross 5y ago
This is just a semantic argument about what "capability" and "autonomous" means. The system is obviously capable of autonomously navigating in an engineering sense, because that's what it does. The system as deployed ("FSD beta") also requires a human driver, and actively monitors for driver attention. So it is not actually operating autonomously. It seems that the spirit of the law is to disallow unregulated testing of cars that are actually operating autonomously. Cars with a human in the loop don't really seem to be what the regulations were thinking of. The letter-of-the-law argument would seem to disallow any sort of uncommanded control by the vehicle, including lane assist and 1970's cruise control. And that's not right either.

FabHK 5y ago

The article addresses that explicitly. Basically, the DMV is saying "oi, if you're testing a system that's capable of driving by itself, you have to follow certain rules"! Then you reply "No, we're still testing it, and it requires human supervision, so it's not capable of driving by itself, so the rules don't apply!" > "FSD" is aspirationally an automated driving system. The name unequivocally communicates Tesla's goal for development, and the company's "beta" qualifier communicates the stage of that development. Tesla intends for its "full self-driving" to become, well, full self-driving, and its limited beta release is a key step in that process. > Tesla's "FSD" has the "capability to drive a vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator," but it does not yet have the capability to do so safely.

paxys 5y ago
I think the "loophole" here is that - despite the marketing claims - Tesla is NOT testing a system which is designed to run without active monitoring by a human. This is unlike Cruise, Waymo etc. who do fall under this law.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Marketing is admissible in court as evidence of intent.
  - paxys 5y ago
    That would be the case if they didn't also have controls in place to prevent the driver from disengaging while autopilot was active.
    - bagacrap 5y ago
      are you suggesting any developer of autonomous driving systems can straight up ignore this law as long as they make sure the system requires the presence of a human?
      - deleted 5y ago

jasonhansel 5y ago

I suppose it depends on what "capable" means. If you mean that a Tesla with FSD can be used to drive without human control, then that is definitely true since the tests for driver alertness can be bypassed. If you mean that a Tesla with FSD has the level of technological sophistication needed to drive autonomously, that is also true: if you bypass the checks for driver alertness, the Tesla can continue driving (albeit not safely). This is well beyond the range of most "driver assistance" technologies. If you mean that a Tesla can drive autonomously without bypassing any checks for driver alertness, then no, it cannot, but only assuming these checks never fail and are always sufficient to prevent it from being used without active monitoring. Tesla's case seems weak here, in that it relies on an extremely narrow interpretation of the law, according to which a system that can drive autonomously but tries to prevent you from doing so is not considered truly autonomous. But IANAL, so perhaps Tesla has a better case than I'd assume.

ajross 5y ago
> Tesla's case seems weak here, in that it relies on an extremely narrow interpretation of the law, To be clear: there is no case, nor has Tesla tried to make one. The linked article is an opinion essay by an academic in the field. The CA DMV hasn't said anything. For myself: I'd argue that we have ~23k FSD beta vehicles on US roads now that have been driving for 3-4 months and that if we're really concerned about the safety of the system (vs. getting into semantic arguments about the statute language of some random law) we should just go get the data and see. By my math that's going to be something in the tens of millions of miles now. That should be well above the noise floor.
- kadoban 5y ago
  How are "we" going to go get the data? Tesla isn't exactly open about these things. (no, marketing numbers aren't enough)
  - ajross 5y ago
    The subject being discussed is literally the regulatory authority of the California Department of Motor Vehicles. You don't think they track accidents statistic? I mean, if someone was coming along from the DMV and saying "here's a report showing a 95% confidence of a higher than average accident rate among FSD beta vehicles" then I'd be first in line to admit that, yes, we should probably halt deployment while we figure out what's going wrong. But that's not what's happening here at all. The people with the data are silent, which tells me something that confirms my priors as a FSD beta tester: this system as deployed is safe. It is.

jdavis703 5y ago

CHP has alleged cases of drunk or sleepy drivers who disabled the dead man’s switch and were somehow in a full self-driving mode. Because people who presumably aren’t mechanics or automative engineers can enable an unsupervised self-driving mode, it seems like it might fall under this law.

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
CHP has even dealt with one guy who has been arrested multiple times for letting his Tesla drive itself down the interstate while he (the only occupant) was sitting in the back seat. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/05/11/backseat-driver-chp-arrests-man-in-back-of-tesla-on-suspicion-of-reckless-driving-again/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/05/11/backseat-driver-chp-a...
- somethoughts 5y ago
  Yes perhaps to further analogy at the extreme end - it could be seen analogous to if a caffeinated-weed-vodka energy drink company claimed its caffeinated-weed-vodka enhanced your driving ability and claimed to have internal metrics suggesting it worked, marketed the heck out of their "super alert" drink and wink-wink encouraged people to test it on the road but first to go to e-sign some click through waivers on their website.
- axiak 5y ago
  just reading this now... this person wasn't even using FSD, but was using autopilot...
adrr 5y ago
Put an ankle weight on the steering wheel.

ncr100 5y ago

This is how it fails: Turn the system on, keep a finger touching the steering wheel, then close your eyes. Boom.

ajross 5y ago
In fact no. It actively monitors driver attention with a camera. If you close your eyes or look down at your phone for more than a few seconds, the car will shriek at you, lock you out of autopilot for the drive[1], and if you don't take manual control will bring the vehicle to a stop. Recent versions have in fact been tuned to be too sensitive and people have been complaining about false positives. I do wish people would spend some time actually investigating how this system works before pontificating about it. It's not done. But it's far, far closer to done than you seem to want to believe. [1] And after three such events kick you out of the beta program entirely.
- lolc 5y ago
  I can follow the argument on how FSD does not fall under the law because of its requirement for driver attention. I do wonder how much water that holds, but that is for another thread. What I'm curious about is what you mean by "done". You mean an autonomous Tesla that can drive without human supervision? Is Tesla close to that in your view? On what type of roads?
- tommoor 5y ago
  Is this a recent change? There are many videos online of Tesla's "driving" with no-one in the driver seat. One tester in the bay area even had his car seized[1] [1] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/backseat-tesla-driver-unapologetic-after-arrest-for-reckless-driving/2544875/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/backseat-tesla-driver-...
  - nbutyllithium 5y ago
    It's specifically enabled for those enrolled in the full self driving beta (and only while it's enabled). As far as I know it's not yet made its way to those who just use autopilot which is what was used with that remarkably dangerous backseat stupidity. Edit: Zaroth's comment makes it sound like it's now enabled for normal autopilot use as well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29598520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29598520