Craig Doty II, a Tesla owner, narrowly avoided a collision after his vehicle, in Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode, allegedly steered towards an oncoming train.
Nighttime dashcam footage from earlier this month in Ohio captured the harrowing scene: Doty’s Tesla rapidly approaching a train with no apparent deceleration. He insisted his Tesla was in Full Self-Driving mode when it barreled towards the train crossing without slowing down.
This isn’t actually true. The Tesla full self driving issues we hear about in the news are the ones that result in fatal and near fatal accidents, but the forums are chock full of reports from owners of the thing malfunctioning on a regular basis.
It IS actually true. It does goofy stuff in some situations, but on the whole is a little better than your typical relatively inexperienced driver. It gets it wrong about when to be assertive and when to wait sometimes, it thinks there’s enough space for a courteous merge but there isn’t (it does some Chicago style merges sometimes), it follows the lines on the road like they are gospel, and doesn’t always properly estimate how to come to a smooth and comfortable stop. These are annoying things, but not outrageous provided you are paying attention like you’re obliged to do.
I have it, I use it, and I make lots of reports to Tesla. It is way better than it used to be and still has plenty of room to improve, but a Tesla can’t reboot without having a disparaging article written about it.
Also fuck elon, because I don’t think it gets said enough.
Look at the rates that teenagers crash, this is an indictment.
It was advertised as fully autonomous dude. People wouldn’t have this much of a hard-on for trashing it if it wasn’t so oversold.
This fully autonomous argument is beat to death already. Every single Tesla owner knows you’re supposed to pay attention and be ready to take over when necessary. That is such a strawman argument. Nobody blames the car when automatic braking fails to see the car infront of it. It might save your ass if you’re distracted but ultimately it’s always the driver whose responsible. FSD is no different.
You realize it can be true that the driver is at fault when they crash and that the crash was more likely to happen because you have Elon contradicting his own marketing team constantly and confusing people.
He literally would take reporters in his car and take his hands off the wheel. He just fundamentally doesn’t care about safety now. Probably doesn’t about safety later, just saw a way to make some money.
If it’s not fully capable of self driving then maybe they shouldn’t call it full self driving
Sure. Make then change the name to something different. I’m fine with that.
Though I still don’t know what most people actually mean by full self driving and how it’s different from what FSD can do right now.
Seriously you sound like a Mac user in the '90s. “It only crashes 8 or 9 times a day, it’s so much better than it used to be. It’s got so many great features that I’m willing to deal with a little inconvenience…” Difference being that when a Mac crashes it just loses some data and has to reboot but when a Tesla crashes people die.
FTFY
These are serious rate differences man.
Every driver, and even Tesla, will tell you it’s a work in progress, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who has had an accident with it. I’d be willing to bet money that IF You find someone who has had an accident they have a driving record that’s shitty without it too.
If you want to talk stats, let’s talk stats, but “It seems like Tesla is in the news a lot for near crashes” is a pretty weak metric, even from your armchair.
Is 200ish crashes and 6 deaths per year too many?
I know its an absolute number but we are asking if its worth sacrificing people for the potential of safer driving later.
Can you explain why you are so confident that this will all be worth it in the end?
Evidence that teslas are more dangerous than other cars: https://www.thedrive.com/news/tesla-drivers-have-the-highest-crash-rate-of-any-brand-study
Evidence for the 200 crashes and 6 deaths a year claim for FSD: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/26/24141361/tesla-autopilot-fsd-nhtsa-investigation-report-crash-death