Full Self-Driving - feels like a long way off to me...

[Theflash95]

Am I the only one that feels like full self-driving is going to be a long, long way off? Every day I drive my Model S (which I love) and I use autopilot on the highway (which is useful), but I see things every day that make me say "full self-driving... I just don't see it happening anytime soon." I see exit lanes on the highway in rush hour where exiting traffic unofficially splits and makes a single lane two lanes... one for each direction... is my FSD car going to make me the a-hole and sit perfectly in the middle? I drive through my neighborhood which has no lane markings on the road, nothing at all... no lines to separate one direction from another and not even lines highlighting the edge of the road, and I think to myself... how would FSD work in this situation? Scan the road and realize which half to stay on? What if a car is parked in the street (which happens all the time)? What if I get to a 4 way stop sign and there is an aggressive driver who doesn't wait their turn, or a timid driver who starts going after I start? What if we go at the same time? When I'm making a turn through an intersection where there are two turn lanes and I'm in the inner lane, but the folks in the outer lane don't go wide enough and the inner lane cars have to drive over the lines separating the road? Is my FSD car going to try to squeeze them over to make them be perfectly in their proper lane? What if I'm on the highway and need to exit but no one opens up space for me to get in? Personally I might try to force someone to let me over by inching very close to the gap between one car and the next hoping that they back off a bit... how would FSD do that if no one budged?

These are just a small amount of things I see on a daily basis. 90%, maybe even 95% of driving is easy... it's that 5-10% that's tricky where you have to bend/break the traffic rules a little bit to deal with something... how is FSD going to deal with all of that? Maybe if most cars were all FSD and they "talked" to one another it would make it a little easier, but obviously that's not the case.

 

[roblab]

All this concern about what's not even here yet. People lying awake nights worrying about whether or not FSD will be able to take the off ramp, whether or not they will be able to get to work without touching the steering wheel. Wondering how long before all cars have FSD (That will be a few days...) so they can work together.

What's the matter here? Have people forgotten how to drive?? Do they think they can't make it to work if there's a complicated corner? WHY? You know, you can take over, help the car, or even put both hands on the wheel and do it yourself. Let the car do boring part of the drive, the stop and go. There is no reason to think that you MUST let the car do all the driving. It's STEERING ASSIST. If it ever really becomes Full Self Driving, I probably won't use it, as I don't need it. I learned to drive and still have my license and my full attention span. Maybe 5-10% of the time I can help the car over the rough spots, if I'm not unconscious.

 

[Electroman]

Am I the only one that feels like full self-driving is going to be a long, long way off?

Welcome to the club. On FSD timelines, I always thought Musk was too optimistic, or as the shorts would say lying.

I believe FSD is possible only if:

- you make some key changes to our road infrastructure - from small roads to highways - that aids FSD. Like embedded sensors on the road that aids the car to make key decisions at certain junctures.

- have a common protocol that cars can share and send some basic information to each other.

We are far far off from that. I think we will have the first probe landing in Mars from SpaceX before we have any semblance of FSD for Joe average.

 

[jeffpaul]

Although autopilot won't engage on a road with no lines, it does actually work without them. I think these cars are capable of a lot more now than you think. The current Teslas may or may not be *completely* driver-less in the near future but the current hardware is certainly capable of level 3 on most roads and definitely all highways. Companies like Waymo are ferrying people around already with a driver-less system in place (although they have a safety driver just-in-case) and those cars are already making those tough decisions you mentioned, so it's just a matter of time.

It's not going to be an overnight thing where one day it doesn't exist and the next day it does.

 

[Theflash95]

Roblab, I’m not one of those folks laying awake at night... just stating some observations about things I see every day. As an engineer I can understand the difficulty in trying to program a system to deal with all these situations.

Jeffpaul - I agree that the cars are probably capable of a lot more, but before rolling out features they have to be damn near perfect as you can of course injure or kill someone with the wrong mistake.

I just feel like about 50% of the folks on these forums think self driving is right around the corner. I swear I read that someone was upset about the new Model S/X interior refresh mock-up photos because they don’t show the steering wheel folding away or being removable. C’mon... full self driving where you don’t do a thing other than state your destination is a long way off.

 

[Mo City]

I don't see how anyone with an ounce of objectivity can believe full self-driving is "around the corner".

What I believe is FSD capabilities will achieve a significant separation from EAP over the next 18-24 months. Enough that the vast majority of folks here will be very happy.

 

[Theflash95]

Read some of the posts on here and other pro-Tesla sites and you’ll get the vibe that a lot of people think that within 5 - 10 years they’ll be cars on the road with no steering wheel, pedals, etc. I’m not hating on Tesla, I love mine... I just think full self-driving is at LEAST 10-15 years away if not further.

I don’t doubt that some new FSD capabilities will come out to separate it from EAP, however I’m skeptical and have a feeling that the rollout will be too slow and not feature rich enough to make people happy.

Hey, I would love to be proven wrong but the current autopilot function nags you every 25-30 seconds to grab the wheel (if you’re not holding it)... even on a well marked highway. Personally I feel like it’s currently good enough to where it could almost handle onramp to offramp without intervention, but oddball things like a removal of a crash barrier attenuator can prove fatal (as we all know). Also... autopilot can’t handle suddenly coming upon standstill traffic... something that happens quite frequently around my neck of the woods. Like I said there are so many little things to consider I just don’t see FSD happening anytime soon.

Again... just want to point out that I’m not hating on Tesla or any company (or anyone for that matter) trying to automate driving... like I said probably 90 - 95% of driving is easy... it’s that last little 5 - 10% that really can be tricky to program a system to handle.

 

[Theflash95]

Oh, and if you think some folks don’t think fully autonomous driving is just around the corner... some choice quotes from users commenting on the interior refresh article posted on Electrek today:

“I was hoping the next versions would show a clearly plugin steering wheel that could be put on right side, left side or neither so there wouldn’t need to be different production. Full Drive by wire capability with no mechanical linkages even in the steering is implicitly a feature of any vehicle capable of L4 or L5 autonomy and it would be a big advance for manufacturability.”

Referencing the steering wheel:

“It can probably be automatically folded shut depending on if you’re driving or not.”

Why the new interior won’t need a HUD:

“Not needed when they are pushing for their vehicles to be fully autonomous in the near future.”

Remember the article states interior refresh late 2019, full redesign in 2021... that’s only 3 years away:

“Tesla, and other Cars of the future are being designed NOT to be driven. Is that too hard to comprehend?”

 

[Mediocrates]

What's the matter here? Have people forgotten how to drive??

I would argue this skill was not lost by most drivers, but rather was never present.

 

[Shock-On-T]

All this concern about what's not even here yet. People lying awake nights worrying about whether or not FSD will be able to take the off ramp, whether or not they will be able to get to work without touching the steering wheel. Wondering how long before all cars have FSD (That will be a few days...) so they can work together.

What's the matter here? Have people forgotten how to drive?? Do they think they can't make it to work if there's a complicated corner? WHY? You know, you can take over, help the car, or even put both hands on the wheel and do it yourself. Let the car do boring part of the drive, the stop and go. There is no reason to think that you MUST let the car do all the driving. It's STEERING ASSIST. If it ever really becomes Full Self Driving, I probably won't use it, as I don't need it. I learned to drive and still have my license and my full attention span. Maybe 5-10% of the time I can help the car over the rough spots, if I'm not unconscious.

FSD will take your children to school, your aged mother to the doctor, provide transport for blind people, automate taxi fleets, and so on.
The OP is simply pondering on all the difficulties inherent in FSD, and provided an informative and well thought list of potential edge cases which make FSD more difficult.
I’m glad you learned how to drive, but driving ability has nothing to do with FSD.

 

[cybergates]

AP2 is still thrashing into other lanes in city intersections, how the missed the mark on just following the normal / current trajectory is beyond me, why would you all of a sudden swerve. 2018.26. Somehow AP1 was able to get this right years ago. It feels like it's regressed a little (AP2)

Hopefully firmware 9 has some kind of major code rewrite only then do I see FSD on the horizon.

City streets and highways need some standardization as well, lines can't just disappear and exits should have dotted lines for the regular lane as they do in some states (I think AZ is one that does).

 

[Tam]

...tricky...

Waymo has been able to deal with lots of tricky, crazy scenarios.

Tesla is starting from scratch so I think it'll be a long time before it can catch up to Waymo's ability to deal with tricky scenarios.

 

[Matias]

Am I the only one that feels like full self-driving is going to be a long, long way off? Every day I drive my Model S (which I love) and I use autopilot on the highway (which is useful), but I see things every day that make me say "full self-driving... I just don't see it happening anytime soon." I see exit lanes on the highway in rush hour where exiting traffic unofficially splits and makes a single lane two lanes... one for each direction... is my FSD car going to make me the a-hole and sit perfectly in the middle? I drive through my neighborhood which has no lane markings on the road, nothing at all... no lines to separate one direction from another and not even lines highlighting the edge of the road, and I think to myself... how would FSD work in this situation? Scan the road and realize which half to stay on? What if a car is parked in the street (which happens all the time)? What if I get to a 4 way stop sign and there is an aggressive driver who doesn't wait their turn, or a timid driver who starts going after I start? What if we go at the same time? When I'm making a turn through an intersection where there are two turn lanes and I'm in the inner lane, but the folks in the outer lane don't go wide enough and the inner lane cars have to drive over the lines separating the road? Is my FSD car going to try to squeeze them over to make them be perfectly in their proper lane? What if I'm on the highway and need to exit but no one opens up space for me to get in? Personally I might try to force someone to let me over by inching very close to the gap between one car and the next hoping that they back off a bit... how would FSD do that if no one budged?

These are just a small amount of things I see on a daily basis. 90%, maybe even 95% of driving is easy... it's that 5-10% that's tricky where you have to bend/break the traffic rules a little bit to deal with something... how is FSD going to deal with all of that? Maybe if most cars were all FSD and they "talked" to one another it would make it a little easier, but obviously that's not the case.

You're right. Amnon Shashua (founder of MobilEye, which was bougth buy Intel while ago said something like "driving policy is the hard part, not sensing. Sensing is solved. Driving policy is not"

 

[whitex]

Am I the only one that feels like full self-driving is going to be a long, long way off? Every day I drive my Model S (which I love) and I use autopilot on the highway (which is useful), but I see things every day that make me say "full self-driving... I just don't see it happening anytime soon." I see exit lanes on the highway in rush hour where exiting traffic unofficially splits and makes a single lane two lanes... one for each direction... is my FSD car going to make me the a-hole and sit perfectly in the middle? I drive through my neighborhood which has no lane markings on the road, nothing at all... no lines to separate one direction from another and not even lines highlighting the edge of the road, and I think to myself... how would FSD work in this situation? Scan the road and realize which half to stay on? What if a car is parked in the street (which happens all the time)? What if I get to a 4 way stop sign and there is an aggressive driver who doesn't wait their turn, or a timid driver who starts going after I start? What if we go at the same time? When I'm making a turn through an intersection where there are two turn lanes and I'm in the inner lane, but the folks in the outer lane don't go wide enough and the inner lane cars have to drive over the lines separating the road? Is my FSD car going to try to squeeze them over to make them be perfectly in their proper lane? What if I'm on the highway and need to exit but no one opens up space for me to get in? Personally I might try to force someone to let me over by inching very close to the gap between one car and the next hoping that they back off a bit... how would FSD do that if no one budged?

These are just a small amount of things I see on a daily basis. 90%, maybe even 95% of driving is easy... it's that 5-10% that's tricky where you have to bend/break the traffic rules a little bit to deal with something... how is FSD going to deal with all of that? Maybe if most cars were all FSD and they "talked" to one another it would make it a little easier, but obviously that's not the case.

I said it before and will say it again, Elon Musk has a much better better chance to be crowned "Miss Teen USA" than AP2 cars ever being able to self drive the way he described it in 2016, when AP2 launched.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

It's worth remembering that there are no truly autonomous vehicles doing normal driving. Even the ones with expensive systems would stop dead or crash many times during their life without human intervention.

Realistically, nobody knows how long it's going to take. A good example of that is that GM recently took 2.25B in investment from Softbank in their autonomy program. A pretty good return on investment in Cruise, but not something they'd do if they were really close.

My suggestion is to hope it happens, but otherwise ignore it. (Sorry if you paid for it in advance.)

In the meantime, each time there's a software update, check AP's behavior as if it's new to you and figure out what it can or can't do. Then, when you're driving with AP on, drive your car with your mind and correct the car when it seems that it's not listening.

For some of your scenarios, like other drivers breaking the law, it's simply a matter of reaction time and the computer knowing the performance of the car. The car has to understand intersections, and has to be alert to danger from other vehicles, including illegal behavior. But, it doesn't have to be perfect. If everybody assumed that everybody else was going to run intersections congestion would be much worse than it is.

 

[HX_Guy]

Personally I think FSD features will be launched as freeway only at first, and probably for a long while. While some may say the features are really EAP and not FSD, for me it would mean being able to drive completely hands free, without nags, while on the freeway. You would be able to put in a destination on the navigation for example, and it would allow you to engage FSD once on the freeway, and it would disengage FSD once it makes its way to the exit.

 

[Pentium2004]

Personally I think FSD features will be launched as freeway only at first, and probably for a long while. While some may say the features are really EAP and not FSD, for me it would mean being able to drive completely hands free, without nags, while on the freeway. You would be able to put in a destination on the navigation for example, and it would allow you to engage FSD once on the freeway, and it would disengage FSD once it makes its way to the exit.

There will be a lot of upset owners if that's what FSD ends up being. That was the definition of EAP.

 

[bob_p]

The hard part of FSD is handling all of the "edge conditions" - the unusual situations that can occur at any time while driving.

On our most recent road trip, we were driving on a two lane highway. AutoSteer was doing a pretty good job of navigating the road, maintaining speed and lane, and going to through the curves.

Fortunately, I was paying attention - and had both hands on the steering wheel, looking ahead, and carefully monitoring AutoSteer.

As we entered a series of curves and came around a corner - in front of us was an 18 wheeler driving in the opposite direction - who was trying to maintain high speed by driving as straight a line as possible - cutting across both lanes.

Since this was a two lane rural highway road, there were no shoulders, only drainage ditches immediately on both sides of the pavement - leaving nowhere to go.

I had to make a quick judgement call on how to avoid the truck and even though the truck was currently almost completely in our lane ahead, I chose to quickly slow down and drive as close to the right edge of the road (without going into the ditch), hoping the truck driver would quickly veer into his lane. The truck did move back towards the other lane, and we squeezed by the truck with a few inches to spare - still at highway speeds (likely around a combined 100 MPH between the two vehicles).

Since AutoSteer probably doesn't know how to handle this situation - probably all it would have done was start issuing warnings - and if I hadn't been paying attention, by the time I responded, it would likely have been too late.

If FSD was in full control of the vehicle - what would it do? If it saw the truck had left the other lane open - would it try to drive to the lane with the largest space, even though that would be cutting in front of the truck? Would it do what we did, try to squeeze by, while staying on the pavement? Or would it decide hitting the ditch was safer than trying to avoid hitting the truck?

Would it even recognize that there was a ditch next to the road - or would it assume there was a shoulder present?

It's situations like this that reminded me how far we are away from having full self driving cars - able to operate without any humans behind the steering wheel, monitoring operation. Safe driving takes much more than doing lane keeping and looking for turns/entry/exit ramps.

That said, I do expect Tesla to continue improving the AP software, operating safer (under most conditions) in more situations, and requiring fewer driver interventions, especially on limited access, multilane, highways which are relatively simple, compared to side/urban streets.

 

[dusdev]

I would tend to agree with the OP. I think AI needs to become much better. As a comparison, my Google Home still has a hard time to understand some simple sentences. It has a powerful cloud computing backend to help figure out what I said. Now consider all the road nuances and awkward driver situations. It's absurd to think that the current state of computing in these vehicles and sensing technology will be able to properly handle all the situations without a problem.

I think what's much more likely to happen is that specific areas in cities and highways may be designated as autonomous driving compatible. These will be precisely mapped and marked and the infrastructure will be upgraded with things like traffic light/sign transponders. When the car is in these areas it can drive autonomously. Outside of these areas the driver has to take over. As more FSD is adopted more areas will become compatible.

 

[diplomat33]

Am I the only one that feels like full self-driving is going to be a long, long way off? Every day I drive my Model S (which I love) and I use autopilot on the highway (which is useful), but I see things every day that make me say "full self-driving... I just don't see it happening anytime soon." I see exit lanes on the highway in rush hour where exiting traffic unofficially splits and makes a single lane two lanes... one for each direction... is my FSD car going to make me the a-hole and sit perfectly in the middle? I drive through my neighborhood which has no lane markings on the road, nothing at all... no lines to separate one direction from another and not even lines highlighting the edge of the road, and I think to myself... how would FSD work in this situation? Scan the road and realize which half to stay on? What if a car is parked in the street (which happens all the time)? What if I get to a 4 way stop sign and there is an aggressive driver who doesn't wait their turn, or a timid driver who starts going after I start? What if we go at the same time? When I'm making a turn through an intersection where there are two turn lanes and I'm in the inner lane, but the folks in the outer lane don't go wide enough and the inner lane cars have to drive over the lines separating the road? Is my FSD car going to try to squeeze them over to make them be perfectly in their proper lane? What if I'm on the highway and need to exit but no one opens up space for me to get in? Personally I might try to force someone to let me over by inching very close to the gap between one car and the next hoping that they back off a bit... how would FSD do that if no one budged?

These are just a small amount of things I see on a daily basis. 90%, maybe even 95% of driving is easy... it's that 5-10% that's tricky where you have to bend/break the traffic rules a little bit to deal with something... how is FSD going to deal with all of that? Maybe if most cars were all FSD and they "talked" to one another it would make it a little easier, but obviously that's not the case.

Honestly, I think some people underestimate AI in self-driving cars. Everything you mention are all things that a self-driving car will be able to handle with the proper code. They are doable. I am not saying it will be easy to do but they are definitely doable. After all, you learned how to do these things correctly, so why can't a computer also learn them? An AI can learn them too, it's just a matter of teaching it, just like you were taught.