I was just suspended and feel like venting a bit, so here goes...
First, strikes are not reset after each software update. I thought this was the case, but its not. I was at 4/5 strikes for awhile now after getting most of them awhile back, my last FSDB software update was two nights ago.
Second, I wish the strikes system would balance between miles driven. According to various apps like recurrent auto, I drive WAY above the average of most (117 miles a day for me vs 33 miles a day for most). I have 50k miles on it and am 3 months shy of 2 years old. Its likely A LOT easier for people who drive a dozen or so miles a day on average to keep from getting strikes (legit and false positive) than it is for someone who drives a lot like me.
Third, I think there should be some tolerance for when you are in situations that are not a higher risk (ie sitting still). The older system would constantly flash blue and say 'move the wheel' when sitting at a stoplight not moving. Three of my strikes were sitting still at a traffic light with several cars in front of me including the last and final strike. It seems that the system monitors the current 'drive', it will say 'pay attention' and let you look up and move wheel to cancel it. I usually manually force disengage because I don't trust it to see me looking at the road as it has disengaged on me after I was moving the wheel and looking directly ahead before. The system definitely will get more aggressive each time it notifies you during that drive EVEN IF YOU MANUALLY DISENGAGE EACH WARNING - to the point that the last 'notice' during the drive will only appear for literally a second before it forcefully disengages (which is what happened to me). In my case I was a red light which turned green, there were about 4 cars in front of me at the light still, withing 1 second of moving the notice popped up and suspended FSD before I could disengage. I was in a lot of stop and go traffic with lights at that point and did have previous warning that drive that I manually disengaged, so I am pretty certain it gets stricter and stricter each notice even if you disengage or acknowledge by moving the wheel.
Some will ask why I am not looking up to begin with. Unfortunately I am starting to get bad close up vision, I need readers to see the screen clearly and there are no 'make text bigger' options. I pop my readers on to look at the screen for navigation etc. Why not use voice commands? I do, I try to. Its hard to get navigation to add a waypoint without using the screen - I can't get voice commands to play music from my hard drive/usb drive, it always selects music from other sources instead. Then there is text messages. I get texts from months, sometimes years old. Its confusing because a customer might send me a text, I see it and hear it on the Tesla, and I start wondering if I missed something. I respond, it turns out it an old text, then the new text come in after that - and I get more confused - to the point of when I stop at a light I look at the text on the phone to figure out which texts are actually new ones and which are not. This is a problem with Tesla/Android for over a year now it seems (do a search for 'Tesla send old text messages' and you will see hundreds of people reporting the problem). This makes it really hard to use voice commands with text etc.
Fourth, now that FSD is disabled and I have been driving using it for months it has become muscle memory to turn it on at every change and use it. I am now driving MUCH more unsafe because subconsciously I am expecting the Tesla to behave a certain way when I have autosteer on and its regressed so badly from what I am used to with FSDB. I keep reminding myself that its no longer on FSDB, but I forget, cause again its become automatic for me to turn it on. I think the car is going to keep going, or turn, etc, but it doesn't and starts beeping and buzzing to take over immediately which then scares the crap out of me cause I think something else is wrong (adding to the scare is the fact that the beeps are all the same, blind spot, forward collision, etc, so you don't know exactly why its beeping unless you look at the screen, which as I previously stated I can't see up close well without readers and also takes you eyes of road).... The car is now back to breaking at green lights and lights that are not even stop lights, not automatically going on green lights, not signally and changing lanes on mapped navigation, and when I manually signal to change lanes it is NOWHERE NEAR as confident in doing so as FSDB. FSDB suspension for someone who drives 30 miles a day vs someone who is likely in the top 10% of more of miles driven on it per day is likely to be far worse when trying to 'get used to' the old version again.
And other problems with FSDB...
The auto headlights are forced ON, which makes the auto hi beams force on every second it thinks they can be on. This is stupid - every night I have video of people flashing their lights at me cause my hi beams are on when they shouldn't be. They would sometimes turn on an off 4-5 times in a 15-20 second period so even when cars are far enough not to be blinded they think I am signaling them or a hazard. I had a cop flash his lights at me cause he probably thought I was warning traffic of a cop, when it was just the Tesla being dumb with the hi beams. They turn on in well lit freeway driving in the city, well lit streets, and almost every freeway overpass in Houston area they try to turn on before the hill (I guess it thinks it cant see the road anymore causes of the hill?!?). I have seen no difference in how autopilot handles when the hi beams are on vs off, so I don't know why they are so aggressive with turning them on. It shouldn't turn them on at all on the major city freeways! On residential well lit side streets it blasts them into houses and approaching intersections is blinds care perpendicular crossing. The auto hi beam feature needs to be off until they can fix it - its a major safety issue and is being used illegally. When I asked about this they said 'its in beta', but I argued the auto hi-beams are NOT in beta... just having them forced on in FSDB is.
FSDB has NO CLUE how to handle Houston feeder roads and underpasses that go under the freeway every mile. FSDB stops entering the u-turn lanes for no reason, then doesn't yield when exiting them. It tries to split the u-turn lane and go beside traffic in front of you thinking they are two lanes (they are wide so 18-wheelers can use them but they are one lane). If you turn left on a feeder under an underpass FSDB stays in the far left lane, which is another dedicated left turn lane then tries to signal into the next lane to go straight but by then either a car behind you has (legally) turned left into the second lane thus blocking you or FSDB performs the lane change in the middle of the intersection which is illegal. I have 'autopilot snapshot' this quite literally over a hundred times at various free underpasses but it doesn't improve at all. This happens when the lanes are clearly marked and the path on the map is perfect, but FSDB doesn't abide by that. Its even worse if its a large 5-6 lane underpass you are entering from the feeder.
A more minor thing, auto wipers are forced on when using FSDB. Auto wipers really suck, I have pics of my windshield so full of water drop you can barely see and they don't auto turn on, and other pics of it wiping absolutely nothing, but you can manually do them which sucks but is fine. What is most annoying is that after a car wash, when the windshield is SPOTLESS, about 10 minutes into a FSDB drive it will 'auto cleaning dirty windshield' then get water all over the edges of the already spotless windshield and side of the car. I thought maybe car wash was leaving a soap residue over where the camera was but nope, one time I thoroughly cleaned that area with microfiber cloth and another time with glass cleaner and it was spotless - and its not a fluke - I have a car wash pass and wash 2-4 times a week and it happens EVERY TIME I was the car. How do things like this get reported to get fixed?!? I know its a minor thing, but its the kind of things that will go unknown forever.
TLDR; I am pissed I don't have FSDB anymore due to suspension. They need to factor in miles driven per day/length of drive with the strike out system as I am probably in top 5-10% of miles driven per day. FSDB is by NO MEANS PERFECT, but it IS much safer for me, especially now that I am USED to it and how it behaves and I am NOT at all used to how it behaves on the old software which doesn't automate things I am naturally used to it doing.
EDIT: oh yeah, the freaking 'need more cowbell...' When trying to engage autosteer now I am not used to situations where it won't turn on, so I try to do it a few times in a row. the stupid cowbell thing turns on. and on and on and on. Push up on the stalk the graphics turn off the music blasts over radio, phone etc. Oh, and press the microphone button and the cowbell song RESTARTS, over and over. Have to wait for it to totally finishing before hitting microphone or it never ends. so annoying playing over phone calls etc, where is option to turn that off?!?
First, strikes are not reset after each software update. I thought this was the case, but its not. I was at 4/5 strikes for awhile now after getting most of them awhile back, my last FSDB software update was two nights ago.
Second, I wish the strikes system would balance between miles driven. According to various apps like recurrent auto, I drive WAY above the average of most (117 miles a day for me vs 33 miles a day for most). I have 50k miles on it and am 3 months shy of 2 years old. Its likely A LOT easier for people who drive a dozen or so miles a day on average to keep from getting strikes (legit and false positive) than it is for someone who drives a lot like me.
Third, I think there should be some tolerance for when you are in situations that are not a higher risk (ie sitting still). The older system would constantly flash blue and say 'move the wheel' when sitting at a stoplight not moving. Three of my strikes were sitting still at a traffic light with several cars in front of me including the last and final strike. It seems that the system monitors the current 'drive', it will say 'pay attention' and let you look up and move wheel to cancel it. I usually manually force disengage because I don't trust it to see me looking at the road as it has disengaged on me after I was moving the wheel and looking directly ahead before. The system definitely will get more aggressive each time it notifies you during that drive EVEN IF YOU MANUALLY DISENGAGE EACH WARNING - to the point that the last 'notice' during the drive will only appear for literally a second before it forcefully disengages (which is what happened to me). In my case I was a red light which turned green, there were about 4 cars in front of me at the light still, withing 1 second of moving the notice popped up and suspended FSD before I could disengage. I was in a lot of stop and go traffic with lights at that point and did have previous warning that drive that I manually disengaged, so I am pretty certain it gets stricter and stricter each notice even if you disengage or acknowledge by moving the wheel.
Some will ask why I am not looking up to begin with. Unfortunately I am starting to get bad close up vision, I need readers to see the screen clearly and there are no 'make text bigger' options. I pop my readers on to look at the screen for navigation etc. Why not use voice commands? I do, I try to. Its hard to get navigation to add a waypoint without using the screen - I can't get voice commands to play music from my hard drive/usb drive, it always selects music from other sources instead. Then there is text messages. I get texts from months, sometimes years old. Its confusing because a customer might send me a text, I see it and hear it on the Tesla, and I start wondering if I missed something. I respond, it turns out it an old text, then the new text come in after that - and I get more confused - to the point of when I stop at a light I look at the text on the phone to figure out which texts are actually new ones and which are not. This is a problem with Tesla/Android for over a year now it seems (do a search for 'Tesla send old text messages' and you will see hundreds of people reporting the problem). This makes it really hard to use voice commands with text etc.
Fourth, now that FSD is disabled and I have been driving using it for months it has become muscle memory to turn it on at every change and use it. I am now driving MUCH more unsafe because subconsciously I am expecting the Tesla to behave a certain way when I have autosteer on and its regressed so badly from what I am used to with FSDB. I keep reminding myself that its no longer on FSDB, but I forget, cause again its become automatic for me to turn it on. I think the car is going to keep going, or turn, etc, but it doesn't and starts beeping and buzzing to take over immediately which then scares the crap out of me cause I think something else is wrong (adding to the scare is the fact that the beeps are all the same, blind spot, forward collision, etc, so you don't know exactly why its beeping unless you look at the screen, which as I previously stated I can't see up close well without readers and also takes you eyes of road).... The car is now back to breaking at green lights and lights that are not even stop lights, not automatically going on green lights, not signally and changing lanes on mapped navigation, and when I manually signal to change lanes it is NOWHERE NEAR as confident in doing so as FSDB. FSDB suspension for someone who drives 30 miles a day vs someone who is likely in the top 10% of more of miles driven on it per day is likely to be far worse when trying to 'get used to' the old version again.
And other problems with FSDB...
The auto headlights are forced ON, which makes the auto hi beams force on every second it thinks they can be on. This is stupid - every night I have video of people flashing their lights at me cause my hi beams are on when they shouldn't be. They would sometimes turn on an off 4-5 times in a 15-20 second period so even when cars are far enough not to be blinded they think I am signaling them or a hazard. I had a cop flash his lights at me cause he probably thought I was warning traffic of a cop, when it was just the Tesla being dumb with the hi beams. They turn on in well lit freeway driving in the city, well lit streets, and almost every freeway overpass in Houston area they try to turn on before the hill (I guess it thinks it cant see the road anymore causes of the hill?!?). I have seen no difference in how autopilot handles when the hi beams are on vs off, so I don't know why they are so aggressive with turning them on. It shouldn't turn them on at all on the major city freeways! On residential well lit side streets it blasts them into houses and approaching intersections is blinds care perpendicular crossing. The auto hi beam feature needs to be off until they can fix it - its a major safety issue and is being used illegally. When I asked about this they said 'its in beta', but I argued the auto hi-beams are NOT in beta... just having them forced on in FSDB is.
FSDB has NO CLUE how to handle Houston feeder roads and underpasses that go under the freeway every mile. FSDB stops entering the u-turn lanes for no reason, then doesn't yield when exiting them. It tries to split the u-turn lane and go beside traffic in front of you thinking they are two lanes (they are wide so 18-wheelers can use them but they are one lane). If you turn left on a feeder under an underpass FSDB stays in the far left lane, which is another dedicated left turn lane then tries to signal into the next lane to go straight but by then either a car behind you has (legally) turned left into the second lane thus blocking you or FSDB performs the lane change in the middle of the intersection which is illegal. I have 'autopilot snapshot' this quite literally over a hundred times at various free underpasses but it doesn't improve at all. This happens when the lanes are clearly marked and the path on the map is perfect, but FSDB doesn't abide by that. Its even worse if its a large 5-6 lane underpass you are entering from the feeder.
A more minor thing, auto wipers are forced on when using FSDB. Auto wipers really suck, I have pics of my windshield so full of water drop you can barely see and they don't auto turn on, and other pics of it wiping absolutely nothing, but you can manually do them which sucks but is fine. What is most annoying is that after a car wash, when the windshield is SPOTLESS, about 10 minutes into a FSDB drive it will 'auto cleaning dirty windshield' then get water all over the edges of the already spotless windshield and side of the car. I thought maybe car wash was leaving a soap residue over where the camera was but nope, one time I thoroughly cleaned that area with microfiber cloth and another time with glass cleaner and it was spotless - and its not a fluke - I have a car wash pass and wash 2-4 times a week and it happens EVERY TIME I was the car. How do things like this get reported to get fixed?!? I know its a minor thing, but its the kind of things that will go unknown forever.
TLDR; I am pissed I don't have FSDB anymore due to suspension. They need to factor in miles driven per day/length of drive with the strike out system as I am probably in top 5-10% of miles driven per day. FSDB is by NO MEANS PERFECT, but it IS much safer for me, especially now that I am USED to it and how it behaves and I am NOT at all used to how it behaves on the old software which doesn't automate things I am naturally used to it doing.
EDIT: oh yeah, the freaking 'need more cowbell...' When trying to engage autosteer now I am not used to situations where it won't turn on, so I try to do it a few times in a row. the stupid cowbell thing turns on. and on and on and on. Push up on the stalk the graphics turn off the music blasts over radio, phone etc. Oh, and press the microphone button and the cowbell song RESTARTS, over and over. Have to wait for it to totally finishing before hitting microphone or it never ends. so annoying playing over phone calls etc, where is option to turn that off?!?
Last edited: