Featured Tesla Autopilot recall probed by safety regulator following new crashes

I'm not a statistician, but it seems that taking the data from near the end of a pandemic (2021) would be about as non representative as you can get. A lot has changed since 2021.

It's also important to remember that every time that the neural network is refreshed, it's like it's brand new, with all the bugs and flaws that are present with new software and hardware. It's "trained" with a fresh set of learning samples. It's with fresh software. The choice of sensors changed from time to time at Musk's whims. It's important that in 2021 the cross section of Tesla drivers that chose to join the "Beta Test" were not necessarily the same people who would be willing to pay for the FSD license. Beta testers expect it to break and are tasked with reporting flaws. Those beta testers were threatened with ejection from the project if they did not pay attention.

I'm not at all convinced that this position is valid. It sounds neat to say that it's always looking for potential threats, but that's just poetic license. I'd bet dollars to donuts that there are no "training videos" to tell it what to do if a live power line fell across a dirt road.

Remember the Tesla that shut down in the fast lane of the San Francisco Bay Bridge tunnel and the multi car crash that it caused?

Speaking of "on the lookout for threats", I've not heard any explanation of what Tesla has done to isolate the cause of Tesla broadside collisions when large stationary objects on the freeway block part of the road. I've seen video of a speeding Tesla in China that ran into a slow moving street sweeper. I've read the report of the Florida white 18 wheeler where the driver had plenty of time to stop, but instead hit the undercarriage of the trailer. And there's the report from last year where a fire truck was destroyed while being used as a temporary road block for a previous accident. That was within 25 miles of my home. We could see the scorched road where the truck was hit when we drove by.

It's nice to think that your car is always looking out for your best interests, but the reality is that its computer is following a predetermined sequence of activities and only taking action if one of it's routines call for that action. Unfortunately, there are a lot of the software routines that will execute even if it's a bad choice unless you opt out by taking the appropriate action.

 

You're right, during the pandemic, many less people were driving so now, there are even more people on the road so more millions of miles driven. If you have more recent data, give me a link.

I don't know back then but now, every time you deactivate, you're given a choice to say verbally why you deactivated. It says these will be used to train the system.

Looking out for live wires on the road can be considered an edge case. Looking out for red light runners is not.

That Tesla that stops under the bridge, beside "what they said" (and we know some have blamed the ADAS when it was there own doing) was not reported yet if it was really FSD or not. Looking at how the front dipped twice as it slowed down to a stop, it doesn't look like it was none of the ADAS or AEB that took over. But again, we have to wait for the result of the investigation. Either way, people also do dumb decision that ends up others being killed, like that guy on a motorcycle that died because a lady stopped on the highway to let ducks pass.

The examples you gave reminds me of the EV fires that make the news while ICE vehicle fires are much more common but don't make the news. See a trend here? There is a reason that a law needed to be passed to force people to move over to the next lane for stopped emergency vehicles, and spoiler, no, it was not because of Tesla. But to answer your question, no, I don't know what they have done to prevent it, but I do know my car during that 98 km ride took the left lane when two stopped vehicles on the shoulder were encroaching onto my right lane.

 

Are you talking about my video of it driving autonomously on my private dirt road? What's BS about it?

 

It was a unique accident in the data, two deaths, so I thought it would be easy to find a Google News article and it worked. I'll be able to make reasonable subsets for each year for Teslas.

It also means I can select another manufacturer, say GM, Ford, and Nissan who may have a signifcant number of EVs to see how their FARS data looks.

BTW, I started with 2019 since that was my first year of Tesla ownership. My plan is to make similar subsets for each subsequent year.

Bob Wilson

 

I think that throwing the EV battery fires into the discussion is a red herring. I can do something about the neighbor's BOLT if he parks it close to my car while charging it without the fix. I can't do much when the guy down the street comes around the curve too fast and side swipes my car... if I were to park it at the curb where the RX-7 was wiped out by a guy in a big old Lincoln. The driver had Narcolepsy and knew he should not drive.

That's my main objection to the Tesla self driving products. YOU think it does a great job of self navigation despite the fact that, as you approach an intersection, you can't tell me in advance the exact path that the car will travel. I understand that there is a screen in the car that will tell you what path it has selected. Is that really sufficient to predict whether or not you will hit an obstacle or if you will cause another car to take emergency action.

I prefer cars that are 100% reliable and where the reaction to every control input is repeatable and predictable.

Getting back to the car that caused the 8 car pileup while using FSD on Nov 24, 2022. The surveillance camera footage shows the car pulling over without warning. That camera is using IR blended with real color. Towards the end it switches to a camera using visible light. That's where it's obvious that the car is entering a dark tunnel with some brake-lights but little illumination. It's a piss poor design crashes (in more ways than one) that relies on visible light when entering a dark tunnel. Here's a great video, posted by KRON channel 7.

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My cars, BTW, have never pulled to a stop in a busy tunnel just because it was dark and it got confused.

Your other red herring... Red light runners are more common than downed wires? I've only been driving a touch more than 50 years. I've come across downed lines twice. I've never been at risk of being run over by a person who was running a red light, despite growing up in a town built around the agriculture industry. I suspect that I've not been in danger because my defensive driving training started in High school. It was reinforced during Motorcycle safety school. It was further reinforced by training at the phone company.

Maybe the Tesla needs to look for cars running red lights because it can't tell exactly how far the cars are from the intersections? Maybe they will do a lot better once they reinstall the radar in all their cars.

Are they going to do that? It would sure make sense.

 

As if trusting drivers can be reliable. If it would, there wouldn't be any rear ending and t-boning. Too many drivers are distracted while driving. As for the route prediction, it's like following the instructions of your turn by turn GPS. Not much different, except it does it by itself, if you allow it. You can always abort a lane change, like you can change your mind all by yourself while driving.

Look here and you'll see plenty of red light runners and rear enders...

Wham Baam Teslacam - YouTube

I mentioned EV fire with the objective that they make the news while ICE vehicles do not, unless I guess if it's a whole parking lot that catches fire lol. That was to bring an analogy with Telsas hitting stationary objects while in driver assist. Other unassisted vehicles do it so frequently that it doesn't make the national news. I then gave the proof that a law needed to be passed to give way to emergency vehicles because it unfortunately happened too often.

 

I think you can see the difference between consistent controls for cars and consistent drivers in the cars. We have rules of the road to persuade drivers to drive in a (mostly) standard way.

Example: Left turn from the left most lane to the left most lane.
Example: No turn on Red Light.
Example: 25 MPH max speed.

It's easier for the average driver to drive consistently when the car behaves the same in response to driver's input from car to car. from one car to the next.

We can ignore the red herrings you tried to add to the thread to move the thread away from the Autopilot / FSD safety probe. Oh, BTW. In looking at the youtube videos of FSD beta I saw all of the above errors committed by various FSD equiped cars in Silicon Valley. Many times the video of the driver included muttering "Oh Crap! they still haven't fixed that one!" as they hit the bail out button.

I sincerely hope that the Tesla FSD is either banned or restricted to areas where the rest of us don't have to wonder if the car is going to shut down in protest over something trivial.

 

Driving experience - 65 years.

Number of times I've almost been t-boned at an intersection by a red light runner in the last 48 hours - twice. Had I accelerated from a stop on the green light instead of looking both ways multiple times the person crossing my path at least 2 seconds after the light would have hit me.

Number of times I have seen the t-bone happen in the last 10 years - twice. Both times the person next to me accelerated seeing a green light and the guy coming across ran the red light at speed limit ++.

Number of times someone has been t-boned by a red light runner at the exit to our community in the last 20 years - 14. 3 deaths.

Number of times I have heard a 18-wheeler run the light horn blaring - about every other day. 55 MPH speed limit down hill into the intersection.

Number of times a year I have seen enforcement at that intersection - maybe twice a year.

Had a briefing a year or so ago by the local Sheriff. Number of officers on duty in the county per shift was scary. Which explains why enforcement is non-existent. Wouldn't be my priority either.

R state, R county. More important to give school vouchers to high income families with my tax dollars.

 

Maybe you should read the safety probe and not just listen to what others are telling you or assume, because the probe specifically excludes FSD. Read it yourself

Subject System: Suite of software, hardware, data, and any other related systems on or off the vehicle that contribute to the conferral of any vehicle capabilities that Tesla labels Level 2 or above, including but not limited to the various “Autopilot” packages, but not including Full-Self Driving Supervised/Beta.

So, again, to you too, I think you have a misplaced or exaggerated fear for a product you have no actual experience with, especially the most recent version. You should fear all those inattentive drivers that have no system to save your bacon instead, because they are much more unpredictable than FSD.

And we're back to this NHTSA document.

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf

Which states that there was only one confirmed death while in FSD v11 between August 2022 and August 2023. During that period, FSD was close to 100,000,000 miles driven, which is less than the industry average of 1.8 deaths per 100,000,000 miles driven. Since then, with the release of V12 and the one month trial given to millions of vehicles, FSD miles driven has sky rocketed and the sky hasn't fallen. If there would have been at least one death or major accident, the media would have been all over it, like they are with anything Tesla related. What we don't know however, is how many accidents it saved because well, "nothing happened", but that, it's unimportant to you, because of that misplaced and exaggerated fear.

 

And that's just one intersection.

BuT FSD iS uNsAfE aNd ShOuLd Be BaNnEd!

 

Of course, these systems combined with drivers who remain equally as attentive as before, are an improvement.

But it is also a no brainer that these systems too often enable or otherwise lead to increased pilot inattentiveness and disengagement. The aviation industry started dealing with this long before today's automotive ADAS became available and began giving us examples of complete driver disengagement.

Thus, we get two movements countering each other. Absent active prevention measures, it will be far too easy for increases in common human factors failures to outweigh the ADAS benefits while we are in still in the sub-Level-3 phase, as people's expectations continue jumping ahead of current technical reality.

We will know this issue has been 'solved' when full and proper Level 3 certifications are rolled out.

Isn't that a form of "whataboutism"?

Of course all the other manufactures must deal with this too. It is just that Tesla is showing up the first-est, with the most-est, and with the most misleading product names. Or, it is the first batter up. We mustn't wait until more of the batting order is chosen before dealing with this problem.

We already have an example in this very forum, of a driver taking a very long fatiguing trip that would not have been attempted without FSD. And a fender-bender happened. The fact that the incident happened just after the (likely fatigue-impaired) driver turned off FSD to make a pitstop, doesn't negate the indications that FSD was very likely misused as a crutch to enable a trip that wouldn't have happened without it. (Dashcan video would help better determine what really happened, but is not available.) Thus, despite not having direct culpability itself, FSD appears to have enabled the human (mis)behavior that led to an incident.

We will know this issue has been 'solved' when full and proper Level 3 certifications are rolled out.

 

I don't own a Tesla. I don't plan to. What's the difference between Full-Self Driving Supervised/Beta and FSD without the "supervised " and "beta" tags attached?

In normal software engineering , the term FSD by itself would be the general release version after correcting all errors uncovered in the QA or Beta Test suites. Does Tesla have 3 or more different versions, delineated by the testing level as well as the need to be alert at all times? That sounds like an odd way to do business.

There is the case of the Seattle motorcyclist who died last month when the Tesla behind him lurched and crushed him to death. The driver claimed that it was under automatic control. Tesla was unable to tell the feds whether the proper Recall fix had been applied.

From the OPB.org web site:

I'm sure that there is a mid point between reasonable caution and blindly adoring a flawed product that you've invested so much in.

 

Is this the post you are referring to?

@bwilson4web didn’t indicate the trip would not have been attempted without FSD.

I agree we should proceed with caution. I also acknowledge any driver assist package, by any manufacturer, will lead to accidents a human may not have gotten into.
However, for every one of those, the goal should be that it will prevent more.

Did we certify cars with cruise control in the 80s? Misuse of cruise control has led to deaths after all?
I agree any level 3 driver assist should be certified, I am just wondering where you would set the bar?

 

Well .... this'll give all the anti-auto pilot people conniptions



Tesla Is Removing The Steering Wheel Nag For FSD - Within The Next Month | Torque News
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A question about FSD from an incident I experienced a few days ago driving without any driver assistance in a non-Tesla vehicle.

Come up to a light controlled intersection. Both 4 lanes, 2 in each direction. My prior crossing of this intersection saw a car blatantly ran the red light with no attempt to slow. 35 MPH. Dry. Tires good.

Red light comes on. I pick it up late because a truck blocks my view of the preceding yellow. I am only a couple of car lengths from the intersection. I have to make a split second decision if I stop or run it. I brake and look behind me. Car behind is assuming I'm running it. I elect to stop but stop deliberately well ahead of the crosswalk to give him as much room as possible to stop. We both stop successfully with him 3 feet from my rear bumper. He blares his horn at me and as the light changes charges around me in the left hand lane.

Can FSD in any form make a decision that nuanced? History. Situational Awareness. Even the kind of car the other guy is driving.

 

That's only for FSD, not Autopilot and the nag will only be removed as long as the cabin camera is able to confirm the driver is looking at the road. Similar to what BlueCruise do.

Yes, I'm all for better camera in the vehicle to confirm driver's attentiveness. But even with the current camera (or lack of in the earlier model), the death caused by (ab)using the system is still lower than the industry average. The last known Tesla ADAS death was last month and was claimed to involve Autopilot (not FSD) and the one before was last December and also involved Autopilot, meaning that since the FSD trials started April 1st, where millions of owners had a chance to use FSD, there has been no known reported death or major wreck caused by it. My take is the 'it drive itself' crowd is dwindling down and people are more cautious of its capabilities and uses it accordingly, even though the media while criticizing the system, still calls it "self driving" themselves!

You can see it that way but I see it as everyone needs to do something because driver's distraction is way too common while driving and it has worsen with the arrival of smart phones. The industries involved need to figure out a way to make sure that driving is the priority.

Full self driving is the end goal and when it was released to the public, first on limited quantity with drivers with a "perfect score" (similar to what some insurance companies do to base your insurance cost) then to public with near perfect score and then to more and more drivers, it was never just called "Full Self Driving". It was first called "Full Self Driving (Beta)" with a big disclaimer. It stayed with that moniker for several years, until the wide release of version 12 in March where it was renamed to "Full Self Driving (Supervised)". The change was to emphases than the product still needs to be supervised and is not yet fully autonomous. It also still has that big disclaimer when activated, including in the email sent to the accounts link to the car when FSD is activated.

 

I would have to say no. So far, if it's close enough to the yellow it will go through without hesitation. If it's further away, it will stop, also without hesitation, sometime braking harder that I would have liked. I do find that sometime I could have 'made the light' if I was driving by myself. I can still override its decision by using my brake or accelerator and that's probably what I would do if I saw the car behind me about to ram into me. That's one reason when in stop and go traffic, I like to have a high end vehicle right behind me that most certainly has AEB. But that's until an old pickup truck squeezes in between us

 

Too many negatives:

bwiilson4web didn’t indicate the trip would not have been attempted without FSD.​

I agree with this version:

bwiilson4web indicated the trip would have been attempted only with FSD.​

More precisely, all of my trips are with FSD. It compensates for my 74 years and state of health.

Bob Wilson

 

While that cruise control allows some reduction in driver engagement, it does less than the SAE Level 0 examples listed here. It certainly doesn't enable total driver disengagement as the Level 2.5 systems are doing.