Changing lanes constantly unnecessarily pissing people off around me: critical disengagement. No one wants to ride in a car that makes people angry at all. My “look like an idiot” tolerance is quite low.
I'll go a step further since I live in still mostly polite Canada. Putting a signal on and then turning off without actually changing lanes, over and over again triggers my "looks like an idiot" tolerance.
I've only taken FSDb(for bollocks) out for one try. I'm not yet on 11.4.x because I refuse to download it based on comments on forums. My husband has been using 11.3 a lot and as a passenger, there were many times I was unaware the car was driving, not him, so I was finally ready to try it out on a route that I had ridden with it multiple times before so I knew some of the quirks (consistent, rapid deacceleration at one point on the highway despite no speed change, and the car displaying the correct speed limit is one of them.) So I have 100 miles of experience over two trips, out and back. Mostly highway. Set to Chill and minimal lane changes. Didn't engage until I was on the highway and in the correct lane (the 5 minutes to the highway is a strange route and passes 3 construction sites with seemingly daily changes in traffic patterns and is harrowing enough without expecting FSD to handle it and then the right lane after I join the freeway immediately becomes the exit lane for the next exit 500M down the road.)
What I would consider critical disengagement were:
* the signal and physical moving toward the exit ramp that was 14 miles before the next exit shown on the NAV. And was closed for construction. It then tried to exit on 2 of the following 8 exits before the actual exit. The car was also traveling at the freeway speed limit there because it doesn't respond to construction speed limits.
* moved into the left turn lane (triggered by my lane change request) and then moving back into the straight through lane because, I assume, traffic was stopped in front of me (due to a left turn signal being red so they were all waiting to make the same turn as I needed.)
* same intersection, after I reengaged the FSD during the wait at the red light, during the left turn it decided to cut far too close to the first car waiting at the red light for the cross-road. Whether that car was over the stop line or not (I don't recall), I just disengaged because my mental math showed I'd be close to or actually sideswiping myself on his bumpter. Yes, probably the car would have over-corrected and widen the turn at the last moment, but there was no reason for its path to be diagonal from the end of the median to my new direction's lane, instead of pulling out a few car lengths and then making the turn. It was a protected left turn so there was no oncoming traffic to avoid, no timing issues to worry about and the car was just starting up from a full stop so it wasn't cutting the turn tight due to speed.
* tried to move one lane to the left within 100m of the start of my exit ramp on the way home. We believe this is a mapping issue leftover from construction almost 2 years ago when that lane was an exit lane for the previous exit, AND, the map reads 80kph (the revised construction zone speed from 2 years ago) instead of 100kph. The car doesn't react to the incorrect speed but does everything it can to get the car out of the lane it thinks doesn't exist (this is after where the old lane would have been forced to exit so at this point, I can only assume it thinks it is in an on-ramp lane.)
Now, my husband, on the same route, disengages when he gets to the previous exit (one has to disengage at the bottom of our exit ramp anyway as there is a 4 lane change in 100M in order to continue on our route and my friendly neighbourhood FSD Youtuber hasn't made that lane change successfully yet.) I wanted to see if the urge to inappropriately change lanes right before the exit was still a problem. It is. As well, he disengages as we enter every town along the way because FSD will not start slowing until it passes the new speed limit. I chose to dial down the speed myself in each of those cases and then nudge the car to accelerate faster when the speed limit rises again. So not a disengagement, critical or otherwise, but also even if nothing else had happened, my drive would not have been intervention-free.
Those were the egregious errors, but in total there were 12 disengagements, so the rest I'd count as non-critical, just in the "don't want to be seen as an incompetent or drunk driver" category. I suppose if I was more experienced with FSDb I'd trust how the car will make turns so not have to disengage the moment I felt it driving in such as way that I wasn't confident it was even going to attempt the turn. Those are more the 'student driver' mistakes. As I have repeatedly said, I taught 3 kids how to drive and have the grey hair to prove it. I will not pay Elon for the privilege of teaching his baby to drive.
Unfortunately, the car was picked for the driver assist features and it commonly disappoints me, either panicking when there is no need to panic, not looking far enough down the road to slow or lane change for problems ahead, or unable to follow speed limits (i.e. won't maintain the speed limit in a highway construction zone with narrowed lanes.) Not to mention, loss of TACC or AP in rain or fog or sunlight or some other magical reason. On our last long drive, for the whole trip (including an overnight stay) my husband lost TACC (which he wanted to use because he was tired of monitoring for FSDb effing up unexpectedly). It simply said it was unavailable but did allow him to reengage FSDb so he had no choice but to use FSDb when he was tired of maintaining the car's speed manually on the highway. (We suspect in that case, one door may not have been completely shut - while stopped we opened and closed all but one door but the day after returning home TACC was back, and I had opened and closed the remaining door when unloading the car at home.)
saneryee-studio.medium.com
