Any beginner tips for FSD / providing feedback to Tesla? Also, my experience so far on day 1

[andrew603]

Hey all, I'm new here.

I just got my beta access. Looks like some people got instructions on how to provide feedback to Tesla. I can see in some other threads that there is an email address and "Record Video" button but I didn't get any info on that... my beta just installed and shows the release notes. And I didn't see the video button when I was out driving (I may have just missed it). I have a 2019 Model 3.

I read some of the previous threads but I'm not sure if those are still best practice.

Also, some notes on my experience thus far:

• I was at 98 safety score for well over a week after it supposedly started rolling out to 98s, and nothing.
• I finally hit 99 and it took 5 days at 99 to get beta.
• The beta just showed up as a normal update for me. It took about 45 minutes to install.
• I never got an email like some people did. But I know they have my right email as I get other emails from them.
• I'm in a medium sized (just < 100k people) suburban / urban city in New England, USA. So lots of aggressive drivers and lots of potholes. And lots of streets that would confuse even a human driver.

I took a drive down the street and I had to take control 4 times:

1. Taking a left onto a moderately busy road from a stop sign. It was starting to move forward and there was clearly a car coming from my left. I don't know if it was going to try to turn so I may have not had to take control this time but I felt better safe than sorry.
2. Taking a right onto a road with a higher speed limit. It took the turn WAY to slow, I had to accelerate to not cause other's to have to aggressively break. Granted this one was just a case of FSD not being aggressive enough vs actually making a mistake but it was a very safe turn, there was no reason to go that slow (when I say slow I mean... 5MPH on a 40MPH road... that slow).
3. Taking a left at a stop light onto a road with three lanes. It merged into the innermost lane but in order to make the next right hand turn I needed to be two lanes over. Ended up completely missing the turn (no way it could have safely gotten over at that point as there were other cars). A human driver would have turned into the outer lane. And yes, the car had right of way and could have gone into any of the three lanes but chose the inner one... literally the worst of the 3 choices.
4. Taking a right onto a street with a divider in the middle and some shallow potholes on the right. Didn't even attempt to turn, just sat there. I had to manually turn. There was a car behind me so couldn't wait to see if it would eventually figure it out.

For both 3 and 4 the steering wheel kind of jittered left to right rapidly as if making tons of tiny corrections.

Overall not thrilled with the experience so far but I get that it is a beta. And I also get that New England roads can be tough even for humans. But crossing my fingers that it gets better.

 

[boaterva]

Every disengagement provides feedback. So does the video button, which you don't need to press unless there's other feedback you want to add, like when underway under beta. The button is at the top of the screen, right next to (too close to) the profile selector. I didn't get the email either, but I've seen it several times on twitter, so, I don't really care . The email address is in the release notes, you definitely should find it there. Emails are only needed if you want to add even more precise information for a particular timestamp, etc. Feedback here really doesn't serve any purpose, especially when you don't even say what version you are on (I assume 10.5?). If you search on youtube, there are tons of FSD beta videos, some from people that have been doing this for over a year, and you can see whether your experiences are normal or not. Twitter and YT are the best places to see what's going on, who's getting the new version when, and the status. Best of luck, and, every tester does add new info, but you do need to pay attention and be sure watch out and take over as needed!

 

[andrew603]

Every disengagement provides feedback. So does the video button, which you don't need to press unless there's other feedback you want to add, like when underway under beta. The button is at the top of the screen, right next to (too close to) the profile selector.

Awesome. That is very helpful, thank you!

Feedback here really doesn't serve any purpose, especially when you don't even say what version you are on (I assume 10.5?). If you search on youtube, there are tons of FSD beta videos, some from people that have been doing this for over a year, and you can see whether your experiences are normal or not. I assume 10.5?

I'm on firmware version 2021.36.8.8... But I'm not sure what 10.5 refers to since I don't even see 10.5 on TeslaFi, so are you referring to another version?

Also, yes, I figured no one from Tesla is watching here I just wanted to share my experiences. Since I have watched a lot of the YouTube and they gave me the impression it would be much better than it is. I also have it set to "Normal"... I'm going to "Aggressive" at some point with the same route and see if I have better luck.

 

[andrew603]

Update, went out to the car to find it. Yes I'm 10.5.. also found the video button, thank you @boaterva !

Also in my previous post I meant I'm on "average" and I'm going to try "assertive" to see if it does better (couldn't remember the setting names off the top of my head).

 

[PDX-Y]

1. Taking a left onto a moderately busy road from a stop sign. It was starting to move forward and there was clearly a car coming from my left. I don't know if it was going to try to turn so I may have not had to take control this time but I felt better safe than sorry.

Let it creep. This can be unnerving watching a machine do it (you'd be fine if your grandmother did, though), but the creep is part of the turn process. My experience got much better once I started trusting the car here. You'll feel it when the car commits, it's not subtle.

1. Taking a right onto a road with a higher speed limit. It took the turn WAY to slow, I had to accelerate to not cause other's to have to aggressively break. Granted this one was just a case of FSD not being aggressive enough vs actually making a mistake but it was a very safe turn, there was no reason to go that slow (when I say slow I mean... 5MPH on a 40MPH road... that slow).

I've seen it be slow entering traffic, though not 5 mph. I've never seen it cut another car off though, just take its time accelerating. Are you sure there were cars behind you, or are you just afraid of what would have happened if there were? If there's a collision you needed to avoid, absolutely use the report button. But if not... trust the car?

1. Taking a left at a stop light onto a road with three lanes. It merged into the innermost lane but in order to make the next right hand turn I needed to be two lanes over. Ended up completely missing the turn (no way it could have safely gotten over at that point as there were other cars). A human driver would have turned into the outer lane. And yes, the car had right of way and could have gone into any of the three lanes but chose the inner one... literally the worst of the 3 choices.

People have complained about this behavior, but... sorry, the car is right here. You're supposed to turn into the inner lane and then execute a lane change. Most states have explicit laws to that effect. If it's simply not possible to get merged to the right before your next turn, then I'd call that a navigation failure and not a driving failure.

Broadly there are things that are reasonable to expect from autonomy, but there is a big space of "human driving behavior" that we'd never tolerate from a machine. Wide lane-switching turns are one of them, I think. If you want it to drive you around you need to be happy with it doing so within the letter of the law.

 

[EVNow]

A human driver would have turned into the outer lane. And yes, the car had right of way and could have gone into any of the three lanes but chose the inner one... literally the worst of the 3 choices.

Human driver would be wrong. You can search other threads - most states have rules that say you have to turn to the inner most lane, if you are on the left most turn lane. So, the question - how to get over quickly to the right hand lane to turn.

Either FSD has to ignore the rule in this case or take a different route if it can't make that right turn.

I think when robotaxis actually become a reality - we will see cars driving according to the rules and probably missing a lot of turns but rerouting to get to the destination.

BTW, you can use the other threads dedicated for experience with FSD Beta.

 

[andrew603]

I've seen it be slow entering traffic, though not 5 mph. I've never seen it cut another car off though, just take its time accelerating. Are you sure there were cars behind you, or are you just afraid of what would have happened if there were? If there's a collision you needed to avoid, absolutely use the report button. But if not... trust the car?

There was a pretty large line of cars behind me. As I said, it probably wouldn't have caused an accident but the traffic behind me wouldn't have expected me to go be going that slow.

People have complained about this behavior, but... sorry, the car is right here. You're supposed to turn into the inner lane and then execute a lane change. Most states have explicit laws to that effect. If it's simply not possible to get merged to the right before your next turn, then I'd call that a navigation failure and not a driving failure.

In this case the road was designed for it. The left name (the one it turned me into) is actually a left turn only lane. The road is designed so if you are going left you turn into the left lane, straight you use the middle, right you use the right. And the lights are set up so no other lane has the right of way for any of those three lanes. It's a weird setup but relatively common in New England.

 

[nvx1977]

Hey all, I'm new here.

I just got my beta access. Looks like some people got instructions on how to provide feedback to Tesla. I can see in some other threads that there is an email address and "Record Video" button but I didn't get any info on that... my beta just installed and shows the release notes. And I didn't see the video button when I was out driving (I may have just missed it). I have a 2019 Model 3.

I read some of the previous threads but I'm not sure if those are still best practice.

Also, some notes on my experience thus far:

• I was at 98 safety score for well over a week after it supposedly started rolling out to 98s, and nothing.
• I finally hit 99 and it took 5 days at 99 to get beta.
• The beta just showed up as a normal update for me. It took about 45 minutes to install.
• I never got an email like some people did. But I know they have my right email as I get other emails from them.
• I'm in a medium sized (just < 100k people) suburban / urban city in New England, USA. So lots of aggressive drivers and lots of potholes. And lots of streets that would confuse even a human driver.

I took a drive down the street and I had to take control 4 times:

1. Taking a left onto a moderately busy road from a stop sign. It was starting to move forward and there was clearly a car coming from my left. I don't know if it was going to try to turn so I may have not had to take control this time but I felt better safe than sorry.
2. Taking a right onto a road with a higher speed limit. It took the turn WAY to slow, I had to accelerate to not cause other's to have to aggressively break. Granted this one was just a case of FSD not being aggressive enough vs actually making a mistake but it was a very safe turn, there was no reason to go that slow (when I say slow I mean... 5MPH on a 40MPH road... that slow).
3. Taking a left at a stop light onto a road with three lanes. It merged into the innermost lane but in order to make the next right hand turn I needed to be two lanes over. Ended up completely missing the turn (no way it could have safely gotten over at that point as there were other cars). A human driver would have turned into the outer lane. And yes, the car had right of way and could have gone into any of the three lanes but chose the inner one... literally the worst of the 3 choices.
4. Taking a right onto a street with a divider in the middle and some shallow potholes on the right. Didn't even attempt to turn, just sat there. I had to manually turn. There was a car behind me so couldn't wait to see if it would eventually figure it out.

For both 3 and 4 the steering wheel kind of jittered left to right rapidly as if making tons of tiny corrections.

Overall not thrilled with the experience so far but I get that it is a beta. And I also get that New England roads can be tough even for humans. But crossing my fingers that it gets better.

Hey, I live in the 603 too, southern NH. In case you didn't get it, here's the email Tesla sent out when I got 10.2:

Hello,

We will be pushing FSD Beta Version 10.2 (2021.32.25) to your vehicle shortly!

Full Self-Driving is in limited early access Beta and must be used with additional caution. It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention to the road. Do not become complacent. When Full Self-Driving Beta is enabled, your vehicle will make lane changes off highway, select forks to follow your navigation route, navigate around other vehicles and objects, and make left and right turns. Use Full Self-Driving Beta only if you will pay constant attention to the road, and be prepared to act immediately, especially around blind corners, crossing intersections, and in narrow driving situations. Every driver is responsible for remaining alert and active when using Autopilot and must be prepared to take action at any time.

As part of receiving FSD Beta, your vehicle has automatically opted into VIN associated telemetry sharing with Tesla, including Autopilot usage data, images and/or video. If you wish to be removed from the limited early access FSD Beta please email fsdbeta at tesla dot com.

Your vehicle is running on Tesla Vision! Note that Tesla Vision also includes some temporary limitations, as noted below:

Follow distance is limited to 2-7.
Autopilot top speed is 80 mph.

How to provide feedback:

Press the "Video Record" button on the top bar UI to send an Autopilot Snapshot video clip.
Clips are automatically sent to the engineering team. You will not be able to view the clip.
You can email your feedback to fsdbeta at tesla dot com.
In your email please include date, time, location, and if you took an Autopilot Snapshot. This helps us investigate issues, and better understand your feedback.


Thank,

The Tesla Team

 

[PDX-Y]

There was a pretty large line of cars behind me. As I said, it probably wouldn't have caused an accident but the traffic behind me wouldn't have expected me to go be going that slow.

Meh. I mean, that's a grandma turn. It's surely annoying for people following, but it's not unsafe and it's an absolutely routine thing. We've all seen human drivers do that.

Again, let the car drive. It's true that an ideal system would correctly detect the absence of approaching traffic from the left and enter the travel lane rapidly and confidently. But not all roads are like that, and the car needs to be deciding on whether or not visibility is good enough to go. And that's hard, and it's still being tuned.

Basically this just seems nitpicky. Once they know the creep/visibility code is working safely it's trivial to tune up the aggression. That's more than you should be expecting in a beta release, honestly.

 

[andrew603]

For anyone curious.

I can see an extremely strong (though not 100%) argument that it should not have gone into the rightmost lane. But the traffic engineers clearly did not intend for a majority of people taking that left to be stuck in a left turn lane with your only option being a Burger King. If it had there would be thousands of cars a day turning into Burger King.

But I can see an argument being made that you should go into the middle lane and then merge right. But I don't think that is what the traffic engineers intended either. It seems pretty clear they intended people taking a right to go directly into the right turn only lane.

And unfortunately there is no way to avoid this without adding 10+ minutes to the trip.

 

[andrew603]

Also, as an analog, I don't think they meant for those people at that red light I marked to go into the right hand turn lane either. Seeing as that would take them right back on the highway they just came off of.

 

[nvx1977]

Every disengagement provides feedback. So does the video button, which you don't need to press unless there's other feedback you want to add, like when underway under beta. The button is at the top of the screen, right next to (too close to) the profile selector. I didn't get the email either, but I've seen it several times on twitter, so, I don't really care . The email address is in the release notes, you definitely should find it there. Emails are only needed if you want to add even more precise information for a particular timestamp, etc. Feedback here really doesn't serve any purpose, especially when you don't even say what version you are on (I assume 10.5?). If you search on youtube, there are tons of FSD beta videos, some from people that have been doing this for over a year, and you can see whether your experiences are normal or not. Twitter and YT are the best places to see what's going on, who's getting the new version when, and the status. Best of luck, and, every tester does add new info, but you do need to pay attention and be sure watch out and take over as needed!

@andrew603:

Based on my monitoring of network traffic, manual disengagements aren't always sent to Tesla. According to greentheonly on twitter, It logs the disengagement only if it meets a particular triggering situation. Tesla has around 250 predefined triggers that will cause data to be uploaded to the mothership, and not all of the triggers require a disengagement.

I don't know how to reconcile this with the statements from the original early access testing group. I distinctly remember Dirty Tesla saying in his videos that he doesn't HAVE to use the AP snapshot button because Tesla told him that a disengagement will basically create a snapshot. Chuck Cook in his videos says that he was told that using the right stalk to disengage FSD will not cause a snapshot to be created, so if you want to stop FSD without sending anything, use the stalk.

Lately I have been more liberal with the snapshot button because I saw on the release notes that they are using auto-labeling. So I'm less concerned about swamping a human team with tons of snapshots to sift through, even though I'm sure this is still happening to some extent. There's also the conventional wisdom that the car only has room to store ~5 snapshots, so taking more than that risks overwriting earlier snapshots. The data seems to be beamed to the mothership as soon as the car is connected to wifi.

 

[alee]

For anyone curious.

I can see an extremely strong (though not 100%) argument that it should not have gone into the rightmost lane. But the traffic engineers clearly did not intend for a majority of people taking that left to be stuck in a left turn lane with your only option being a Burger King. If it had there would be thousands of cars a day turning into Burger King.

But I can see an argument being made that you should go into the middle lane and then merge right. But I don't think that is what the traffic engineers intended either. It seems pretty clear they intended people taking a right to go directly into the right turn only lane.

And unfortunately there is no way to avoid this without adding 10+ minutes to the trip.

This is the curse of autonomy - it's following the rules correctly, but as a human we recognize that double rapid lane change requires you to make a judgment call on whether there's enough leeway at that moment to do it. And even from the left, you could probably make it, but FSD is not aggressive enough, even though we're uniquely advantaged with EV acceleration to actually create space to make this happen safely.

 

[nvx1977]

For anyone curious.

I can see an extremely strong (though not 100%) argument that it should not have gone into the rightmost lane. But the traffic engineers clearly did not intend for a majority of people taking that left to be stuck in a left turn lane with your only option being a Burger King. If it had there would be thousands of cars a day turning into Burger King.

But I can see an argument being made that you should go into the middle lane and then merge right. But I don't think that is what the traffic engineers intended either. It seems pretty clear they intended people taking a right to go directly into the right turn only lane.

And unfortunately there is no way to avoid this without adding 10+ minutes to the trip.

View attachment 738400

yeah I agree with you. There are tons of weird lane designs here that require you as a human driver to just know what to do. If you've never driven there, or you're following the letter of the law, good luck.

I'm not sure how FSD solves this without advanced knowledge of the lane design.

FWIW, here is the NH statute for left turns:

2015 New Hampshire Revised Statutes :: Title XXI - MOTOR VEHICLES :: Chapter 265 - RULES OF THE ROAD :: Section 265:42 - Required Position; Method of Turning at Intersections.

law.justia.com

relevant part:

and after entering the intersection the left turn shall be made so as to leave the intersection, as nearly as practicable, in the left-hand lane lawfully available to traffic moving in such direction upon the roadway being entered.

I'm interpreting that to mean that turning into the leftmost lane is highly recommended but not mandatory, depending on the situation.

 

[andrew603]

They need a sticker to put on the back of your car. You know, like the "Student Driver" only "AI Driver".

@novox77 Good to see another granite stater here thanks of digging up that statute, I was always curious whether it was legal or people here are just all terrible drivers (or both). As you probably guessed I'm in Nashua (though that crazy intersection is in Merrimack). Looking forward to testing the beta on the unusual road designs we have here! As an aside, took me forever to get that 99pts. I don't know about you but every time I went on Daniel Webster or Route 3 I got dinged 2pts for "close following" just because of people seeing a gap and merging in front of me.

@PDX-Y It'll probably take me a few drives to learn to trust the system more. Driver's here are very impatient and I try to accommodate them but they'll have to learn.

 

[nvx1977]

@novox77 Good to see another granite stater here thanks of digging up that statute, I was always curious whether it was legal or people here are just all terrible drivers (or both). As you probably guessed I'm in Nashua (though that crazy intersection is in Merrimack). Looking forward to testing the beta on the unusual road designs we have here! As an aside, took me forever to get that 99pts. I don't know about you but every time I went on Daniel Webster or Route 3 I got dinged 2pts for "close following" just because of people seeing a gap and merging in front of me.

I'm on the I-93 corridor but very familiar w/ Rt 3 and DW. Yeah close following was my worst scoring. I would take a drive at night and follow someone at a safe distance for a few miles, then come home. That usually reduced the close following penalty to negligible levels. So glad to be done with safety score monitoring. It really isn't friendly to aggressive driving areas.