Elon: FSD Beta tweets

[sleepydoc]

“well” is relative. But you seem to be on the other extreme.

For me FSD handles vast majority of intersections with zero problems. Unprotected turns are iffy.

One place where FSD lags is in driving etiquette. Being slow to start at empty intersections, slow at roundabouts or going in the middle of unmarked roads are all situations where we feel the driving etiquette is being broken. They are not usually comfort or safety issues. These are the situations where youtubers don’t disengage and thus claim zero disengagement drives.

Some of it is etiquette, much is safety. Here are some examples from this week:

• Roundabouts - I've actually had FSD navigate a roundabout on a few occasions which is an improvement from before, however it still stops at the entrance, whether there's traffic or not. This defeats the entire purpose of a roundabout (to keep traffic moving without unnecessary slowdowns and is also a safety issue. People may say that "any time you get rear ended it's the other guy's fault," and that's technically true, but if you are constantly stopping unnecessarily they you're still the one causing the accident. the car will also freak out and stop when it sees a car on the right, even though that car is appropriately waiting. Stopping in a round about is a fail.
• turning on to a main road from a side road (e.g. Tesla has a stop sign, cross traffic at 45 MPH has no stop sign) - Tesla stops. then starts slowly inching forward until it's sitting half way in the traffic lane then will slowly start accelerating. If there's no cross traffic then this is merely annoying for the cars behind. More often there is cross traffic but Tesla hesitates too much while still inching forward. The result is there's a car rapidly approaching and Tesla is sitting in the lane of traffic trying to decide whether to go or not. This is flat out dangerous and I would have been in multiple accidents had I not intervened.
• 4 way stop proceeding straight - no traffic, no pedestrians and completely clear sight lines. Tesla stops. Then slowly inches forward at 1-2 MPH. Inch. inch. inch. Tesla doesn't start accelerating appreciably until it's nose is actually at the stop sign on the opposite side and even then accelerates fairly slowly. In this case, the car is essentially blocking the intersection unnecessarily. is it causing an accident? probably not, but I don't consider this successfully navigating the intersection because it's obstructing traffic. If it were taking a driver's exam it would fail.
• left turn at a stop light - blinking yellow turn signal. Tesla won't turn.
• right turn on red - opposing traffic has a green left turn arrow. Tesla stops, the semi making a left turn is somewhat slow so Tesla starts inching forward. again - inch, inch, inch. If I don't intervene I'm either blocking the semi who has a right of way or causing an accident.
• Turning off a highway onto a county road. A right turn has a separate 'sweep' lane with a yield sign. no traffic, the car stops and I probably would have been rear ended had I not intervened because the traffic behind me is traveling at 40 MPH. Other occasions the car will proceed even though there's cross traffic.

How often do you let the car navigate an intersection without a stoplight without any intervention when there's significant traffic? For me it's virtually never.

 

[sleepydoc]

Like a bus. So people are already doing it and while they're not "defeating" traffic, they are defeating it in the way he's describing. And on a bus, you're reducing cars on the roadway and increasing passenger throughput.

I initially read his tweet as meaning that a highway full of autonomous vehicles would no longer have to slow down, as every car could move at the most efficient speed with the most efficient spacing. But obviously that makes little sense.

Exactly - except if people can have the luxury of riding a bus (someone else drives and you don't have to worry about a thing) with the convenience of a car (instantly available, no walking to the bus stop, your own private space) we potentially end up with the worst of both worlds - even more traffic because driving and sitting in traffic is no longer so onerous.

 

[EVNow]

Some of it is etiquette, much is safety. Here are some examples from this week:

• Roundabouts - I've actually had FSD navigate a roundabout on a few occasions which is an improvement from before, however it still stops at the entrance, whether there's traffic or not. This defeats the entire purpose of a roundabout (to keep traffic moving without unnecessary slowdowns and is also a safety issue. People may say that "any time you get rear ended it's the other guy's fault," and that's technically true, but if you are constantly stopping unnecessarily they you're still the one causing the accident. the car will also freak out and stop when it sees a car on the right, even though that car is appropriately waiting. Stopping in a round about is a fail.

Not safety. Atleast in my city people don't hit you from the back if you slowdown/stop at a roundabout. In general drivers should expect to slowdown/stop at roundabouts. This is one of those cases where if the roundabout has traffic it drives better .... since it has to anyway wait. If the roundabout is empty, it becomes an etiquette question .... waiting for 2 to 5 seconds for no reason and the vehicle at the back is wondering what that sign that says "Student Robot Driver, please be patient" is all about So, I usually intervene and press the accelerator when the roundabout is empty and there are vehicles behind me.

[*]turning on to a main road from a side road (e.g. Tesla has a stop sign, cross traffic at 45 MPH has no stop sign) - Tesla stops. then starts slowly inching forward until it's sitting half way in the traffic lane then will slowly start accelerating. If there's no cross traffic then this is merely annoying for the cars behind. More often there is cross traffic but Tesla hesitates too much while still inching forward. The result is there's a car rapidly approaching and Tesla is sitting in the lane of traffic trying to decide whether to go or not. This is flat out dangerous and I would have been in multiple accidents had I not intervened.

How often does this happen to you ? Does this happen at particular intersections ? Sounds like a map issue to me. I don't remember this ever happening to me.

[*]4 way stop proceeding straight - no traffic, no pedestrians and completely clear sight lines. Tesla stops. Then slowly inches forward at 1-2 MPH. Inch. inch. inch. Tesla doesn't start accelerating appreciably until it's nose is actually at the stop sign on the opposite side and even then accelerates fairly slowly. In this case, the car is essentially blocking the intersection unnecessarily. is it causing an accident? probably not, but I don't consider this successfully navigating the intersection because it's obstructing traffic.

Same question as above.

I'm just trying to say this isn't the behavior uniformly for everyone, at all intersections. Atleast to a lot of us such behavior looks like edge case since it hasn't happened to me in 5 months.

How often do you let the car navigate an intersection without a stoplight without any intervention when there's significant traffic? For me it's virtually never.

Do you mean no traffic lights or stop sign ? Those are unprotected .... and we just don't have a lot of instances of such places with significant traffic. There are times when the car has to wait a bit and let half a dozen vehicles pass before taking the unprotected turn and I almost always let it wait. May be 3/4 it works perfectly and I need to intervene 1/4.

One place where I intervene is at unprotected right turns when the traffic coming from the left is turning (so, we can actually turn right), but FSD doesn't handle that situation. So, I disengage.

Overall - I think if you drive a lot in neighborhoods with a lot of roundabouts and school zones, you will have a lot of interventions. If you drive 20 miles daily on suburban surface streets - on well laid out roads with few turns, you will likely see few interventions.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Not really sure what Elon is trying to say here. Is he saying self-driving cars will make traffic worse?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1500475796623749120

EDIT: he seems to be saying that we will become more aware of how bad traffic is in a self-driving car because we will notice the traffic more instead of focusing on driving. But in a real self-driving car (driverless), you are just a passenger, so why would it matter? You could just read a book or watch a movie and ignore traffic.

All Elon is doing with that tweet is acknowledging that self-driving cars will make traffic worse.

He follows that up with one of the many reasons why it will.

Pain of driving is a variable that lots of people factor in when deciding to go somewhere. The pain of driving is not just traffic, but all the other things that happen not just on the road, but dealing with parking as well.

Being able to read a book or watch a movie allows us to experience so little of the pain that we're going to be on the road so much more.

I don't think we should look at the tweet by itself, and instead look at it in combination with an earlier tweet regarding the need for more intelligent traffic lights. That we need to use AI technology in a way to combat traffic. That autonomous cars will make traffic worse, but we can mitigate that by using AI.

It seems to me that Elon is thinking of Autonomous driving as a hive mind which would be pretty cool. The hive mind as in the vehicles plus the traffic lights. That's the only way I can see of defeating traffic.

 

[Terminator857]

When you say highways are we talking about multi lane highways or two lane highways

Tesla used to use the term "limited access freeway". Don't know if it still does. So number of lanes doesn't matter much, just that there are no traffic control lights, no pedestrians, etc...

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Some of it is etiquette, much is safety. Here are some examples from this week:

• Roundabouts - I've actually had FSD navigate a roundabout on a few occasions which is an improvement from before, however it still stops at the entrance, whether there's traffic or not. This defeats the entire purpose of a roundabout (to keep traffic moving without unnecessary slowdowns and is also a safety issue. People may say that "any time you get rear ended it's the other guy's fault," and that's technically true, but if you are constantly stopping unnecessarily they you're still the one causing the accident. the car will also freak out and stop when it sees a car on the right, even though that car is appropriately waiting. Stopping in a round about is a fail.
• turning on to a main road from a side road (e.g. Tesla has a stop sign, cross traffic at 45 MPH has no stop sign) - Tesla stops. then starts slowly inching forward until it's sitting half way in the traffic lane then will slowly start accelerating. If there's no cross traffic then this is merely annoying for the cars behind. More often there is cross traffic but Tesla hesitates too much while still inching forward. The result is there's a car rapidly approaching and Tesla is sitting in the lane of traffic trying to decide whether to go or not. This is flat out dangerous and I would have been in multiple accidents had I not intervened.
• 4 way stop proceeding straight - no traffic, no pedestrians and completely clear sight lines. Tesla stops. Then slowly inches forward at 1-2 MPH. Inch. inch. inch. Tesla doesn't start accelerating appreciably until it's nose is actually at the stop sign on the opposite side and even then accelerates fairly slowly. In this case, the car is essentially blocking the intersection unnecessarily. is it causing an accident? probably not, but I don't consider this successfully navigating the intersection because it's obstructing traffic. If it were taking a driver's exam it would fail.
• left turn at a stop light - blinking yellow turn signal. Tesla won't turn.
• right turn on red - opposing traffic has a green left turn arrow. Tesla stops, the semi making a left turn is somewhat slow so Tesla starts inching forward. again - inch, inch, inch. If I don't intervene I'm either blocking the semi who has a right of way or causing an accident.
• Turning off a highway onto a county road. A right turn has a separate 'sweep' lane with a yield sign. no traffic, the car stops and I probably would have been rear ended had I not intervened because the traffic behind me is traveling at 40 MPH. Other occasions the car will proceed even though there's cross traffic.

How often do you let the car navigate an intersection without a stoplight without any intervention when there's significant traffic? For me it's virtually never.

All these reasons are why I don't use FSD Beta much. I used to use it every day at a 4 way stop, but the latest update made it too slow at a 4 way stop so I no longer use it there.

I still try to use it when there isn't a car behind me, but there is always a car behind me. Anyone who lives in the Metro areas of the PNW knows all too well how there is too much traffic to have any aloneness.

The lack of usage means that when I do use it that I find its behavior unpredictable.

I really wish I would have used it yesterday as I drove on a road I haven't been on in recent memory, and I yielded at a yield sign. The person behind me wasn't too happy about this and honked at me as I slowed down to yield.

My lane did continue on so I just went ahead, and didn't worry about the yield sign.

This leaves three possibilities.

1.) That I was only supposed to yield if people were actively trying to get over into my lane, and I yielded too soon.
2.) The yield sign should have shown my lane continuing to let me know my lane was continuing. I interpreted the yield sign as meaning my lane was going to end, and I needed to get over. This is why I initially slowed until realizing it continued, and the person behind me honking.
3.) That it was yield sign people ignore, and the person behind me was telling me to ignore that yield sign.

I'm curious about what FSD Beta will do so I might go back to it. I bet it will slow at the yield sign, but maybe not.

I have a love/hate relationship with driving.

The moments I hate are ones with ambiguity. Either in signage or a brain fart moment.

 

[EVNow]

Being able to read a book

I see this written often. I've to wonder .... reading a book in a car is not easy. Its not good for the eyes and can be nauseating to some people as well.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I see this written often. I've to wonder .... reading a book in a car is not easy. Its not good for the eyes and can be nauseating to some people as well.

I think its less about what we'd actually be doing, and more about what we'd LIKE to do with that added time.

We'd like to do something productive like reading a book, but the reality is we'd have our faces stuck in a screen.

Probably on a forum talking about the next great thing.

 

[sleepydoc]

Not safety. Atleast in my city people don't hit you from the back if you slowdown/stop at a roundabout. In general drivers should expect to slowdown/stop at roundabouts. This is one of those cases where if the roundabout has traffic it drives better .... since it has to anyway wait. If the roundabout is empty, it becomes an etiquette question .... waiting for 2 to 5 seconds for no reason and the vehicle at the back is wondering what that sign that says "Student Robot Driver, please be patient" is all about So, I usually intervene and press the accelerator when the roundabout is empty and there are vehicles behind me.

Agree to disagree - people here won't intentionally rear end you either but stopping unnecessarily in a lane of traffic is not safe behavior, IMO. As I said in another post, pressing the accelerator actually involves a fair amount of analysis on the driver's part that it's safe to do so. If you're having to press the accelerator for the car it means the car isn't able to effectively do that analysis.

How often does this happen to you ? Does this happen at particular intersections ? Sounds like a map issue to me. I don't remember this ever happening to me.

Pretty much every intersection like this. (with he caveat that we tend to drive the same roads so I can't claim to have tried xx different uncontrolled intersections.)

Same question as above.

I'm just trying to say this isn't the behavior uniformly for everyone, at all intersections. Atleast to a lot of us such behavior looks like edge case since it hasn't happened to me in 5 months.

Same answer as above. I really can't say if it's an edge case or not since I only drive my car. I just know it's pretty consistent, definitely the majority of such intersections. I'll try to get out and find some other intersections to test it. We just had a snow storm so it will be a few days before the roads are clear enough to give FSD a fair shake, though.

Do you mean no traffic lights or stop sign ? Those are unprotected .... and we just don't have a lot of instances of such places with significant traffic. There are times when the car has to wait a bit and let half a dozen vehicles pass before taking the unprotected turn and I almost always let it wait. May be 3/4 it works perfectly and I need to intervene 1/4.

Sorry- I wan't clear. I meant intersections without traffic lights. With traffic lights it does fairly well, but in those cases the light is doing a lot of the regulating. 4 way stops, 2 way stops and unregulated intersections are intrinsically more difficult and require more analysis and judgement on the part of the driver.

One place where I intervene is at unprotected right turns when the traffic coming from the left is turning (so, we can actually turn right), but FSD doesn't handle that situation. So, I disengage.

Overall - I think if you drive a lot in neighborhoods with a lot of roundabouts and school zones, you will have a lot of interventions. If you drive 20 miles daily on suburban surface streets - on well laid out roads with few turns, you will likely see few interventions.

agreed. I think to a certain extent many of the FSD beta testers self regulate. There are many times I don't bother using FSD because I know it will have issues. If I only use it in cases I know it can handle then the 'failure rate' is quite low, but that's not really accurate. What should naturally happen is that as the capabilities progress people will use it in progressively more difficult situations. Not unlike teaching your teenager how to drive.

 

[sleepydoc]

We'd like to do something productive like reading a book, but the reality is we'd have our faces stuck in a screen.

so self driving cars would lead to more time on Facebook...and accelerate the decline of society!

 

[aronth5]

When you say highways are we talking about multi lane highways or two lane highways

Good question. I would say only controlled access highways regardless of the number of lanes.

 

[aronth5]

What version of fsd beta is Musk talking about that only rarely requires interventions? If he’s referring to the current latest version he must be smoking more than just some weed.

Also remember Elon now lives in Boca Chica, Texas so the majority of his driving is likely in Texas. Much different road environments where it would be much easier to maintain zero disengagement drives.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I see this written often. I've to wonder .... reading a book in a car is not easy. Its not good for the eyes and can be nauseating to some people as well.

Reading a book is something that requires sustained attention, and it's something people already do on journeys where they aren't driving.

 

[EVNow]

Reading a book is something that requires sustained attention, and it's something people already do on journeys where they aren't driving.

Yes … just not sure it’s a good thing. I guess I’ll do the same thing I do now … listen to music.

I’m somewhat susceptible to motion sickness - so, no book reading for me.

ps : When someone else drives, I usually lookout. I rarely get to do that when I drive I.e. when you drive you miss out so many details compared to looking out as a passenger ….

 

[Raurele]

Yes, that was exactly my question, too. I hope he’s not referring to 10.2. If he is I have news for him!

How are you doing that? The NoA stack still requires confirmation of lane changes and I’ve never had it successfully use a carpool lane.

Yup -nailed it. It’s also classic entrepreneur/CEO speak. Make a statement that at first blush sounds awesome and promising but on closer inspection leaves out enough critical information so there’s enough ambiguity that it’s really close to meaningless.

I’m on 10.2 like @GranularHail and in addition to the issues he pointed out I’ll add intersections. The biggest critical difference between highway driving and city driving is intersections. Highways either have no intersections or have stoplights which are the most controlled and easiest to navigate. Cities have 4 way stops, completely uncontrolled intersections, 2 way stops, 5 way intersections, roundabouts, etc. as well as more traffic traveling in different directions.

I’ve yet to have FSD navigate an intersection without a stoplight well. Yesterday I was at a 4 way stop with no other cars around and clear sightlines. The car did the typical stop, then proceed like a scared turtle with little jerky starts until it finally felt safe to proceed. The problem is it does that until it’s virtually all the way through the intersection. Once the car has entered the intersection you just need to proceed (unless something suddenly enters your path.) Stuttering in the middle of the intersection is actually more dangerous. It does the same thing when tuning from a side street onto a larger street with traffic driving 45 MPH. in stead of taking the opportunity to turn into an opening, it starts then stutters and hesitates until a car is practically upon it.

I’ve seen people comment that all they had to do was ‘goose the car a bit’ by pressing on the accelerator, but think about what you’re doing there - you’ve looked, verified that there are no cars, bikes, pedestrians, verified you have the right of way and verified that the opening is large enough to proceed meaning FSD is either unable to confirm all this or unable to appropriately respond.

It does not require confirmation. Change your settings. Doesn’t work in some states I believe. Introducing a More Seamless Navigate on Autopilot

The steering wheel vibrates, the blinker turns on, and 3 seconds later, it changes lanes if safe. It’ll even slow down to get behind the car beside you if needed. I usually just give it a little gas to get ahead of that person and it gets over on its own. I drive 150 miles a day on 4 different freeways and it’s all hands free besides the nudge.

And for carpool lane make sure you don’t have “Avoid HOV Lanes” turned on. When I get on The freeway, it automatically navigates as far left as it can for the carpool.

2022MYP, non beta.

 

[drtimhill]

Some of it is etiquette, much is safety. Here are some examples from this week:

• Roundabouts - I've actually had FSD navigate a roundabout on a few occasions which is an improvement from before, however it still stops at the entrance, whether there's traffic or not. This defeats the entire purpose of a roundabout (to keep traffic moving without unnecessary slowdowns and is also a safety issue. People may say that "any time you get rear ended it's the other guy's fault," and that's technically true, but if you are constantly stopping unnecessarily they you're still the one causing the accident. the car will also freak out and stop when it sees a car on the right, even though that car is appropriately waiting. Stopping in a round about is a fail.
• turning on to a main road from a side road (e.g. Tesla has a stop sign, cross traffic at 45 MPH has no stop sign) - Tesla stops. then starts slowly inching forward until it's sitting half way in the traffic lane then will slowly start accelerating. If there's no cross traffic then this is merely annoying for the cars behind. More often there is cross traffic but Tesla hesitates too much while still inching forward. The result is there's a car rapidly approaching and Tesla is sitting in the lane of traffic trying to decide whether to go or not. This is flat out dangerous and I would have been in multiple accidents had I not intervened.
• 4 way stop proceeding straight - no traffic, no pedestrians and completely clear sight lines. Tesla stops. Then slowly inches forward at 1-2 MPH. Inch. inch. inch. Tesla doesn't start accelerating appreciably until it's nose is actually at the stop sign on the opposite side and even then accelerates fairly slowly. In this case, the car is essentially blocking the intersection unnecessarily. is it causing an accident? probably not, but I don't consider this successfully navigating the intersection because it's obstructing traffic. If it were taking a driver's exam it would fail.
• left turn at a stop light - blinking yellow turn signal. Tesla won't turn.
• right turn on red - opposing traffic has a green left turn arrow. Tesla stops, the semi making a left turn is somewhat slow so Tesla starts inching forward. again - inch, inch, inch. If I don't intervene I'm either blocking the semi who has a right of way or causing an accident.
• Turning off a highway onto a county road. A right turn has a separate 'sweep' lane with a yield sign. no traffic, the car stops and I probably would have been rear ended had I not intervened because the traffic behind me is traveling at 40 MPH. Other occasions the car will proceed even though there's cross traffic.

How often do you let the car navigate an intersection without a stoplight without any intervention when there's significant traffic? For me it's virtually never.

Translation … it’s beta software.

 

[EVNow]

This is funny.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1500337332276236288

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

All Elon is doing with that tweet is acknowledging that self-driving cars will make traffic worse.

He follows that up with one of the many reasons why it will.

Pain of driving is a variable that lots of people factor in when deciding to go somewhere. The pain of driving is not just traffic, but all the other things that happen not just on the road, but dealing with parking as well.

Being able to read a book or watch a movie allows us to experience so little of the pain that we're going to be on the road so much more.

I don't think we should look at the tweet by itself, and instead look at it in combination with an earlier tweet regarding the need for more intelligent traffic lights. That we need to use AI technology in a way to combat traffic. That autonomous cars will make traffic worse, but we can mitigate that by using AI.

It seems to me that Elon is thinking of Autonomous driving as a hive mind which would be pretty cool. The hive mind as in the vehicles plus the traffic lights. That's the only way I can see of defeating traffic.

I disagree with him.

Peak traffic is rush hour. Economics would significantly increase the average number of people per vehicle at peak. Likely both in 4-person and 10-person vehicles.

In addition, a lot of traffic in cities is created by parking. Sometimes an estimate of 30%. With autonomous vehicles only stopping for boarding and beboarding, and with municipalities likely to respond positively to help the use of taxis and other shared transportation you'll have zones created to smooth it out.

Plus, I think if we have autonomy, autonomous vehicles will ultimately behave better than humans.

I think more miles, but lower peak volume.

 

[Dan D.]

Not really sure what Elon is trying to say here. Is he saying self-driving cars will make traffic worse?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1500475796623749120

EDIT: he seems to be saying that we will become more aware of how bad traffic is in a self-driving car because we will notice the traffic more instead of focusing on driving. But in a real self-driving car (driverless), you are just a passenger, so why would it matter? You could just read a book or watch a movie and ignore traffic.

Often it seems Elon is a visionary who is thinking 5 to 20 years ahead. Just not really in the present. The utopian plans are science fiction like something from Arthur C Clarke. Elon seems to mentally just fill in the gap from Now to Future as a given, where most of the rest of us are stuck with "then a miracle occurs".

I like utopian plans and futurism. The problem is giving every thing he says the same weight. Some ideas are marvelous, some are crap; we need to be able to say that. e.g. Give up on windshield wiper magic software that is crap by just using the $1 sensor and fix FSD's sensor blind spots.

/editorial

 

[diplomat33]

Often it seems Elon is a visionary who is thinking 5 to 20 years ahead. Just not really in the present. The utopian plans are science fiction like something from Arthur C Clarke. Elon seems to mentally just fill in the gap from Now to Future as a given, where most of the rest of us are stuck with "then a miracle occurs".

I like this. I think this explains Elon's approach to FSD perfectly. He started with this vision of the ideal self-driving car: just a few inconspicuous cameras and advanced AI able to drive itself anywhere better than a human. It would be the ideal self-driving car because the hardware would be cheap and not ruin the style or form of the car, and the advanced vision based AI would mean the self-driving would be truly generalized and not be dependent on any "crutch". Of course this self-driving does not exist yet (certainly not in 2015-16 when Elon first started talking about it) but it is a great vision of what could be in the future. Based on all the rewrites and the missed promises, I don't think Elon knew the details of how to make this vision into a reality, other than a belief that machine learning and data should be able to solve the problem eventually. That's where the "and then the miracle happens". Now, the Tesla engineers are working hard to try to make the miracle happen.

I like utopian plans and futurism. The problem is giving every thing he says the same weight. Some ideas are marvelous, some are crap; we need to be able to say that. e.g. Give up on windshield wiper magic software that is crap by just using the $1 sensor and fix FSD's sensor blind spots.

I agree. I too love utopias and futurism. Heck, I am a huge Star Trek fan who wishes we had starships and warp drive. It's one reason why I got a Tesla because the cars are very futuristic IMO. But that does not mean every idea is great. You are right that Elon has had some missteps.