After 5-weeks, I turned FSD Beta off!

After years of waiting I finally got my FSD Beta! After 6-weeks I turned it off.

I found the promise of the FSD Beta to be overblown. Yes it is very cool that the car will navigate on city streets to a destination. But the car is far too timid to be usable. It is worse than driving with a student driver. Also, the car’s hesitation causes a lot of problems with other drivers who get confused when they see the car stop or slow, when it should not. But that is not what made me turn it off.

I turned it off because it made the overall driving experience annoying, and more dangerous.

With the beta turned-on, the car makes speed changes at nearly every speed limit sign, even when only running TACC. Not only is this annoying but these changers often alarm my passengers and sometimes surprise the cars behind. The car does not do this when the FSD is disabled.

And then there is a notice at nearly every traffic light that one is coming, even when running only on TACC. I find I am spending time clearing nuisance alerts instead focusing 100% of my time on driving the car. And the sudden speed changes, if you miss one of the alerts, is just another version of the phantom breaking problem with the same set of issues for the cars behind. Note that I have this feature disabled under AP. This does not occur if FSD is disabled.

Next we have speed based lane changes. I disabled this under AP and the FSD stack just ignores this as well, and there is no way to tell it not to do so.

So overall, the benefit of having FSD is very minimal, while the negative impact to quality and enjoyment of driving is very real. I definably will not be buying FSD on a future car, unless these problems are fixed.

"Tesla Autopilot Engaged in Model X" by Ian Maddox is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog Feed thumbnail

 

[Joboo7777]

Sure you aren’t over reacting? Latest version looks pretty safe here

https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/10oetdb

I’ve had this happen to me. I’m not sure how far the car would have gone across traffic but I certainly didn’t want to find out so I immediately took control. This also happens to me when there are 2 turning lanes. The car likes to start out in the far outside turning lane only to cut the turn short and end up in the inside lane. Then if/when it realizes there is a car in the inside lane it abruptly stops short creating an abrupt stop for the car behind me. Definitely creates a high stress level similar to the feeling I got teaching my 16 year old son how to drive.

 

[KArnold]

I used the "Report" voice command to report these incidents/bug and got confirmed receipt by Tesla.

How does Tesla "confirm receipt"?

As stated, conventional wisdom is that the voice command "bug report" simply bookmarks your log. They don't actually do anything with it.

 

[Dewg]

When you say "works quite well" I'd say you haven't experienced many of the issues I've had. I have seen the car come almost to a complete stop on the highway with nothing in front of, or beside me, almost causing a major accident. It happened so fast that by the time I smashed the accelerator to the floor to avoid getting rear ended, which happened in a split second, it was almost too late. I've had phantom braking so many times and has almost caused a wreck twice. And, yes, I do pay attention all the time and am ready to "intervene" but the car can react so fast, in such an unexpected place/way that I can see where it can simply "out think" even the best driver. In the situation I mentioned above, where the car pulled in front of an oncoming pickup truck and directly into the front of another car, I was sitting there, simply waiting for traffic to clear, when it jetted out with no "advancing forward" warning or any other indications. There is a location on a local 4-lane, divided highway, with a 70mph speed limit that the car routinely comes to a complete stop right after it comes over a slight rise. I've actually let it do this once, when I had a clear roadway, to see if it would actually just STOP on the highway! And it did. I have story after story of me saving the car or my own life, and others, from crashes.

However, if I'm simply on the interstate, low traffic volume, going from Point A to Point B, yes it works quite well. However, last week I was in Colorado and had a rental car that I clicked on its' TACC and it did the same thing with no Phantom Braking, no random stopping, no craziness. So, I wouldn't say I expect L4, but I do expect a modicum of safety and commonsense programming and I'm not seeing enough changes in the updates, or communication from Tesla, to give me that "warm fuzzy."

I haven't had many of the issues you've experienced. To be fair, I do have issues from time to time - the car will pick the wrong lane, or have a jerky turn. I do get phantom braking from time to time as well, it's just usually very minor - 5mph or so. I haven't had it slam on the brakes in quite a while.

I have story after story of my car driving great for me and saving me from people driving like idiots around me. Just yesterday, while on the freeway, I checked my mirrors and blind spot to make sure the lane was clear, then initiated a lane change. The car started the change and then aborted and quickly returned to my lane - because a large F-150 was speeding two lanes over and decided to change lanes into the same lane, ignoring my blinkers and movement. I had the right of way, but had I been driving manually, I wouldn't have likely seen him in time and he could have hit me or caused an accident behind him when he corrected himself.

I'm sorry you have a poor experience, and hopefully you can get it resolved, either through equipment replacement (cameras, the FSD computer, or GPS equipment), reinstallation of the firmware, calibration of the cameras, or some combination of those. There have been people with terrible experiences who end up finding it's a GPS antenna problem, an FSD computer that needed to be replaced, camera wiring harnesses that were loose, etc.

 

[DWtsn]

I haven't had many of the issues you've experienced. To be fair, I do have issues from time to time - the car will pick the wrong lane, or have a jerky turn. I do get phantom braking from time to time as well, it's just usually very minor - 5mph or so. I haven't had it slam on the brakes in quite a while.

I have story after story of my car driving great for me and saving me from people driving like idiots around me. Just yesterday, while on the freeway, I checked my mirrors and blind spot to make sure the lane was clear, then initiated a lane change. The car started the change and then aborted and quickly returned to my lane - because a large F-150 was speeding two lanes over and decided to change lanes into the same lane, ignoring my blinkers and movement. I had the right of way, but had I been driving manually, I wouldn't have likely seen him in time and he could have hit me or caused an accident behind him when he corrected himself.

I'm sorry you have a poor experience, and hopefully you can get it resolved, either through equipment replacement (cameras, the FSD computer, or GPS equipment), reinstallation of the firmware, calibration of the cameras, or some combination of those. There have been people with terrible experiences who end up finding it's a GPS antenna problem, an FSD computer that needed to be replaced, camera wiring harnesses that were loose, etc.

I have definitely had my car save my bacon!! It has incredible technology and I pray it gets better. The reason I haven't turned off my FSDb is because I think the technology cannot get better if people don't continue to gather data for the car/tech to improve. I think I'm fairly unique because I live in the country and I drive rural country roads, small state highways, major interstates and I drive in/out of the DFW metroplex weekly and experience major city traffic. So my car gets a lot of every style and manner of driving, speed limits, traffic, obstacles, etc. My car gets to figure out what to do with the random pedestrian at a crosswalk in Dallas and a cow that happens to wander on the road in the country. Praying the tech gets better. I can only imagine the amount of engineering to get a car to "think" and see the way a human sees. I can't fathom that level of technology, but I'm willing to help out and drive mine in as many diverse areas as I can and let the car "drive itself" as much as possible. My biggest frustration is when it just does something that is unimaginable and I'm just sitting there with the WTF look on my face, staring at the screen, cursing and saying, "what were YOU thinking?" Knowing all to well that the Engineer I'm cursing at will never hear or see it!! lol.

 

[TLLMRRJ]

I almost got rear ended this morning as people were leaving church. They had the right of way and my path had a red light. FSD beta slammed on the brakes and started to give me the take over red hands of death warnings. It stopped 2 cars short of the red light and the car behind me wasn't expecting it. He swerved to another lane to avoid bumping into me.

I was afraid he was going to follow me home since it's a few blocks from my house, and it looks like I may have did this on purpose. We were going 55 in a 40 and he was tail gating me.

I only paid for 1 month to try out beta, and I am going to wait a year before I try it again. But when I try it again, I am definitely going to put on a custom bumper sticker that says something like, "Student computer driving, stay back."

 

[ATPMSD]

the technology cannot get better if people don't continue to gather data for the car/tech to improve.

In principal I agree with this statement. But in practice, Tesla does not have a system that collects data from ordinary customers like you and me; there is no feedback loop unless you are in their Beta tester group.

 

[BigNick]

I see such a wide variety of reactions to FSD from "it tries to murder me on a daily basis" to "it works perfectly."

I suppose this is due to the driving conditions FSD gets used in. Downtown Washington DC traffic is another world compared to rural Iowa traffic, and a 25MPH suburban subdivision with children and pets around is something else entirely.

In some situations, a human will expect certain conditions and rule out others. You wouldn't expect a child to dart out into a 75MPH Interstate highway after a toy or ball, but while in a subdivision, you're on high alert for it. Conversely, you aren't expecting a herd of deer to run across a residential street but when driving in a rural area, it's one of your main things to be on the lookout for. In an urban setting, red-light runners are far more common, while an Interstate highway eliminates this possibility by design.

Perhaps the FSD system isn't prioritizing what is most likely to happen based on overall situation and for that reason it's being so twitchy?

Disclaimer: I've never tried FSD, only read the praises and horror stories. (Maybe in 10-20 years once it's had enough time to be proven, I might consider buying it.)

 

[KArnold]

there is no feedback loop unless you are in their Beta tester group

I assume you are referring to the YT influencers who still have the REPORT button. A "feedback loop" by definition is a loop, a 2-way communication. From where I sit, there is no feedback loop at all. Those people groups can report incidents to Tesla but nobody outside of corporate knows what happens to that information, if anything. IMHO, it's likely zero action for 99.9% of things based upon their fix rate of reported incidents.

This is a mixed bag for me. If I were king of Tesla, certainly I would want to minimize my expenses. But they already had the report button - why not leave it there, if even a placebo for those who think it's doing something similar to the BUG REPORT command? Or even an auto-responder to their E-Mail that says "We received your comments and they are important - forwarded to engineering" even if they are intentionally lying (which obviously they have no ethical issues with). So while this "feedback loop" doesn't change much from an engineering perspective, at least customers can feel like they are directly contributing. We're on the beta team - we want to help. We want to be part of a real feedback loop. But short of that, at least give the impression of having such a mechanism, especially when it could be done very, very easily.

We who run the FSDb are gathering raw data for Telsa. We assume they have a means to translate that data into useful business information and to a large extent they likely can do that. Or perhaps they are getting enough FSDb bug reports from employees/influencers to keep them busy for quite a while - it's not yet time to address the edge cases that are unique to others and that we all see every day. Sure, they realize they have serious issues with nav, turn signals, lane choice, and so on - they probably don't need a lot more examples for that as they have thousands already.

But it's the lack of a feedback loop that makes me think L5 driving for Tesla is not even on the horizon in terms of a timeframe. If we assume they top 10 issues were addressed, perhaps the "feedback loop" will change and they will start caring about our unique situations as the frequency of bugs decreases further. That sure feels like a long time away.

 

[ATPMSD]

A "feedback loop" by definition is a loop, a 2-way communication.

You are being a bit too literal, although using the word “report” would have been better for me to use. Not sure I agree Tesla is getting adequate “reports.” In my evaluation (post #1) it seems clear to me that they failed to do regression testing on TACC and AP, since FSDb impacted those systems. I suggest they are focusing on, and only getting reports on FSDb functionality.

 

[PianoAl]

But the car is far too timid to be usable.

I rarely use FSDb because of the mistakes it makes but find that the timidity can often be solved with a foot in the accelerator.

 

[Azlaneguy]

How does Tesla "confirm receipt"?

As stated, conventional wisdom is that the voice command "bug report" simply bookmarks your log. They don't actually do anything with it.

You get a message saying thanks for sending and participating in bug reporting. I'll try a screen shot next time.

 

[Ash83]

I waited for 3 months to give it a real shot and see if noticeable changes happens between updates. unfurnately I noticed no improvement from Oct - January.

The crazy thing it actually works really well 80% of the time, but when it screws**w up it does it in a royal fashion. I think it will need time to get that last 20%. without those crazy edge cases stable we cannot call it Full Self driving and it should not be released for the public.

The wheel shaking and it giving up while doing a left turn into incoming traffic and stopping mid way was the moment I clicked unsubscribe.

 

[PianoAl]

I've used it on this route about eight times, and it's been flawless. I use it because it allows me to override the erroneous 30 MPH speed limits.

On two occasions, it neatly drove a little onto the shoulder and back when it got scared of approaching trucks. Also, it will go over the yellow center line to give cyclists more room.

 

[DWtsn]

In principal I agree with this statement. But in practice, Tesla does not have a system that collects data from ordinary customers like you and me; there is no feedback loop unless you are in their Beta tester group.

If we are running FSDb, are they not collecting that data from us as "beta" testers? I guess that was my understanding was they are constantly collecting data from the FSDb cars/drivers.

 

[eli_]

I only mess around with it when a new significant build comes out, which hasn't really happened since December. It's fun to LARP as an unpaid Tesla employee testing unreleased stuff, but you have to be in this mental mode of wanting to try it out and experiment. For day-to-day driving it feels great to turn it off and drive normally.

 

[Supcom]

If we are running FSDb, are they not collecting that data from us as "beta" testers? I guess that was my understanding was they are constantly collecting data from the FSDb cars/drivers.

A condition of using FSDb is that data sharing is enabled. Cars that do not have FSD or do not enable FSDb may elect to NOT share data with Tesla.

 

[ATPMSD]

A condition of using FSDb is that data sharing is enabled. Cars that do not have FSD or do not enable FSDb may elect to NOT share data with Tesla.

But you cannot flag problem. There is no “Report” button for the masses.

 

[DWtsn]

And the plot thickens!!! (Out of control Tesla slams into San Ramon home)

 

[galimpic]

And the plot thickens!!! (Out of control Tesla slams into San Ramon home)

It's probably the very usual case of the driver pressing the accelerator instead of the brake. Happens many times every day, but it's news because it's Tesla, and the suspect is automatically the car. And they of course had to research if "self driving" was turned on to enter the garage...

 

[Huncowboy]

I agree with the OP. I am about to turn mine off too. The instrument panel is just way too busy. Even if I turn off FSD visualization it still shows all the cars, etc. I guess it is bugged.

The whole point of an auto pilot is to relax. The exact opposite is happening when using FSD (other than on highways). You really have to watch out. The basic auto pilot is awesome on highways and I use it all the time. Changing lanes is nice to have but it is only doing an OK job when there is traffic. I would not even pay for that not to mention FSD. 15k? LOL...