Tesla FSD drives down railroad tracks, gets hit by train

[JM.]

A texting medical cab driver nearly killed me wife by running a red. Our "super unsafe" Tesla is the reason she's not dead.

Sounds like what happened to me (or didn't happen, thanks Lord Elon).

The bad ADAS reminds me of a Toyota loaner I got from Rivian/Enterprise. The systems are not only absolute junk, but Toyota has multiple vendors/computers for parts of the ADAS, which don't seem to talk. It's why I was getting lane departure warnings from one part of the car while the other part of the car was violently self-steering me out of my lane. BRILLIANT! I did stop using it in that car.

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[docwhiz]

I think part of the problem is that we’re talking about “FSD” at all. Tesla officially calls it Full Self-Driving (Supervised) which makes me think that Tesla is still trying to sell this system as Full Self-Driving, which it isn’t. If Tesla as a company were forthright and honest, they’d call the product Supervised Full Self-Driving and we’d refer to it as SFSD.

Instead, Tesla makes what’s arguably the most important part of the product name, Supervised, a parenthetical at the end rather than the first word people see in the name. I say it’s the most important part of the name because drivers who ignore the Supervised part are taking a significant risk. Tesla seems to be tacitly condoning this risky behavior by deemphasizing the word Supervised, probably as much as they can legally. There seems to be a long-standing problem with the Tesla corporate culture regarding what they’re selling as ADAS versus what it actually does.

It should be called just Supervised Driving.
No Full.
No Self.
Those are lies.

 

[COdogman]

Fun to watch armchair experts endlessly whip themselves up with Tesla schadenfreude. If you are not using FSD on HW4 on a daily basis, then you have no idea what you're talking about and are not adding anything useful to the discourse.

As has been mentioned by several people here, all ADAS is imperfect, which makes all ADAS dangerous. I rented a brand new XC60 on vacation last month and just trying to use basic lane-keeping was incredibly scary. In a few hours of driving, it misunderstood splitting lanes several times and the car darted across the road, resulting in unsafe oversteer. I have also had several rentals where I experienced dangerous (and scary) mis-application of radar-based automated emergency braking. I certainly remember early days of R1 where even their geo-fenced lane-keeping was sporadically diving for concrete barriers. Why then are these systems so widespread? Because humans are god-awful at driving and even imperfect systems will not be texting/ browsing / sleep-deprived/ old / eating / applying makeup / checking on their kids / dog on their lap / etc. You're an awesome, infallible driver? Congrats! Most people are not. A texting medical cab driver nearly killed me wife by running a red. Our "super unsafe" Tesla is the reason she's not dead. While charging last year we watched a teenage driver pull out in front of a father of five on a motorcycle. We administered CPR for 20 minutes, but he did not make it. I personally know more than a dozen people who have been in serious, life-altering car accidents and half a dozen who have been injured by cars while riding their bicycle. Our roads are a dangerous hellscape and are only getting worse due to expanding vehicles and shrinking attention spans.

It is naive & child-like to think is going to be some magic ADAS system that will pop out fully formed, able to deal with absolutely every edge case. That is not how grownups make hard things happen. These systems are going to have to improve the same way that air travel did. Accident-->Investigate-->Learn-->Improve-->Repeat. Not comfortable with that? Don't use them! But also don't sit here and pretend like everything is grand and Tesla is out there being a public menace. Their approach may not be perfect, but it's already probably safer than a substantial portion of drivers and it's also the only one that is scalable enough for it to benefit the public at large.

TLDR Straw man fallacy.

No one expected "fully formed, able to deal with absolutely every edge case". What should be expected is transparency, and as much safety as possible.

There is literally no evidence that FSD/ Autopilot is safer than human drivers. None. Even in your longwinded post you said "already probably"

Remember, there is a world full of humans that didn't sign up to be guinea pigs for Leon's vanity projects.

 

[pamalabama]

I think part of the problem is that we’re talking about “FSD” at all. Tesla officially calls it Full Self-Driving (Supervised) which makes me think that Tesla is still trying to sell this system as Full Self-Driving, which it isn’t. If Tesla as a company were forthright and honest, they’d call the product Supervised Full Self-Driving and we’d refer to it as SFSD.

Instead, Tesla makes what’s arguably the most important part of the product name, Supervised, a parenthetical at the end rather than the first word people see in the name. I say it’s the most important part of the name because drivers who ignore the Supervised part are taking a significant risk. Tesla seems to be tacitly condoning this risky behavior by deemphasizing the word Supervised, probably as much as they can legally. There seems to be a long-standing problem with the Tesla corporate culture regarding what they’re selling as ADAS versus what it actually does.

School zone is a very strict rule, i.e. you go 20mph and not 1 mph over. It takes a lot of parameters and it's relatively not a hard problem compared to fundamentally driving in a safe way.

Besides a school zone is a thing that many people go an entire year without ever driving through

Plus there are different types of school zones. Some flashing, some with a sign that lists specific times. It's not a simple thing to solve and may involve every school zone being manually programmed.

Tesla focuses on the real issues that affect most people

 

[pamalabama]

Test Shows FSD Ignoring School Bus Stop Signs and Lights, Runs Over Child-Size Mannequin

https://dawnproject.com/the-dawn-pr...y-tests-of-tesla-full-self-driving-in-austin/

That's the dawn project. Useless to post anything from him.

He literally made a superbowl ad of FSD running over children by stepping on the accelerator pedal.

His argument is that FSD should not allow you to step on the accelerator pedal. That's ridiculous.

you can literally hit a child in a waymo by grabbing on the steering wheel while you're riding.

 

[COdogman]

That's the dawn project. Useless to post anything from him.

He literally made a superbowl ad of FSD running over children by stepping on the accelerator pedal.

His argument is that FSD should not allow you to step on the accelerator pedal. That's ridiculous.

So it did or didn't drive right past the school bus stop signs and lights?

 

[pamalabama]

So it did or didn't drive right past the school bus stop signs and lights?

yes it did. That's any easy case to supervise FSD. I mentioned earlier that school bus is one of the limitations.

plus you're so ignorant that you don't know that FSD already DOES stop for school buses.

The issue in this context is he had to park the bus on the side of the road to make FSD pass. Which means that FSD would have stopped for the school bus if it ever did really stop on that road. Because in the context of what is happening the school bus would never pull off to the side like that. It would stay centered where it is, especially if a child in the context needs to cross the street.

And when the child popped out at track-athlete speeds, it's impossible to brake if you've already blown past. Look at rivian. Hit a child in broad daylight during the IIHS test and they still earn a top safety pick + while doing that. Moronic

FSD stops for a school bus (front and rear) on a 2 lane road. No issues. It is mainly a 4 lane highway where you can run into issues if the bus is driving the opposite direction. Often 4 lane highways are divided which means you do not have to stop

 

[COdogman]

yes it did. That's any easy case to supervise FSD. I mentioned earlier that school bus is one of the limitations.

plus you're so ignorant that you don't know that FSD already DOES stop for school buses.

The issue in this context is he had to park the bus on the side of the road to make FSD pass. Which means that FSD would have stopped for the school bus if it ever did really stop on that road.

So I guess a stopped school bus with children crossing the street is not "real world" enough for Tesla to care about?

Blaming the bus driver is low even for you. What if the street were wide enough to provide the same amount of space as in the video without pulling over to the side?

The fact is when the bus stops and the signs and lights are operating, vehicles are required to stop. There is no asterisk for Tesla FSD that says they only have to stop if the driver blocks the path of the Robotaxi barreling towards them and the kids getting off the bus....

 

[pamalabama]

Blaming the bus driver is low even for you. What if the street were wide enough to provide the same amount of space as in the video without pulling over to the side?

i'm not blaming the bus driver. This is a set up test from the dawn project which does not reflect the real world

FSD sometimes does not stop for a school bus on a 4 lane highway. 2 lane is not an issue in normal circumstances. This road happens to be a little wide as there is room for cars to park off to the side.

if you are behind a school bus, FSD will stop and not pass the school bus. Even on a 4 lane highway.

FSD stops for a school bus in most circumstances that present themselves in the real world. But not all of them.

Stop signs, emergency vehicles, school zones. pretty much the only times that require any real supervision

FSD pulls over for emergency vehicles but they do not have the audio detection yet

 

[COdogman]

i'm not blaming the bus driver. This is a set up test from the dawn project which does not reflect the real world

FSD sometimes does not stop for a school bus on a 4 lane highway. 2 lane is not an issue in normal circumstances. This road happens to be a little wide as there is room for cars to park off to the side.

if you are behind a school bus, FSD will stop and not pass the school bus.

So FSD stops for a school bus in most circumstances that present themselves in the real world

School buses stopped to pick up/ drop off children on all types of roads is about as "real world" as it gets.

That is a situation where there should be no room for error. If even you admit it won't stop in that situation every time, then it's dangerous. The "real world" should not be forced to adapt to Tesla FSD fanbois - it works the other way around.

 

[pamalabama]

School buses stopped to pick up/ drop off children on all types of roads is about as "real world" as it gets.

That is a situation where there should be no room for error. If even you admit it won't stop in that situation every time, then it's dangerous. The "real world" should not be forced to adapt to Tesla FSD fanbois - it works the other way around.

That is absolutely not dangerous. It's not unsupervised but it is not dangerous.


By that definiton will rivian ADAS be dangerous when it is allowed on any roads because it does not stop for a pedestrian? Or a school bus? Of course not


These are supervised systems. Tesla never claimed FSD was unsupervised. And when you are compute limited it makes sense to improve the fundamental safety and driving quality of FSD before adding very specific features.

AI is really bad at following strict rules. School zone/school bus are one of the very few hard rules we have which probably uses a lot of parameters. FSD is getting a 4.5x model scaling which may enable these features

 

[Dave Cundiff]

Except they literally don't. It's an ignorant study.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/01/11/tesla-fatality-rates/

As I read it, Snopes said they couldn't confirm the data.

That's a long way from calling the study "ignorant."

Best wishes!

 

[docwhiz]

Tesla never claimed FSD was unsupervised

Tesla has always called it "Full Self Driving"
That's a lie.

 

[JM.]

What’s the point of FSD, if you have to supervise It the whole time?

Again, it's both hilarious and sad that people who have no experience with this think they should express opinions on it. Which are inherently useless because of the complete ignorance expressed right in your post. What's the point? That you as a normal driver have to make many adjustments per second, and the fatigue of this is well proven. You also have one set of eyes that needs to monitor a 360 degree circle. ADAS takes a massive workload off the human, and now the perception and ability to be focused on major threats is much higher. I arrive where I'm going refreshed, not beat down, and during the drive I'm FAR more aware of all the things that could be a problem. Such as seeing a problem a quarter mile ahead, which is easier because I'm not focused on the cars immediately around me, or on simple lane-keeping.

 

[docwhiz]

Again, it's both hilarious and sad that people who have no experience with this think they should express opinions on it. Which are inherently useless because of the complete ignorance expressed right in your post. What's the point? That you as a normal driver have to make many adjustments per second, and the fatigue of this is well proven. You also have one set of eyes that needs to monitor a 360 degree circle. ADAS takes a massive workload off the human, and now the perception and ability to be focused on major threats is much higher. I arrive where I'm going refreshed, not beat down, and during the drive I'm FAR more aware of all the things that could be a problem. Such as seeing a problem a quarter mile ahead, which is easier because I'm not focused on the cars immediately around me, or on simple lane-keeping.

I've had experience with FSD and I find it more stressful than manual driving.
You have to constantly monitor the car and I find that I don't always agree with the speed, road position, etc. and it's stressful to have to worry that it will do the right thing.
I'd rather just drive myself.

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