Just for the record: even my grandma doesn't have roundabout support. Maybe she should buy a Tesla.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
FSD and roundabouts (out of main)
- Thread starter mrdoubleb
- Start date
Many humans struggle with roundabouts! When a car can traverse a roundabout better than a human lots of people will sit up and say wow! - whether in or out of the car...
Todd Burch
14-Year Member
“Roundabout support” simply means there’s a 3D model of a roundabout sign in the code. Meaning the car MAY be able to recognize a sign indicating a roundabout is approaching—not that it will handle a roundabout yet.
j6Lpi429@3j
Closed
I will be VERY surprised if roundabout support is soon. I have written about this extensively on here in the past. Its absolutely one of the hardest problems for FSD (I'm not kidding). Big roundabouts that act like a sort of circular highway....maybe not *too* bad, but mini-roundabouts, where its not clear who has priority and 3 or more cars often reach the roundabout entrances at the same time? Thats really vague, and really tricky, and often relies on drivers physically checking the faces of the other drivers to see whether they should go first or not. It implies reading intent, and a decision as to whether to drive aggressively or politely given the circumstances...
Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE tesla to have cracked this. Its the last checkbox I need before justifying trading in my model S for a top-range 3 (or waiting for a Y), to get the new FSD goodness... But surely not yet?
Also, this would unlock a massive amount of UK demand. FSD in the Uk is RUBBISH unless it supports roundabouts. They are our most common form of junction.
Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE tesla to have cracked this. Its the last checkbox I need before justifying trading in my model S for a top-range 3 (or waiting for a Y), to get the new FSD goodness... But surely not yet?
Also, this would unlock a massive amount of UK demand. FSD in the Uk is RUBBISH unless it supports roundabouts. They are our most common form of junction.
jeewee3000
Active Member
I'm not here to estimate if roundabout support comes sooner than later, but regarding your post I have the following remarks:
Roundabouts are very different throughout the world. Where I live there are clear rules regarding right of way that would be easy to program. The hard part is: how does the car differentiate one typ of roundabout from another.
The amount of lanes differ greatly, and (as posted above) the roundabout with many smaller roundabouts around it are hard to navigate - even for a human. I'm not talking about not hitting anything, but just knowing where to drive to (legally) get to the road you want to take.
I'm not so worried about FSD not being able to "check the faces" of other drivers, since the FSD computer doesn't use faces, it uses velocity vectors and so on. It knows - much more accurately than humans - if a driver is slowing down or accelerating and therefore can just as easily read the intentions of another.
In the scenario that the FSD "misreads" another drivers intention and it moves onto a roundabout at the same time another driver does, than both FSD and the other driver still have time to react/readjust. This happens all the time while driving and is essentially what driving is: reacting to other road users.
For FSD it's all about driveable space and physics. A roundabout is not extra hard given that there is a good open view for drivers/FSD camera's.
I personally started "believing" more in FSD by max 2025 after seeing this:
What I'm most doubtful about is how FSD will handle objectively bad road systems, meaning roads/corners/turns that have poor visibility and where people frequently have light accidents that they don't care about.
I'm thinking certain alleyways in Rome, or certain mountain roads I've driven (from the French Alps to Yosemite National Park), or certain countries (India, parts of Africa, etc).
If the road offers poor visibilty and/or has flawed rules of the road, FSD seems that much harder to me.
So TL;DR: roundabouts seem simple enough, it's other things that I'm worried about for FSD.
j6Lpi429@3j
Closed
Not all roundabouts have clear vision over them. Here in the Uk the larger ones, by tradition have signs for local businesses, sometimes a hill with flowers and plants, sometimes even trees, occasionally weirdly a park bench.
Also one of the worst situations is where three lane roads enter a roundabout that has two lanes, and then the exist come out into three lanes again. This is chaos for new drivers, as you are deliberately, and hopefully safely merging with another lane while going around a roundabout and also changing lane at the same time to get ready for your exit.
Also one of the worst situations is where three lane roads enter a roundabout that has two lanes, and then the exist come out into three lanes again. This is chaos for new drivers, as you are deliberately, and hopefully safely merging with another lane while going around a roundabout and also changing lane at the same time to get ready for your exit.
PV4EV
Member
I am having nightmares about being in a driverless Robotaxi as it attempts to smoothly drive around any of the range of bizarre roundabouts shown below, in all conditions, and when each one is half full of human drivers and a mixture of daredevil cyclists. Even as a programmer with decades of experience, and with an awareness of neural networks, I have my doubts that an FSD Johnnycab is going to smoothly navigate through the examples shown below with 100.0% safety, before about 2030, without leaving a trail of destruction in its wake !!!
Last edited:
The below video shows it makes roundabouts in the UK under certain conditions but I believe it will take longer for a sustainable performance however its great improvement. I have not tried in Germany for a longer time. We don't have that many and they are usually way more narrow and not on larger roads either.
Tesla is solving all thinkable driving situations while Wamo and others don't even try to. That alone should be prove how far they are ahead.
HG Wells
Martian Embassy
Are there any comedies where someone repaints the arrows at a roundabout in the wrong direction ?
j6Lpi429@3j
Closed
That is indeed impressive. FWIW I have an S with AP1 so...
But my main concern is mini-roundabouts in congested traffic. Like I say, the big roundabouts with very clearly established right of way are (to my mind) way easier.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
those conditions being:
Driver manually slows car on approach to manually check for oncoming traffic (and there wasn't any- otherwise he'd have to manually stop since the car certainly isn't checking for it)
AND
Driver makes 100% of actual lane and exit decisions using turn stalk
So honestly, not sure that's really the car "making" a roundabout so much as the car just doing normal lane holding and manual-initiated functions to move it around per human decision making.
I recall watching a UK TV show of Americans driving rentals. Whenever the driver exclaimed "roundabout", a drink was required.
My Model 3 today mastered a small German Roundabout. Really impressive. I did not have a camera with me and was quite surprised however I took the first exit and am not sure how that test who has gone with the 2nd or 3rd.
What I can say though is that I drove a winding road in the Alps today that I drove mid of last year last and the improvements are significant how the car handles reducing speed in front of stronger curves to go around nicely. Strong improvement versus last year.
LN1_Casey
Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus
I don’t think roundabouts will be as hazardous as some think. After all, the neural network will learn each roundabout with each time a Tesla drives through it. Each time an owner corrects. It doesn’t forget those corrections.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
That's not really how it works though.
Individual cars do not learn anything.
The only time driving behavior changes is, fleet-wide, when a firmware or map update is pushed out- behavior then changes in the same way on all vehicles of the same config who get that update.
