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The telemetry will tell the story, not the clickbait news headline based on preliminary information. I seriously doubt FSD would drive into a house.

JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
> telemetry will tell the story Idk, the death-toll gap between Tesla and Waymo seems to tell a story enough.
- Reason077 3mo ago
  There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents. Note: it’s important to distinguish between Autopilot and FSD here. “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer. This article never mentions FSD, only Autopilot.
  - JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
    > There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents It’s tough to say given many data sources are aggregated. For what it’s worth, my parents’ car is a Tesla with FSD and I’ve stopped it from, off the top of my head, racing into a red-lit intersection, running over a small dog and running into a closing garage door. I still use it. It mostly works. But I’m vigilantly monitoring it in a way that isn’t supported by Tesla’s marketing (which frequently shows drivers engaging it hands off).
    - Reason077 3mo ago
      The garage door I can certainly believe. Its AI brain just won’t be trained to look for that sort of thing. I’m surprised about the red lights and animals, however: ours seems very cautious around any kind of live animal on the road, even braking and manoeuvring to avoid birds on the road. It’s not so good at avoiding the corpses of already dead ones, however (bump!).
      - Retric 3mo ago
        > The garage door I can certainly believe. Its AI brain just won’t be trained to look for that sort of thing. Why not? That’s likely to come up at minimum thousands of times per day, and likely vastly more as the system improves.
        Reason077 3mo ago
        I get the impression that it kind of comprehends the world as a horizontal plane. It’s focused on objects on the surface and isn’t looking for hazards coming from above. Could that be improved? Sure! Is it a priority for them? Maybe not…
        Retric 3mo ago
        At minimum it needs to pay attention to railroad crossing bars and bridges. They show a 2D representation to the driver because that’s good enough for drivers, but I wouldn’t assume that represents how the system operates internally at every stage. Even navigating requires the concept of bridges crossing roads without intersecting them.
        Reason077 3mo ago
        It is indeed known to have issues at railway crossings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783427 AFAIK, there's no issue with bridges that cross roads, however. It will just ignore a road that's above or below the one you're travelling on that doesn't intersect with yours. Just like a human driver would do.
        Retric 3mo ago
        > It is indeed known to have issues at railway crossings: At scale you can “have issues” and still work 99% of the time. If it’s completely incapable of handling railroad crossings that’s relatively easy to verify. > AFAIK, there's no issue with bridges that cross roads, however. It will just ignore a road that's above or below the one you're travelling on that doesn't intersect with yours. Just like a human driver would do. As a user of the system that’s worked it all out it’s not an issue for you, but getting that behavior from raw sensor data is non trivial.
  - FireBeyond 3mo ago
    > “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer. I'm not sure the point you're making here - that just sounds like "Tesla couldn't care less about updating their software and it's still "not good". People it hits are still dead. "Oh well, it's not like Tesla had updated the software, so you can't blame them".
    - Reason077 3mo ago
      Oh, I absolutely agree. Ideally Telsa would dump the old Autopilot stack and put all cars (that have the hardware to support it) on a free version of FSD, nerfed so that it's roughly feature-equivalent to Autopilot. That way everyone would get the safety advantages of FSD, including the really important stuff like better driver attention monitoring. Unfortunately, Tesla keeps Autopilot bad because it forces more people to pay for FSD, and in this case they seem to care more about profits than safety.
      - ben_w 3mo ago
        > Unfortunately, Tesla keeps Autopilot bad because it forces more people to pay for FSD, and in this case they seem to care more about profits than safety. Not saying you're wrong, but I think "it forces people to pay for FSD" is a poor decision if true. More likely it creates market confusion (as we see in this thread) about exactly which of the two products that Tesla advertises as things which drive your car for you is the more dangerous one and which is "the good one" (though from their taxis, I think the scare quotes are still justified even then). I'm also not even sure if they do care about profits (or safety), given Musk's made about as much from selling Tesla shares as the company has made in lifetime profit, before getting shareholder approval for a deal to give him more shares. (Conditionally give, yes, but the nature of it all suggests share price is more important than profit or safety, and if you don't care about such things that makes it much easier for them to sell a million robots or whatever).
        3mo ago
  - budsniffer952 3mo ago
    You are on Hacker News, you don't think we know what FSD is?
    - Reason077 3mo ago
      The article only mentions Autopilot, but half the comments here are talking about FSD.
      - 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago
        Makes sense It's relevant because it arguably affects the driver's beliefs and behaviour, whether they are using FSD or just Autopilot It's a separate upgrade but it's reasonable to assume the marketing may affect drivers using only Autopilot If HN commenters are confusing the two then this only strengthens that argument
  - bumby 3mo ago
    To me, having safety features that cost nothing for the manufacturer to enable sold as an option is a gross practice. See: The software that enabled a secondary AOA sensor on the Boeing 737Max.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago
    "There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents" https://theintercept.com/2023/01/10/tesla-crash-footage-autopilot/ https://theintercept.com/2023/01/10/tesla-crash-footage-auto... No deaths in this one Note the comment about Google's Waymo ceasing to use the term "full self-driving" after this accident Why would they do that Let the reader decide
- is_true 3mo ago
  does it makes sense to compare the two given that waymos are driven in a limited set of circumstances and most of the times below speeds that could kill you on a crash?
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
paulryanrogers 3mo ago
If Tesla was bold enough to intentionally auto disengage seconds before an accident (to avoid liability) then can they be trusted to maintain telemetry throughout dicey circumstances?
- IncreasePosts 3mo ago
  That's not what they do, and any crash happening within 5 seconds of fsd disengagement is considered to be using fsd.
  - paulryanrogers 3mo ago
    Apparently they do at least intentionally disengage, often with little time to react. When they could instead start braking and alert the driver. https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report I also don't trust the motives of a company that names something "Full Self Driving" knowing it's not fully self driving. Never mind their shenanigans around avoiding or disregarding regulations and reporting requirements.
  - budsniffer952 3mo ago
    Citation please.
  - FireBeyond 3mo ago
    That's how it is now, and (like most things safety-related) Tesla had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it. Just like the initial attention/distracted monitor only required your hand on the steering wheel once every fifteen minutes. They also considered AEB-activation to mean that meant that FSD wasn't active, even if AEB only kicked in because of FSD's decisions.
- dlcarrier 3mo ago
  Auto disengaging seconds before an acciden't isn't a Tesla-specific thing, it's part of the standard for any driving automation SAE level 3 or lower (https://www.sae.org/news/blog/sae-levels-driving-automation-clarity-refinements https://www.sae.org/news/blog/sae-levels-driving-automation-...). The vehicle will return driving over to the human any time it's unable to determine what to do.
gerdesj 3mo ago
Are there any US federal or state laws stipulating some sort of black box style recording of data for accident investigation? If not then I suspect a Tesla will turn out to be quite surprisingly forgetful about what it was up to in a road traffic collision. RTC is a UK term that took over from RTA (road traffic accident) - it describes what happened rather than heading off into the weeds as to cause.
- Reason077 3mo ago
  I don’t know about laws, but Teslas automatically record and save everything in the event of a collision. My brother was hit by another car while driving a Tesla a few years ago and it was very easy to retrieve video from the Tesla’s cameras and show who was at fault.
IncreasePosts 3mo ago
The reddit post from the grandchild says "autopilot", which is really just lane keeping and adaptive cruise control. I believe autopilot would totally run into a house. It doesn't respect stop signs or red lights. If the house is at a T intersection the autopilot might try to drive right through it. I agree about FSD though
- FireBeyond 3mo ago
  Adaptive cruise control certainly shouldn't run into a house, for the same reason it should detect a stationary (or slow) object in front of you and gradually slow to a stop before it.
thephyber 3mo ago
And _we_ will never see the telemetry. Maybe NTSB will. Certainly Tesla will. And that will inform how their PR team responds to this collision. Maybe some plaintiffs will if they can manage to subpoena the data from Tesla in some hypothetical future court case. The reason I will never buy a Tesla is because it is one of the most advanced surveillance systems against the driver, but there is no one empowered to inspect the car / company (comprehensively, not superficially). > I seriously doubt FSD would drive into a house. Strawman. You seem to be insinuating that FSD intended to aim for a house. Usually the chain of events would start with something like “FSD was engaged on the road and in the intended lane” then “FSD lost track of the boundary of the lane” or maybe “FSD identified an obstruction in the lane so it maneuvered out of lane”.
cosnenc 3mo ago
Software with bugs in it? Preposterous!
ojosilva 3mo ago
Teslas do glithcy speed limits readings often, from GPS drift (ie. it thinks the car is on the highway) or may be deceived by some sign with numbers on the street. When that happens and depending on Autopilot [1] settings, the car will shoot out to reach the new limit. If the driver is distracted enough not to notice or react in time, the car could crash. GPS inaccuracy does sound plausible given Teslas slow down if an abrupt change of direction is near (ie roundabout) per GPS and map data. The house sits at a corner, not a culthesac. 1. It's not clear the driver allegedly said "autopilot" or "FSD"

JumpCrisscross 3mo ago

> telemetry will tell the story Idk, the death-toll gap between Tesla and Waymo seems to tell a story enough.

Reason077 3mo ago
There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents. Note: it’s important to distinguish between Autopilot and FSD here. “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer. This article never mentions FSD, only Autopilot.
- JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
  > There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents It’s tough to say given many data sources are aggregated. For what it’s worth, my parents’ car is a Tesla with FSD and I’ve stopped it from, off the top of my head, racing into a red-lit intersection, running over a small dog and running into a closing garage door. I still use it. It mostly works. But I’m vigilantly monitoring it in a way that isn’t supported by Tesla’s marketing (which frequently shows drivers engaging it hands off).
  - Reason077 3mo ago
    The garage door I can certainly believe. Its AI brain just won’t be trained to look for that sort of thing. I’m surprised about the red lights and animals, however: ours seems very cautious around any kind of live animal on the road, even braking and manoeuvring to avoid birds on the road. It’s not so good at avoiding the corpses of already dead ones, however (bump!).
    - Retric 3mo ago
      > The garage door I can certainly believe. Its AI brain just won’t be trained to look for that sort of thing. Why not? That’s likely to come up at minimum thousands of times per day, and likely vastly more as the system improves.
      - Reason077 3mo ago
        I get the impression that it kind of comprehends the world as a horizontal plane. It’s focused on objects on the surface and isn’t looking for hazards coming from above. Could that be improved? Sure! Is it a priority for them? Maybe not…
        Retric 3mo ago
        At minimum it needs to pay attention to railroad crossing bars and bridges. They show a 2D representation to the driver because that’s good enough for drivers, but I wouldn’t assume that represents how the system operates internally at every stage. Even navigating requires the concept of bridges crossing roads without intersecting them.
        Reason077 3mo ago
        It is indeed known to have issues at railway crossings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783427 AFAIK, there's no issue with bridges that cross roads, however. It will just ignore a road that's above or below the one you're travelling on that doesn't intersect with yours. Just like a human driver would do.
        Retric 3mo ago
        > It is indeed known to have issues at railway crossings: At scale you can “have issues” and still work 99% of the time. If it’s completely incapable of handling railroad crossings that’s relatively easy to verify. > AFAIK, there's no issue with bridges that cross roads, however. It will just ignore a road that's above or below the one you're travelling on that doesn't intersect with yours. Just like a human driver would do. As a user of the system that’s worked it all out it’s not an issue for you, but getting that behavior from raw sensor data is non trivial.
- FireBeyond 3mo ago
  > “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer. I'm not sure the point you're making here - that just sounds like "Tesla couldn't care less about updating their software and it's still "not good". People it hits are still dead. "Oh well, it's not like Tesla had updated the software, so you can't blame them".
  - Reason077 3mo ago
    Oh, I absolutely agree. Ideally Telsa would dump the old Autopilot stack and put all cars (that have the hardware to support it) on a free version of FSD, nerfed so that it's roughly feature-equivalent to Autopilot. That way everyone would get the safety advantages of FSD, including the really important stuff like better driver attention monitoring. Unfortunately, Tesla keeps Autopilot bad because it forces more people to pay for FSD, and in this case they seem to care more about profits than safety.
    - ben_w 3mo ago
      > Unfortunately, Tesla keeps Autopilot bad because it forces more people to pay for FSD, and in this case they seem to care more about profits than safety. Not saying you're wrong, but I think "it forces people to pay for FSD" is a poor decision if true. More likely it creates market confusion (as we see in this thread) about exactly which of the two products that Tesla advertises as things which drive your car for you is the more dangerous one and which is "the good one" (though from their taxis, I think the scare quotes are still justified even then). I'm also not even sure if they do care about profits (or safety), given Musk's made about as much from selling Tesla shares as the company has made in lifetime profit, before getting shareholder approval for a deal to give him more shares. (Conditionally give, yes, but the nature of it all suggests share price is more important than profit or safety, and if you don't care about such things that makes it much easier for them to sell a million robots or whatever).
      - 3mo ago
- budsniffer952 3mo ago
  You are on Hacker News, you don't think we know what FSD is?
  - Reason077 3mo ago
    The article only mentions Autopilot, but half the comments here are talking about FSD.
    - 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago
      Makes sense It's relevant because it arguably affects the driver's beliefs and behaviour, whether they are using FSD or just Autopilot It's a separate upgrade but it's reasonable to assume the marketing may affect drivers using only Autopilot If HN commenters are confusing the two then this only strengthens that argument
- bumby 3mo ago
  To me, having safety features that cost nothing for the manufacturer to enable sold as an option is a gross practice. See: The software that enabled a secondary AOA sensor on the Boeing 737Max.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago
  "There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents" https://theintercept.com/2023/01/10/tesla-crash-footage-autopilot/ https://theintercept.com/2023/01/10/tesla-crash-footage-auto... No deaths in this one Note the comment about Google's Waymo ceasing to use the term "full self-driving" after this accident Why would they do that Let the reader decide
is_true 3mo ago
does it makes sense to compare the two given that waymos are driven in a limited set of circumstances and most of the times below speeds that could kill you on a crash?

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

paulryanrogers 3mo ago

If Tesla was bold enough to intentionally auto disengage seconds before an accident (to avoid liability) then can they be trusted to maintain telemetry throughout dicey circumstances?

IncreasePosts 3mo ago
That's not what they do, and any crash happening within 5 seconds of fsd disengagement is considered to be using fsd.
- paulryanrogers 3mo ago
  Apparently they do at least intentionally disengage, often with little time to react. When they could instead start braking and alert the driver. https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report I also don't trust the motives of a company that names something "Full Self Driving" knowing it's not fully self driving. Never mind their shenanigans around avoiding or disregarding regulations and reporting requirements.
- budsniffer952 3mo ago
  Citation please.
- FireBeyond 3mo ago
  That's how it is now, and (like most things safety-related) Tesla had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it. Just like the initial attention/distracted monitor only required your hand on the steering wheel once every fifteen minutes. They also considered AEB-activation to mean that meant that FSD wasn't active, even if AEB only kicked in because of FSD's decisions.
dlcarrier 3mo ago
Auto disengaging seconds before an acciden't isn't a Tesla-specific thing, it's part of the standard for any driving automation SAE level 3 or lower (https://www.sae.org/news/blog/sae-levels-driving-automation-clarity-refinements https://www.sae.org/news/blog/sae-levels-driving-automation-...). The vehicle will return driving over to the human any time it's unable to determine what to do.

gerdesj 3mo ago

Are there any US federal or state laws stipulating some sort of black box style recording of data for accident investigation? If not then I suspect a Tesla will turn out to be quite surprisingly forgetful about what it was up to in a road traffic collision. RTC is a UK term that took over from RTA (road traffic accident) - it describes what happened rather than heading off into the weeds as to cause.

Reason077 3mo ago
I don’t know about laws, but Teslas automatically record and save everything in the event of a collision. My brother was hit by another car while driving a Tesla a few years ago and it was very easy to retrieve video from the Tesla’s cameras and show who was at fault.

IncreasePosts 3mo ago

The reddit post from the grandchild says "autopilot", which is really just lane keeping and adaptive cruise control. I believe autopilot would totally run into a house. It doesn't respect stop signs or red lights. If the house is at a T intersection the autopilot might try to drive right through it. I agree about FSD though

FireBeyond 3mo ago
Adaptive cruise control certainly shouldn't run into a house, for the same reason it should detect a stationary (or slow) object in front of you and gradually slow to a stop before it.

thephyber 3mo ago

And _we_ will never see the telemetry. Maybe NTSB will. Certainly Tesla will. And that will inform how their PR team responds to this collision. Maybe some plaintiffs will if they can manage to subpoena the data from Tesla in some hypothetical future court case. The reason I will never buy a Tesla is because it is one of the most advanced surveillance systems against the driver, but there is no one empowered to inspect the car / company (comprehensively, not superficially). > I seriously doubt FSD would drive into a house. Strawman. You seem to be insinuating that FSD intended to aim for a house. Usually the chain of events would start with something like “FSD was engaged on the road and in the intended lane” then “FSD lost track of the boundary of the lane” or maybe “FSD identified an obstruction in the lane so it maneuvered out of lane”.

cosnenc 3mo ago

Software with bugs in it? Preposterous!

ojosilva 3mo ago

Teslas do glithcy speed limits readings often, from GPS drift (ie. it thinks the car is on the highway) or may be deceived by some sign with numbers on the street. When that happens and depending on Autopilot [1] settings, the car will shoot out to reach the new limit. If the driver is distracted enough not to notice or react in time, the car could crash. GPS inaccuracy does sound plausible given Teslas slow down if an abrupt change of direction is near (ie roundabout) per GPS and map data. The house sits at a corner, not a culthesac. 1. It's not clear the driver allegedly said "autopilot" or "FSD"