Featured Tesla Autopilot recall probed by safety regulator following new crashes

Ok, so the accident was while you were driving and not the car, is that it?

 

Correct! My accident rate on that trip:

• Manual driving accident rate: 17.54 accidents per mile (1 accident / 300 ft adjust scales)
• FSD driving accident rate: 0 accidents per mile (0 accidents / 717 miles)

WARNING: joke maths

After the NHTSA gets the latest Tesla data, it will beg the question, "What are the rates of other vehicles."

Bob Wilson

 

Why? When the question they are asking is if Tesla's fix in a previous safety recall worked?

 

I've long suspected the NHTSA was looking at twigs on a tree instead of the forrest of how dangerous different car models are in real life.

Bob Wilon

 

There may be crash absorbing shocks and crumple material behind the bumper cover. Get a look at that as it may save you $ if there is a next time. Though it is a tradeoff at your mileage.

 

I will when I mount the rear, underbody shield. I have the part but not the time to put it on. The old part is still working.

Bob Wilson

 

I don't think anyone else has a car model and calls their lane keeping/travel assist programs "Full Self Driving". Although, given it's Tesla, it should be "Fool self driving"

 

If Prius doors pop up in the car wash after being fixed, should we all just say "Oh, well" with the shrug of the shoulders?

This all started because of multiple reports of crashes where Autopilot was in use. While it is possible a difference in reporting level could mean other manufacture ADAS could be getting into as many crashes, ACC and lane departure warning systems are in no way new. The first ones came out in the 1990s.

The NHTSA recommends forward collision and lane departure warnings, but they aren't Congress.
Driver Assistance Technologies | NHTSA
These might be required on new cars now. "All vehicles manufactured for sale in the U.S. will also have to be equipped with forward-collision and lane departure warnings as well as a lane-keeping assist system by the effective date that the secretary of transportation determines." Federal law to address vehicle safety standards, crash prevention & increased fatalities | Repairer Driven News

Now other cars not having all the advanced safety systems out there, is no excuse to let those that do slide when issues come up.

 

If you associate "Full Self Driving" to the competitors' "lane keeping/travel assist" programs, sorry but you have no clue what you're talking about. If you had said Autopilot, then we could have had a discussion about it but not FSD. Nothing you can buy outside of Telsa (not even Mercedes Drive Pilot) comes even remotely close to what FSD is capable of doing, period.

It IS capable of doing "Full Self Driving" but you need to supervised it. My zero intervention 98 km drives, all on regional and city roads two weekends ago is a proof of that.

 

The comment isn't about the system's capability, but Musk and Tesla's recklessness in naming and marketing. The names imply the systems are more capable than they are. Entertainment media has given the general public the impression that aircraft autopilot is a lot more capable than it is. People have been using Autopilot hands free since the Model S came out. There was even videos of Musk doing so.

Full Self Driving flat out implies it is a Level 4 or 5 autonomous system. Maybe it will be one day. Maybe it better than Mercedes Level 3 system in function now. But is just a Level 2 system like Autopilot and other LKA and ACC systems. Tesla/Musk wants it that way. Calling it Level 3 or higher means having to submit to stricter regulations and oversight. It also means they couldn't sell it for the price of a used econo car.

So we have thousands cars, with untrained drivers, testing a system that is Level 3 in all but name on all public roads. Not under the limited conditions real Level 3 ones are being tested on. A good driver monitoring system could mitigate the risks Tesla is taking, but they don't have one. The involvement of NHTSA, which started over two years ago, is all because it wasn't keeping drivers from not paying attention and taking risks with Autopilot. If it isn't working Autopilot it isn't working with FSD.

Now it seems the software update didn't fix the issue. If that proves to be true, Tesla will be putting out a lot of money for driver cameras and hardware upgrades in cars. All because they didn't want to pay for a more robust driver monitoring system from the start. This could end up being their Leaf moment.

 

No ADAS systems are infaillible. Anybody can abuse them. There is a video I saw a few years ago of a driver putting a water bottle in the steering wheel to fool his LKA he was holding the wheel. Of course, he crashed his car.



The one in my 2017 Prius Prime is so useless that I don't even use it. The Autopilot in my Telsa is a complete different story. As an example, I was driving last year in Toronto on a five lane highway (427) after a storm with a low, bright sun directly in my face. The road was still wet and reflecting the sun so bad that I had trouble seeing my lane lines. Autopilot had no issue and kept me centered in my lane. Even when there is some snow on the road, Autopilot is able to keep the car centered. FSD is a step beyond that, driving without issues on a snow covered roads, but you do have to monitor it in in case of a unforseen event.

I would venture that with Autopilot being so good, that users started to get complacent, no matter what it would have been named. And being complacent means some users will start to abuse it. Plus word of mouth played a role in that as some usages were exaggerated when described by the owner. That's something I experienced in 2018 myself when someone explained to me that his Model S in Autopilot had switched lane all by itself to avert an accident. Not knowing any better, I believe it at the time, but now I know it doesn't do that, but it's something I repeated when talking about Telsas to others back then, but when getting one, and seeing the warning that is displayed when you want to activate such feature, you then realise, if you haven't already, the limit of the system. But again, with it working so well 99% of your driving, you tend to be complacent.

In Teslas, there is a cabin camera since 2017 that monitors the driver's attentiveness and will warn the driver if they look away for too long. Tesla started to get more severe with this since last December. I can vouch to this when Friday, on my private dirt road, I wanted to record through my phone how well FSD drives on an unmapped dirt road, but after three warning to look at the road, FSD deactivated itself and I was given a strike (my first) , so that do work.

The issue with NHTSA with the recent update from what I saw is the single pull of the stick to activate AP wasn't by default on existing cars, just new one. Like I mentioned previously, was that well understood by Tesla and/or well explained by the NHTSA? I don't know, but it's a simple fix that I personally would hate if it's obligatory with the current way it works (disabling CC and AP at the same time). Toyota's ADAS doesn't deactivate CC when TKA deactivates when changing lane but unlike Telsa's current version, it auto re-engage when the lane switching is done. I hope Telsa do the same as part of their "fix".

 

Agreed!

I did one 'hands off' test with the nudge and only three were enough to get the car headed to the ditch or opposite lanes. Truly dangerous.

Full Self Driving and AutoPilot in 2024 are much, much better today:

In 2019, AutoPilot had some rough edges and left turns on FSD were until two releases ago, too risky. For example, in a two-lane, left turn, AutoPilot or FSD would change lanes in the turn to everyone's alarm. Since April, the last two releases of FSD have tamed the dual-lane, left turns.

Bob Wilson

 

I agree with much of your reply.

However, this seems to be incorrect.
First, I would argue Tesla vehicle currently have a very robust driver monitoring system.
It relies on both a torque sensor on the steering wheel as well as a driver camera.

The cabin camera exists in all Model 3, Model Y, CyberTrucks and Model S & X since 2021.
The fact that the driver drowsiness can be disabled (automatically enabled at the start of each drive) is puzzling.
I suspect FSD (supervised) wont work if that is set to off. IMO, it should also disable AP.

Tesla has been including all of the hardware for driver assist tech in every car they make. I don’t think the evidence supports your claim that Tesla didn’t want to pay for it.

 

Driver Drowsiness Warning activates over 65 km/h when driven for a minimum of 10 minutes and Autopilot is not engaged.

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_eu/GUID-65BF21B8-50C5-4FA5-86A4-DA363DCD0484.html

It's not even working when Autopilot is active.

But I don't record seeing this in the settings. Is it just in Europe (look at the link).

 

The recall fix was for models going back to 2012. What are those Tesla's driver monitoring systems like?

 

The cabin camera was added in 2017. I'm not sure beside wheel nag, what previous vehicle driver's attentiveness has, but vehicles before 2014 didn't have the hardware for Autopilot.

 

I guess I still don’t understand what this ‘fix’ was.
A 2012 had no cameras, as I recall from my original S.

I believe Autopilot was first available in 2014. So why was the fix back to 2012?

I suppose, regardless of the fix mentioned, this means Teslas between 2014 & 2018(?) had no cabin cameras. Model S & X didn’t have cameras until 2021, as I already mentioned.

 

Mercedes Level 2 ADAS against FSD on city streets (since its level 3 is limited to specify highway segments and under specifics, very limited conditions). Maybe it's not supposed to be used on city streets but it stills allows it. I stopped the video after 11 take over in less than 6 minutes while FSD had... none.

Which one would you prefer to be in?

Edit: So I watched at 2x speed. Mercedes take over, 44, FSD, 0.

 

The one with the real level 3 certification for the areas and conditions covering my travels.

To my understanding, here is the complete list of qualified systems:
.

 

So none, since you're in western Washington. You can't even use their Level 3 ADAS there (yet), but you can already use FSD in over 99% of your roads... And for the time and place you can use Mercedes Level 3, being so limited, FSD will work just as well.