13 ms·

Tesla FSD Beta tried to kill me last night

141 points by nwienert 3y ago

thereare5lights 3y ago
Elon Musk follows Longtermism. His position is that few deaths here and there today don't matter if it brings about full self driving cars.
- babyshake 3y ago
  He has a point. The real question is whether it is his decision to make that this trade-off is worth it, not whether he has a cogent argument.
- hef19898 3y ago
  It is funny, isn't it, that every single person that thought that some lives had to be sacrificed now for the greater good or something later somehow managed to exclude their own life, and that of their loved ones, out of that equation.
  - idopmstuff 3y ago
    For all the criticisms of Elon Musk you could level (and there are many), this is a weird choice in that it's demonstrably wrong - he livestreamed himself driving using the newest version of FSD Beta very recently.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Did he? And we know that wasn't heavily prepared? Also, Musk is very capabale of doing stupid things. Especially when it comes to social media likes. I mean he spent 44 billion for that same reason...
      - nickthegreek 3y ago
        It obviously wasn’t heavily prepared as Musks Tesla tried to kill him during the livestream.
        hef19898 3y ago
        So Musk will end this whole FSD Beta testing on the roads, disable the feature on sold cars via OTA (at least one sensible use case for that in cars beyond map updates) and stop advertizing and / or selling it while reimbursing those who paid for it?
    - gardenhedge 3y ago
      So he's used it.. once? Or are you saying he uses it exclusively to get around?
    - jonathankoren 3y ago
      I remember when Tesla demoed FSD and it was all faked. Given the company’s track record of fraud and his personal track record of over promising and under delivering on this very product, why should anyone believe his video is what he says it is? https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/17/tech/tesla-self-driving-video-staged/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/17/tech/tesla-self-driving-video...
  - musha68k 3y ago
    Exactly; almost no skin in the game here. What are lawsuits and fines to someone who buys 40B companies out of boredom / like we comment on HN. Responsibility and repercussions must become much clearer and more sharply felt to any so called “leadership”. This is one, if not the main malaise of our times.
- baz00 3y ago
  Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make!
- dale_glass 3y ago
  It sounds like a highly selective sort to me. Like, wouldn't be too many deaths and accidents set back the goal? And wouldn't a previously acquired bad reputation slow down adoption when it's finally working? And why not sacrifice short term gains by having say, LIDAR and better hardware at the start, to have the best performing system as fast as possible, and then gradually trim things down once everything works perfectly?
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  If he wants to be among the “few deaths”, good for him, but none if us signed up for his shit.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  That might mean something if he was principled and competent rather than simply narcissistic and stabbing in the dark with generational wealth.
superchroma 3y ago
Joke product from an unserious company. I wouldn't own this and I would never ever buy it for someone I loved. My old Honda hasn't tried to kill me yet. I suppose the jury is out on the takata airbag recall but that's fixed now and our relationship can continue with a pristine record of zero murder attempts.
gameoverhumans 3y ago
It still blows my mind that so many people are okay with beta testing software that controls a several-tonne metal box on wheels moving at 100km/h+ on shared roadways.
- Xenoamorphous 3y ago
  Right? I get trying beta ir even alpha versions of inconsequential software, but something that can easily kill me? What are these people thinking? It’s mind boggling.
- baz00 3y ago
  We're not okay with it. We are however beaten down by every brainwashed fanboy, marketer, investor and news outlet pushing this bubble along to drive some pissy revenue stream though. That includes those of us who worked on safety critical engineering years ago and know exactly what the fuck we are talking about.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    So? At least they have a driving license. That's not something we can say about this pile of crap. It cost me 2 years of my life, a small fortune at the time and a lot of hassle from the authorities before being allowed to pass so I could join in on this thing called 'traffic' with a vehicle. And I thought that was just fine. Now we get this stuff that is absolutely unverified and that is known to have issues released into traffic as though it is perfectly normal.
    - idopmstuff 3y ago
      Why did it take you two years and a small fortune? It took me some reasonable number of hours over ~6 months (at the time in CA you could get your learner's permit at 15.5 and license at 16) and a couple hundred bucks for a driving instructor.
self_awareness 3y ago
The guy enables beta version of autopilot software during the night on a highway. Encounters a bug that nearly costs him his life, and... enables the same feature again later. I mean, why...
- self_awareness 3y ago
  For downvoters: I mean, for me of course it's a good thing that some people risk their lives in order for me to have a stable feature, but I don't really understand the motivation.
jacquesm 3y ago
At least you're in the car. I'm not, and I'm also at risk, and so is my family. Proximity to Tesla is fortunately higher for Tesla owners so they are probably at higher risk from FSD than the rest of us but you really should not give control of your car to anything that says 'beta' on the tin and that regulators haven't stepped in yet is a complete mystery to me. Given the amount of requirements a vehicle (and a driver!) has to go through to be allowed into traffic in the first place you'd expect that any kind of mission critical software would be required to be put through its paces in a very stringent test environment as well but that seems to be asking too much. Besides the fact that the next OTA update may well give you a completely different batch of problems.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  I’m all for the personal responsibility thing. In Canada if you do 50km/h over the limit they seize your car roadside, fine you $10k, suspend your license, and likely charge you criminally for dangerous driving. We also have private race tracks where you can take your Civic and put yourself into a wall at 170km/h if you so choose. I don’t care for arguments about safety statistics or the ends justifying the means. My kids are on these streets. It’s not your autonomy test track.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    For the most part I agree with you, but >I don’t care for arguments about safety statistics is insane. If it's safer it's safer, and the only way to know is statistics. The fact that (seemingly) no government department is collecting and publishing safety statistics on every self driving car manufacturer defies belief.
    - Waterluvian 3y ago
      They’re my kids so I just don’t care if using them as a test subject results in longer term safer roads for everyone. But I think what you’re talking about is if autonomy makes my kids safer in the immediate, and not as an end result of public testing. Yes, I support that. I don’t think this is that yet. The word beta is right there.
baz00 3y ago
This will never work. They are still fucking around changing vehicle configurations, sensor configurations, computers, throwing more compute at it, everything after nearly a decade now. It's a hack job death march, reminiscent of half-assed software crap companies I've worked for, surrounded by hype, marketing and rabid fanboyism. I've never seen customers at this scale who are happy being experimented on like lab rats. The real problem is that roads are vastly unconstrained systems. An analogy is you can't take a sieve and fill all the holes in it with AI because it has no determinism and you don't know what all the constraints/holes are in the first place. Humans can actually reason in these situations fairly competently, even the stupid ones. Give up, produce a half decent low price car with basic features that a human drives that frees us from the insane EV pricing jump and perhaps the world will be changed. Self driving cars are not important other than for a few exec egos and companies who want rid of the cost of a human workforce. This is another fucking race to the bottom and the only innovation is getting people to think it's important.
- bestcoder69 3y ago
  Self-driving cars work really well so far. But we'll see, I guess! https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/are-self-driving-cars-already-safer-than-human-drivers/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/are-self-driving-cars-a...
  - baz00 3y ago
    All this proves is self-published research works really well for businesses! I've worked for ones that won't publish the bad reports I've written.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  Self=driving cars could be important, if we used them in ways that didn't play to the traditional car narratives. An always-connected vehicle could start to deliver some of the "system intelligence" we see in more controlled public-transit platforms. Self-driving cars should be smart enough to say "You specified a destination downtown. I will wait 4 minutes 23 seconds before departure because we'll have a peak cohort of people driving downtown, and can maximize fuel economy by drafting and traveling as a convoy." Potentially we even get to the point where the cars couple together and form transient "trains" to to spread the wear on the drive systems. We could even have controls like "A parade/diplomatic mission/emergency vehicle is travelling down XYZ Street; to ensure their security, a two-block radius around it been flagged as no-go for any autonomous vehicles."
robbywashere_ 3y ago
lawyers and PR will innovate faster than self driving capabilities.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
I do not understand how a large number of software vendors have managed to turn "beta testing" into a desirable way to spend time. People even compete to be allowed to perform free beta testing. Great from a business perspective, saves a lot of money on QA. I prefer to use the software once it has been fully released and has been out for a while for the vendor to iron out any major issues. To freely chose to beta test the self-driving feature of a huge automobile travelling at high speed on public roads (not a test track) is nearly impossible for me to understand. Where it the upside to it? Being able to blog about how you nearly died? Had it gone a bit farther this would have been a good candidate for a Darwin award.
- ncr100 3y ago
  (/s) Did Darwin ever do any experiments with Betta fish?
ocdtrekkie 3y ago
We've passed the point we can blame Elon Musk for this: We need to be asking why the federal government has been completely absent in putting a stop to it. Tesla's marketing around their cruise control is getting people killed. The government needs to give Tesla a week to remove all Autopilot and FSD terms from their products or recall the entirety of the product line. People who paid extra for this unlock should get full refunds for it. My Kia can provide an amount of self-steering in cruise control which is truly impressive and smoothes the driving experience, but nobody sells it as driving itself, much less charges an extra ten grand for the privilege.
- musha68k 3y ago
  Lack of skin in the game is evident, especially with institutions. Whether it's Tesla or the government, responsibility is diffused. True accountability should hone in on the “natural person”. This needs to change.
userbinator 3y ago
With Tesla, everyone can have the experience of being a driving instructor, but unfortunately not everyone is good at it. IMHO it takes even more attention to supervise it than just being in control all the time, since taking over when it tries to do something stupid is the most difficult part. For this reason, I always stay clear of Teslas on the road.
pengaru 3y ago
Trash
chinathrow 3y ago
Stop. Driving. That. Shit.
yashap 3y ago
You have to be absolutely insane to beta test Tesla FSD, it’s very dangerous and full of bugs, nowhere close to ready. The only reason it’s out on public roads is because Musk is in charge, and he’s happy to take massive risks and kill people to get to market a bit faster. Waymo, on the other hand, is actually very good. Waymo is (IMO) actually a bit better/safer than the average human driver, Tesla FSD is way, WAYYYYYYY worse than a human. I’ve spoken with a number of ppl who’ve taken rides in both Tesla FSD and Waymo, and the reviews are unanimous. Tesla FSD makes major mistakes very regularly, you have to be taking control a lot, it’s a terrifying experience. Waymo actually drives safely and correctly, in a confidence inspiring way, with no need for human intervention.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  Tesla should never be allowed to ship broken beta builds in the first place! Criminal negligence is a thing…
- m_fayer 3y ago
  In other words, Tesla may very soon become the reason we can't have nice things.
  - yashap 3y ago
    Fingers crossed that both regulators and the general public can differentiate between very good tech rolled out very carefully (like Waymo, or to a lesser extent Cruise) and very buggy tech rolled out very recklessly (like Tesla FSD). Hard to predict public and government reactions, it honestly could go either way.
crubier 3y ago
Tesla gets a lot of Flak, but all driving assistance systems in commercial cars today that I tried are wayyy more terrible. My long term rental Nissan Rogue lane following system tries to kill me multiple times a day, and only disconnects with an alarm 2seconds+ after leaving the lanes.
- dzhiurgis 3y ago
  True they are so basic it’s sad, but on a flip side warnings are so obnoxious on Tesla plus it’s kinda easy to accidentally disable autosteer without noticing only to discover you are drifting over into other lane. Wonder if Tesla could somehow allow to drive with less steering wheel resistance but also autosteer reliably.
- wazoox 3y ago
  No, Mercedes, BMW, Renault all do a way, way better job than Tesla, and they started much later.
- starik36 3y ago
  I hear you. The system on the Kia Forte 2022 is very fragile as well. I just stopped using it.
- andrewaylett 3y ago
  The biggest difference is that with pretty much every car that's not a Tesla, the driver still needs to drive the car. That's true for the Tesla, too, but "full self-driving" makes it sound like it's different. Mercedes brought out their first actual self-driving car a few months ago. Unlike driver assistance, where the driver is expected to retain control at all times, it will give at least ten seconds notice -- so you're allowed to take your hands off the wheel, read a book, or watch a video. But it will only let you turn it on in very restricted circumstances.
littlestymaar 3y ago
Move fast and break things, car edition.
- musha68k 3y ago
  Let it crash!
KaiserPro 3y ago
I don't understand how its possibly legal for tesla, or anyone for that matter, to be able to push out beta life critical software to the general public. Say for example a utility company pushed out an update that flipped the power contactor between you and the grid too many times that it caught fire, the company would be taken to court. I simply just don't understand how Tesla can get away with it.
- manmal 3y ago
  There’s likely huge political interest in keeping this R&D domestic.
- qprofyeh 3y ago
  I don’t get it either. While they’re at it, why not give DeepMind and OpenAI access to military resources to see whether their models can keep peace better than an army. At least that’s not on civilian territory.
- NelsonMinar 3y ago
  I don't understand how they keep marketing this as "Full Self Driving" or "Autopilot" and then wink and say "oh lol not really, you're supposed to be driving the whole time". The very name of the product is a lie. (And that's not even counting the "Elon Mode" we've since learned is hidden in the firmware.)
  - wilg 3y ago
    The "beta" means you're supposed to be supervising it! The non-beta version would be the one that you don't have to pay attention to. The "Elon Mode" thing is an internal-only flag that nobody has been able to activate outside Tesla, and is not actually called that it's just what some guy on Twitter called it.
- wilg 3y ago
  I think you could argue that it isn't life-critical software because it requires active driver monitoring. What makes it different from lane-keeping assist in other vehicles? Or bog-standard cruise control? The fact that it attempts to do more things does not necessarily make it more dangerous. Your cruise control can drive you into a truck or off the road, but we accept that it is the driver's responsibility to not let that happen. FSD will actually attempt to stop for other vehicles, pedestrians, traffic lights, etc. What is the difference here other than the system is _less likely_ to kill you because it is smarter?
musha68k 3y ago
Aside from questioning self driving cars and Tesla’s misleading marketing stories in particular; “you don’t even have skin in the game anymore” (so who still has then?) Why - in this highly safety critical domain - is there ever anything close to “beta” software accessible to end-users? What about all other participants in traffic? This “perpetual beta” approach hasn’t been industry best practice for most of its existence. There used to be years long development and testing procedures, all happening outside of common traffic. This is all a big marketing racket attempted to as “efficiently as possible” transfer most of risks and costs on masterfully deceived consumers and the ever unquestioned public.
will5421 3y ago
The mistake to make here is to blame Tesla. They’re just pushing their luck within the regulation, else their competitors will overtake them. The blame for this lies with the regulators.
- foobiekr 3y ago
  “The mistake here is not that the company poured dioxin into the waterway but that regulators didn’t stop them” Regulation is a trailing thing, we need people not to be default evil for us to have a society.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  We can blame both, and we can even do it simultaneously.
tguvot 3y ago
it's sounds more like suicide by FSD and not FSD tried to kill
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
The CIA will be thrilled, now they can outsource hacking targets' cars to Lord Xoldemort and keep their own hands clean!
paul7986 3y ago
Sounds as dumb as buying a fully electric car as your one and only driving vehicle and you do frequent road trips in remote and non-remote areas! Also, the time it take to charge your EV compared to filling your gas car is silly after spending $50k to $200k!.
mavu 3y ago
How people allow this testing by customers to happen on their roads is beyond me.
tiffanyh 3y ago
I’m always amazed how people eagerly want to be human crash test dummy’s to test out a feature that could kill you.
BooneJS 3y ago
Model Y w/HW3 + FSD Beta loves to take those turnoff lanes on 2-lane 55 mph highways, thinking that the road just went to 4 lanes. Unfortunately (for me), those turnoff lanes abruptly stop in a 90 degree right turn. I leave audio comments when it happens when prompted asking why I disabled FSD by yanking the wheel left, but I don't know what else to do.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  My question would be if you've witnessed it perform dangerous behaviors, why would you continue to use it. That's what else you can do; stop using the automated death software.
- pengaru 3y ago
  > but I don't know what else to do. You could get rid of the car...
Tommstein 3y ago
I rented a Tesla a couple years ago for a day trip a few states away. Mostly highway driving, which I would assume would be easier than random city streets. And that's how I spent a day with Tesla's FSD beta constantly trying to murder me. I'm surprised the body count isn't higher.
rsynnott 3y ago
> A few moments later, I gave FSD Beta another shot, and I was actually able to repeat the problem “This just tried to kill me. Great, better try it again.” I mean, this seems horribly irresponsible?

141 points by nwienert 3y ago

Elon Musk follows Longtermism. His position is that few deaths here and there today don't matter if it brings about full self driving cars.

babyshake 3y ago
He has a point. The real question is whether it is his decision to make that this trade-off is worth it, not whether he has a cogent argument.
hef19898 3y ago
It is funny, isn't it, that every single person that thought that some lives had to be sacrificed now for the greater good or something later somehow managed to exclude their own life, and that of their loved ones, out of that equation.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  For all the criticisms of Elon Musk you could level (and there are many), this is a weird choice in that it's demonstrably wrong - he livestreamed himself driving using the newest version of FSD Beta very recently.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Did he? And we know that wasn't heavily prepared? Also, Musk is very capabale of doing stupid things. Especially when it comes to social media likes. I mean he spent 44 billion for that same reason...
    - nickthegreek 3y ago
      It obviously wasn’t heavily prepared as Musks Tesla tried to kill him during the livestream.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        So Musk will end this whole FSD Beta testing on the roads, disable the feature on sold cars via OTA (at least one sensible use case for that in cars beyond map updates) and stop advertizing and / or selling it while reimbursing those who paid for it?
  - gardenhedge 3y ago
    So he's used it.. once? Or are you saying he uses it exclusively to get around?
  - jonathankoren 3y ago
    I remember when Tesla demoed FSD and it was all faked. Given the company’s track record of fraud and his personal track record of over promising and under delivering on this very product, why should anyone believe his video is what he says it is? https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/17/tech/tesla-self-driving-video-staged/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/17/tech/tesla-self-driving-video...
- musha68k 3y ago
  Exactly; almost no skin in the game here. What are lawsuits and fines to someone who buys 40B companies out of boredom / like we comment on HN. Responsibility and repercussions must become much clearer and more sharply felt to any so called “leadership”. This is one, if not the main malaise of our times.
baz00 3y ago
Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make!
dale_glass 3y ago
It sounds like a highly selective sort to me. Like, wouldn't be too many deaths and accidents set back the goal? And wouldn't a previously acquired bad reputation slow down adoption when it's finally working? And why not sacrifice short term gains by having say, LIDAR and better hardware at the start, to have the best performing system as fast as possible, and then gradually trim things down once everything works perfectly?
littlestymaar 3y ago
If he wants to be among the “few deaths”, good for him, but none if us signed up for his shit.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
That might mean something if he was principled and competent rather than simply narcissistic and stabbing in the dark with generational wealth.

superchroma 3y ago

Joke product from an unserious company. I wouldn't own this and I would never ever buy it for someone I loved. My old Honda hasn't tried to kill me yet. I suppose the jury is out on the takata airbag recall but that's fixed now and our relationship can continue with a pristine record of zero murder attempts.

gameoverhumans 3y ago

It still blows my mind that so many people are okay with beta testing software that controls a several-tonne metal box on wheels moving at 100km/h+ on shared roadways.

Xenoamorphous 3y ago
Right? I get trying beta ir even alpha versions of inconsequential software, but something that can easily kill me? What are these people thinking? It’s mind boggling.
baz00 3y ago
We're not okay with it. We are however beaten down by every brainwashed fanboy, marketer, investor and news outlet pushing this bubble along to drive some pissy revenue stream though. That includes those of us who worked on safety critical engineering years ago and know exactly what the fuck we are talking about.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
[flagged]
- jacquesm 3y ago
  So? At least they have a driving license. That's not something we can say about this pile of crap. It cost me 2 years of my life, a small fortune at the time and a lot of hassle from the authorities before being allowed to pass so I could join in on this thing called 'traffic' with a vehicle. And I thought that was just fine. Now we get this stuff that is absolutely unverified and that is known to have issues released into traffic as though it is perfectly normal.
  - idopmstuff 3y ago
    Why did it take you two years and a small fortune? It took me some reasonable number of hours over ~6 months (at the time in CA you could get your learner's permit at 15.5 and license at 16) and a couple hundred bucks for a driving instructor.

self_awareness 3y ago

The guy enables beta version of autopilot software during the night on a highway. Encounters a bug that nearly costs him his life, and... enables the same feature again later. I mean, why...

self_awareness 3y ago
For downvoters: I mean, for me of course it's a good thing that some people risk their lives in order for me to have a stable feature, but I don't really understand the motivation.

jacquesm 3y ago

At least you're in the car. I'm not, and I'm also at risk, and so is my family. Proximity to Tesla is fortunately higher for Tesla owners so they are probably at higher risk from FSD than the rest of us but you really should not give control of your car to anything that says 'beta' on the tin and that regulators haven't stepped in yet is a complete mystery to me. Given the amount of requirements a vehicle (and a driver!) has to go through to be allowed into traffic in the first place you'd expect that any kind of mission critical software would be required to be put through its paces in a very stringent test environment as well but that seems to be asking too much. Besides the fact that the next OTA update may well give you a completely different batch of problems.

Waterluvian 3y ago
I’m all for the personal responsibility thing. In Canada if you do 50km/h over the limit they seize your car roadside, fine you $10k, suspend your license, and likely charge you criminally for dangerous driving. We also have private race tracks where you can take your Civic and put yourself into a wall at 170km/h if you so choose. I don’t care for arguments about safety statistics or the ends justifying the means. My kids are on these streets. It’s not your autonomy test track.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  For the most part I agree with you, but >I don’t care for arguments about safety statistics is insane. If it's safer it's safer, and the only way to know is statistics. The fact that (seemingly) no government department is collecting and publishing safety statistics on every self driving car manufacturer defies belief.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    They’re my kids so I just don’t care if using them as a test subject results in longer term safer roads for everyone. But I think what you’re talking about is if autonomy makes my kids safer in the immediate, and not as an end result of public testing. Yes, I support that. I don’t think this is that yet. The word beta is right there.

baz00 3y ago

This will never work. They are still fucking around changing vehicle configurations, sensor configurations, computers, throwing more compute at it, everything after nearly a decade now. It's a hack job death march, reminiscent of half-assed software crap companies I've worked for, surrounded by hype, marketing and rabid fanboyism. I've never seen customers at this scale who are happy being experimented on like lab rats. The real problem is that roads are vastly unconstrained systems. An analogy is you can't take a sieve and fill all the holes in it with AI because it has no determinism and you don't know what all the constraints/holes are in the first place. Humans can actually reason in these situations fairly competently, even the stupid ones. Give up, produce a half decent low price car with basic features that a human drives that frees us from the insane EV pricing jump and perhaps the world will be changed. Self driving cars are not important other than for a few exec egos and companies who want rid of the cost of a human workforce. This is another fucking race to the bottom and the only innovation is getting people to think it's important.

bestcoder69 3y ago
Self-driving cars work really well so far. But we'll see, I guess! https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/are-self-driving-cars-already-safer-than-human-drivers/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/are-self-driving-cars-a...
- baz00 3y ago
  All this proves is self-published research works really well for businesses! I've worked for ones that won't publish the bad reports I've written.
hakfoo 3y ago
Self=driving cars could be important, if we used them in ways that didn't play to the traditional car narratives. An always-connected vehicle could start to deliver some of the "system intelligence" we see in more controlled public-transit platforms. Self-driving cars should be smart enough to say "You specified a destination downtown. I will wait 4 minutes 23 seconds before departure because we'll have a peak cohort of people driving downtown, and can maximize fuel economy by drafting and traveling as a convoy." Potentially we even get to the point where the cars couple together and form transient "trains" to to spread the wear on the drive systems. We could even have controls like "A parade/diplomatic mission/emergency vehicle is travelling down XYZ Street; to ensure their security, a two-block radius around it been flagged as no-go for any autonomous vehicles."

robbywashere_ 3y ago

lawyers and PR will innovate faster than self driving capabilities.

ThinkBeat 3y ago

I do not understand how a large number of software vendors have managed to turn "beta testing" into a desirable way to spend time. People even compete to be allowed to perform free beta testing. Great from a business perspective, saves a lot of money on QA. I prefer to use the software once it has been fully released and has been out for a while for the vendor to iron out any major issues. To freely chose to beta test the self-driving feature of a huge automobile travelling at high speed on public roads (not a test track) is nearly impossible for me to understand. Where it the upside to it? Being able to blog about how you nearly died? Had it gone a bit farther this would have been a good candidate for a Darwin award.

ncr100 3y ago
(/s) Did Darwin ever do any experiments with Betta fish?

ocdtrekkie 3y ago

We've passed the point we can blame Elon Musk for this: We need to be asking why the federal government has been completely absent in putting a stop to it. Tesla's marketing around their cruise control is getting people killed. The government needs to give Tesla a week to remove all Autopilot and FSD terms from their products or recall the entirety of the product line. People who paid extra for this unlock should get full refunds for it. My Kia can provide an amount of self-steering in cruise control which is truly impressive and smoothes the driving experience, but nobody sells it as driving itself, much less charges an extra ten grand for the privilege.

musha68k 3y ago
Lack of skin in the game is evident, especially with institutions. Whether it's Tesla or the government, responsibility is diffused. True accountability should hone in on the “natural person”. This needs to change.

userbinator 3y ago

With Tesla, everyone can have the experience of being a driving instructor, but unfortunately not everyone is good at it. IMHO it takes even more attention to supervise it than just being in control all the time, since taking over when it tries to do something stupid is the most difficult part. For this reason, I always stay clear of Teslas on the road.

pengaru 3y ago

Trash

chinathrow 3y ago

Stop. Driving. That. Shit.

yashap 3y ago

You have to be absolutely insane to beta test Tesla FSD, it’s very dangerous and full of bugs, nowhere close to ready. The only reason it’s out on public roads is because Musk is in charge, and he’s happy to take massive risks and kill people to get to market a bit faster. Waymo, on the other hand, is actually very good. Waymo is (IMO) actually a bit better/safer than the average human driver, Tesla FSD is way, WAYYYYYYY worse than a human. I’ve spoken with a number of ppl who’ve taken rides in both Tesla FSD and Waymo, and the reviews are unanimous. Tesla FSD makes major mistakes very regularly, you have to be taking control a lot, it’s a terrifying experience. Waymo actually drives safely and correctly, in a confidence inspiring way, with no need for human intervention.

littlestymaar 3y ago
Tesla should never be allowed to ship broken beta builds in the first place! Criminal negligence is a thing…
m_fayer 3y ago
In other words, Tesla may very soon become the reason we can't have nice things.
- yashap 3y ago
  Fingers crossed that both regulators and the general public can differentiate between very good tech rolled out very carefully (like Waymo, or to a lesser extent Cruise) and very buggy tech rolled out very recklessly (like Tesla FSD). Hard to predict public and government reactions, it honestly could go either way.

crubier 3y ago

Tesla gets a lot of Flak, but all driving assistance systems in commercial cars today that I tried are wayyy more terrible. My long term rental Nissan Rogue lane following system tries to kill me multiple times a day, and only disconnects with an alarm 2seconds+ after leaving the lanes.

dzhiurgis 3y ago
True they are so basic it’s sad, but on a flip side warnings are so obnoxious on Tesla plus it’s kinda easy to accidentally disable autosteer without noticing only to discover you are drifting over into other lane. Wonder if Tesla could somehow allow to drive with less steering wheel resistance but also autosteer reliably.
wazoox 3y ago
No, Mercedes, BMW, Renault all do a way, way better job than Tesla, and they started much later.
starik36 3y ago
I hear you. The system on the Kia Forte 2022 is very fragile as well. I just stopped using it.
andrewaylett 3y ago
The biggest difference is that with pretty much every car that's not a Tesla, the driver still needs to drive the car. That's true for the Tesla, too, but "full self-driving" makes it sound like it's different. Mercedes brought out their first actual self-driving car a few months ago. Unlike driver assistance, where the driver is expected to retain control at all times, it will give at least ten seconds notice -- so you're allowed to take your hands off the wheel, read a book, or watch a video. But it will only let you turn it on in very restricted circumstances.

littlestymaar 3y ago

Move fast and break things, car edition.

musha68k 3y ago
Let it crash!

KaiserPro 3y ago

I don't understand how its possibly legal for tesla, or anyone for that matter, to be able to push out beta life critical software to the general public. Say for example a utility company pushed out an update that flipped the power contactor between you and the grid too many times that it caught fire, the company would be taken to court. I simply just don't understand how Tesla can get away with it.

manmal 3y ago
There’s likely huge political interest in keeping this R&D domestic.
qprofyeh 3y ago
I don’t get it either. While they’re at it, why not give DeepMind and OpenAI access to military resources to see whether their models can keep peace better than an army. At least that’s not on civilian territory.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
I don't understand how they keep marketing this as "Full Self Driving" or "Autopilot" and then wink and say "oh lol not really, you're supposed to be driving the whole time". The very name of the product is a lie. (And that's not even counting the "Elon Mode" we've since learned is hidden in the firmware.)
- wilg 3y ago
  The "beta" means you're supposed to be supervising it! The non-beta version would be the one that you don't have to pay attention to. The "Elon Mode" thing is an internal-only flag that nobody has been able to activate outside Tesla, and is not actually called that it's just what some guy on Twitter called it.
wilg 3y ago
I think you could argue that it isn't life-critical software because it requires active driver monitoring. What makes it different from lane-keeping assist in other vehicles? Or bog-standard cruise control? The fact that it attempts to do more things does not necessarily make it more dangerous. Your cruise control can drive you into a truck or off the road, but we accept that it is the driver's responsibility to not let that happen. FSD will actually attempt to stop for other vehicles, pedestrians, traffic lights, etc. What is the difference here other than the system is _less likely_ to kill you because it is smarter?

musha68k 3y ago

Aside from questioning self driving cars and Tesla’s misleading marketing stories in particular; “you don’t even have skin in the game anymore” (so who still has then?) Why - in this highly safety critical domain - is there ever anything close to “beta” software accessible to end-users? What about all other participants in traffic? This “perpetual beta” approach hasn’t been industry best practice for most of its existence. There used to be years long development and testing procedures, all happening outside of common traffic. This is all a big marketing racket attempted to as “efficiently as possible” transfer most of risks and costs on masterfully deceived consumers and the ever unquestioned public.

will5421 3y ago

The mistake to make here is to blame Tesla. They’re just pushing their luck within the regulation, else their competitors will overtake them. The blame for this lies with the regulators.

foobiekr 3y ago
“The mistake here is not that the company poured dioxin into the waterway but that regulators didn’t stop them” Regulation is a trailing thing, we need people not to be default evil for us to have a society.
nickthegreek 3y ago
We can blame both, and we can even do it simultaneously.

tguvot 3y ago

it's sounds more like suicide by FSD and not FSD tried to kill

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

The CIA will be thrilled, now they can outsource hacking targets' cars to Lord Xoldemort and keep their own hands clean!

paul7986 3y ago

Sounds as dumb as buying a fully electric car as your one and only driving vehicle and you do frequent road trips in remote and non-remote areas! Also, the time it take to charge your EV compared to filling your gas car is silly after spending $50k to $200k!.

mavu 3y ago

How people allow this testing by customers to happen on their roads is beyond me.

tiffanyh 3y ago

I’m always amazed how people eagerly want to be human crash test dummy’s to test out a feature that could kill you.

BooneJS 3y ago

Model Y w/HW3 + FSD Beta loves to take those turnoff lanes on 2-lane 55 mph highways, thinking that the road just went to 4 lanes. Unfortunately (for me), those turnoff lanes abruptly stop in a 90 degree right turn. I leave audio comments when it happens when prompted asking why I disabled FSD by yanking the wheel left, but I don't know what else to do.

TheCleric 3y ago
My question would be if you've witnessed it perform dangerous behaviors, why would you continue to use it. That's what else you can do; stop using the automated death software.
pengaru 3y ago
> but I don't know what else to do. You could get rid of the car...

Tommstein 3y ago

I rented a Tesla a couple years ago for a day trip a few states away. Mostly highway driving, which I would assume would be easier than random city streets. And that's how I spent a day with Tesla's FSD beta constantly trying to murder me. I'm surprised the body count isn't higher.

rsynnott 3y ago

> A few moments later, I gave FSD Beta another shot, and I was actually able to repeat the problem “This just tried to kill me. Great, better try it again.” I mean, this seems horribly irresponsible?