Technology

I'm sure you're just going to downvote this and move on without reading but I'm going to post it anyway for posterity.

First, a little about me. I am a software engineer by trade with expertise in cloud and AI technologies. I have been an FSD beta tester since late 2020 with tens of thousands of incident-free miles logged on it.

I'm familiar with all of these incidents. Its great that they're in chronological order, that will be important later.

I need to set some context and history because it confuses many people when they refer to the capabilities of autopilot and FSD. Autopilot and FSD (Full Self-Driving) are not the same thing. FSD is a $12,000 option on top of any Tesla, and no Tesla built prior to 2016 has the hardware capability to run FSD.

The second historical point is that FSD did not have any public release until mid-2022, with some waves of earlier releases going to the safest drivers starting in mid-2021. Prior to that it was exclusive to Tesla employees and select few trusted beta testers in specific areas. Any of the issues in this article prior to mid-2021 are completely irrelevant to the topic.

Tesla's autopilot system is an LKAS (Lane keep assist system). This is the same as is offered in Honda (Honda Sensing), Nissan (Pro Pilot Assist), Subaru, Cadillac, etc. Its capabilities are limited to keeping you in your lane (via a front-facing camera) and maintaining distance to the car in front of you (via radar, or cameras in later models). It does not automatically change lanes. It does not navigate for you. It does not make turns or take exits. It does not understand most road signs. Until 2020 it did not even know what a red light was. It is a glorified cruise control and has always been presented as such. Tesla has never advertised this as any sort of "hands-off" system where the driver does not need to pay attention. They do not allow the driver to lose attention from the road in FSD either, requiring hands-on the wheel and constant torque as well as eyes on the road (via an interior camera) in order to work. If you are caught not paying attention enough times the system will disengage and even kick you out of the program with enough violations.

OK, now that being said, lets dig in:

November 24, 2022: FSD malfunction causes 8-car pile-up on Bay Bridge

• I'm from the area and have driven this exact spot hundreds of times on FSD and have never experienced anything even remotely close to what is shown here
• "Allegedly" with FSD engaged
• Tesla FSD "phantom" braking does not behave like this, and never has in the past. Teslas have 360 degree vision and are aware of traffic in front of and behind them.
• Notice at the beginning of the video that this car was in the process of a lane change, this introduces a couple of possibilities as to what happened here, namely:
• Teslas do have a feature under autopilot/FSD that if after multiple warnings for the driver to pay attention and no engagement, the car will slow down and pull over to the shoulder and stop. This particular part of the bay bridge does not have a shoulder, so it stopped where it is. This seems unlikely, since neural networks are very capable of identifying what a shoulder is and that its in an active lane of traffic, and even with tesla's massive fleet of vehicles on FSD there are no other recorded instances of this happening anywhere else.
• This particular spot on the bay bridge eastbound has a very sudden and sharp exit to Yerba Buena Island. What I think happened is that the driver was aiming for this exit, saw that they were about to miss it and tapped the brake and put on the turn signal not realizing that they just disengaged FSD. The car then engaged regen braking and came to a full stop.
• When a tesla comes to a full stop automatically (an emergency stop) it puts the hazards on automatically. This has been a feature since the v1 autopilot days. This car’s hazards do not come on after the stop.
• What seems especially weird to me is that the driver continued to let the car sit there at a full stop while traffic piled up behind them. In FSD you are always in control of your own car and all it would have taken is tapping the accelerator pedal to get moving again. FSD will always relinquish control over the car to you if you tap the brakes or grab and move the steering wheel hard enough. Unless there was some mechanical issue that brought the car to a stop and prevented it from moving, in which case this is not the fault of the FSD software.
• Looking at how quickly (or lack thereof) the car slowed down this seems to very clearly be the car using regen braking, not emergency braking. I'm almost positive this means that FSD was disengaged completely.
• We don't have all the facts on this case yet and I'll be anxious to see how this plays out in court but there are definitely many red flags on this one that have me questioning what actually happened here, but I doubt if FSD has anything to do with it.
• If my earlier point is true this is actually an instance of an accident being caused because the driver disengaged self-driving. The car would have been much safer if the driver wasn't even there.

April 22, 2022: Model Y in "summon mode" tries to drive through a $2 million jet

• This one is a favorite among the tesla hate community. Understandably so.
• Smart summon has 0 to do with FSD or even autopilot. It is a party trick to be used under very specific supervised processes
• Smart summon relies exclusively on the front camera and ultrasonic sensors
• While smart summon is engaged, the user still has full control over their car via the phone app. If the car does anything unexpected you only need to release your finger from the button and the car stops immediately. The "driver" did not do this and was not supervising the car, the car did not see the jet because it was entirely above the ultrasonic sensors, and as I'm sure you can understand the object recognition isn't exactly trained on parked airplanes.
• The app and the car remind the driver each and every time it is engaged that they need to be within a certain range and within eyesight of the car to use it. If you remote control your car into an obstacle and it causes an accident, its your fault, period.
• Tesla is working on a new version of smart summon which will make this feature more useful in the future.

February 8, 2022: FSD nearly takes out bicyclist as occupants brag about system's safety

• I suggest actually watching the video here. What happened is highly at odds with what is actually in the video, but the vid is just over an hour long so I bet most people don't bother watching it.
• "It wouldn't have hit them, it definitely wouldn't have hit them. Do we need to cut that?" "No, you can keep it in"
• If you look at what was happening on the car's display, it detected someone entering the crosswalk and stepping out into traffic on the left side. The car hit the brake, sounded an alert and swerved to the right. There was a bicycle in front of where the car swerved but at no point was it about to "nearly take out a bicyclist". It did definitely overreact here out of safety but at no point was anyone in danger.
• Relatively speaking this is a very old version of FSD software, just after the first wave of semi-public release.

December 6, 2021: Tesla accused of faking 2016 Full Self Driving video

• lol

March 17, 2021: Tesla on Autopilot slams into stationary Michigan cop car

• Now we're getting into pre-FSD autopilot. See above comments about the capabilites of autopilot. Feel free to compare these to other cars LKAS systems. You will see that there are still lots of accidents across the board even with LKAS. That is because it is an assist system and the driver is still fully responsible and in-control of the car.

June 1, 2020: Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot crashes into overturned truck

• Again, pre-FSD. If the driver didn't see the overturned truck and disengaged to stop then I'm not sure how anyone expects a basic LKAS system to be able to do that for them.

March 1, 2019: NHTSA, NTSB investigating trio of fatal Tesla crashes

• This one involves a fatality, unfortunately. However, the car was not self-driving. There is something else very important to point out here:
• The feature that allows Teslas to change lanes automatically on the freeway (Navigate on Autopilot) was not released until a year after this accident happened. That means, that if AP was engaged in this accident, the driver deliberately instructed the car via engaging the turn signal to merge into that truck.

May 7, 2016: First known fatality involving Tesla's Autopilot system

• Now we're getting way back into the V1 autopilot systems which weren't even made by tesla. This uses a system called MobilEye and is made by a third party and is even less capable than V2 autopilot

So, there we go. FSD has been out to the public for a few years now to a massive fleet of vehicles, driving collectively millions upon millions of miles and this is the best we've got in terms of a list showing how "Dangerous" it is? That is pretty remarkable.

Excited to see your response.