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Wiki MASTER THREAD: Actual FSD Beta downloads and experiences

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Just had an absolutely awful drive. Roads were rural two lane roads, well marked, speed limits of 55. Phantom braking was the worst I’ve seen yet. It was sunny, no clouds, perhaps it was braking for shadows cast from trees, or differences in pavement colors (darker vs. lighter, where a section of road was repaired). FSD was basically unusable. The phantom braking was not the 1-2mph slow-downs, but rather 10-25mph slow-downs.

Other phantom braking: seemed to slow when approaching intersections or passing them. Seemed to slow for parked vehicles in driveways. Again, these were 10-2mph slow downs.

There were not many turns made, but the one right turn which it should have no issue with was terrible. Car stopped as if there was a stop sign, and would not complete (or even start the turn). I had to gas it for it to complete the maneuver.

It’s strange, I don’t have an issue with phantom braking in more dense areas or expressways, it’s on these rural roads where I see it the most. Sucks, cuz that’s were I live.

Edit: on curves to the right, still hugs the center lane markings. Car keeping too far left on those curves.

Does this happen at night for you as well? When I drive at night, phantom braking is much reduced (practically nonexistent).
 
Had an interesting drive home yesterday afternoon. Ended up on Sorrento Valley Blvd/Calle Cristobal heading east from Vista Sorrento Parkway to Camino Ruiz using 10.5, and it happened that every single traffic light on this road was off (meaning no flashing red - just off). Was a good test for FSD and also got it on GoPro (might post it sometime if I ever pull it off). There were 10 opportunities to test the behavior (10 intersections with traffic lights out).

I was driving away from the sun with the sun low in the sky at 4PM. So some of the traffic lights were well illuminated. Some were in shade.

For the traffic lights that were illuminated by the sun, usually the perception detected them as yellow, and just slowed down way in advance like the light was yellow. A tap on the accelerator seemed to override that and allowed me to proceed to the stop line. I did have to override at that point because then it would tend to go through as I recall.

There was one well illuminated light that seemed to be perceived as green. No evidence of slowing, so had to disengage for that. It just figured it was green.

For the non-illuminated shaded lights, the car seemed to recognize them (or map them) and saw they were out. For those lights, the car came to a stop pretty reliably. However, it did not treat the intersection as a four-way stop. It just stopped. And then I had to proceed manually (accelerator input was enough to get it going again, so not actually a need to disengage and re-engage).

I'll review the footage and see whether there is anything else interesting. One person had crashed off the road into a wall at an intersection. I'm not sure whether it had anything to do with the lights being out. FSD did better than that, I guess? Though it would have crashed without me at the wheel on that "green" light, I suspect (or at least put others at risk - obviously people were generally proceeding with caution, so they probably would've seen the FSD Tesla bombing for the 4-way stop intersection at 40mph if I had let it go).
 
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every single traffic light on this road was off (meaning no flashing red - just off). Was a good test for FSD and also got it on GoPro (might post it sometime if I ever pull it off). There were 10 opportunities to test the behavior (10 intersections with traffic lights out).
cf tesla on Youtube had posted a video of something similar (power outage because of a storm). He thought it handled some of the intersections as 4-way stops.
 
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cf tesla on Youtube had posted a video of something similar (power outage because of a storm). He thought it handled some of the intersections as 4-way stops.

Yep, I tried to check for this specifically because I was interested. Definitely got one opportunity for it to just go ahead on one intersection (some of the others I was limited due to traffic coming up behind me, not only did not want to keep them waiting, but also want to avoid being rear-ended by anyone since the lights were out - and of course the "yellow" light ones and the "green" light ones I had to drive manually since it wasn't treating them correctly and would just go on the yellow after being overridden with accelerator in the roll up to the light, since it slowed down way too early, requiring an accelerator override, for an effective 4-way stop when it treats it as a yellow light - so really I just had 4 chances or so to actually test). On the one good test case there was no evidence of movement after at least 2-3 seconds with clear visibility and no traffic at any of the side roads. Would it eventually have gone? Maybe, I have no idea; I did not wait 5-10 seconds. Effectively, for practical purposes, not treated as a 4-way stop. As far as I know, it said nothing about "waiting for our turn" either (I was looking for messages). I'll review the video later, as I said - it's possible there was something I missed, since I was busy driving the car.
 
I just received 10.5 as a new FSD Beta addition, so first time using any of the Beta versions, and on the short out and back loop I did from my house to test it out I had double digit phantom breaking incidents.

Some were so slight that you could barely feel it, and some were pretty aggressive.
yeah I feel that a lot of the problem with "phantom braking" is defining what it is. How strong does the braking action have to be? How sure is everyone that every incident is phantom? I've had a few times where the car has slowed down unexpectedly and only when I looked carefully did I realize it was being cautious for a good reason (pedestrian hovering by corner etc). I would not say these were "phantom braking" incidents.

Of course, the car suddenly slamming on the brakes on the freeway and nearly causing someone to rear-end you when there is no good reason for it is a major issue .. no disagreement there. But a slight slow-down when the car is being cautious that has no real safety concern? Not so sure about that.
 
yeah I feel that a lot of the problem with "phantom braking" is defining what it is. How strong does the braking action have to be? How sure is everyone that every incident is phantom? I've had a few times where the car has slowed down unexpectedly and only when I looked carefully did I realize it was being cautious for a good reason (pedestrian hovering by corner etc). I would not say these were "phantom braking" incidents.

Of course, the car suddenly slamming on the brakes on the freeway and nearly causing someone to rear-end you when there is no good reason for it is a major issue .. no disagreement there. But a slight slow-down when the car is being cautious that has no real safety concern? Not so sure about that.

it's braking of any degree that would be considered unwarranted or undesirable by a human.
 
I only took a few short drives with my 3 LR RWD. I did notice significant improvement in car positioning on unmarked roads; it no longer seems like it wants to ride down the middle. Not enough other driving to judge beyond that.
One fun thing I've noticed as that 10.4 and now 10.5 seem to handle metered on-ramps,... maybe. These are the ramps where a traffic light is present to allow only one car at a time to proceed to the highway. The one ramp I've taken actually has two lanes with alternating lights. FSD seems to 'respect' the light for it's lane and doesn't try to proceed when the light for the opposing lane flips to green. It also didn't try to go through the green when there was a car in front of me (for which the green was intended). But that may have been more to do with how quickly the green flipped back to red.
I hadn't even thought about metered ramps. That raises a question. Some say "1 car per green," while others say "2 cars per green." Can it read the sign to make the right decisions?
 
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it's braking of any degree that would be considered unwarranted or undesirable by a human.
That is a very subjective measurement.

I've noticed on a road I travel often, that upon coming up to cross streets where the road I'm traveling doesn't have a stop sign, FSD will slow down by 1 mph, sometimes 2. So, on this street from 30mph to 29 or 28mph, then once it's through the intersection it bumps up to 30mph.

Now, I as a driver may not do that, but I can assure you, my wife does because often cars at these intersections are blocked by parked cars on the road, so they don't have good visibility to determine if it's safe to turn onto/cross the street because they can't always see me traveling down the road.

My sense, is FSD is doing the same and being extra cautious, which I'm fine with.
 
it's braking of any degree that would be considered unwarranted or undesirable by a human.
I agree. I think some of the disagreements are a bit nit-picky. Of course it is subjective and we won't all agree with any particular incident but I think it does communicate that the driver who is claiming it thinks there is an unwarranted slowdown. Sometime annoying, sometimes dangerous. But I think there is a general consensus that it is slowing down soft or hard when it should not. How 'bout leaving it at that.
 
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it's braking of any degree that would be considered unwarranted or undesirable by a human.
Very subjective. Well, some humans would want to plough through crowds.

Apart from what others have said - I've another point.

If you watch someone drive - manually - you will see frequent slow down of up to 5 mph quite often. Thats the way people normally drive. So, small changes in speed should be fine. Only dumb CC would go at a constant speed (or smoothed TACC).

With every oncoming car or what looks like a probable obstacle - there is a probability associated. The question is at what probability should the car respond. There are two possibilities
(1) FSD is assigning too high a probability of collision than warranted
(2) FSD cut off probability for responding is too low

(2) is easier to address. (1) needs a lot of training / better perception and intent estimation ...

ps : Humans do tend to completely ignore low probability events when driving (leading to accidents we see). We do want AVs to be better - so, the question really is how should AVs respond to lower probability events.
 
Just got FSD for the first time today! I have a 98 score. A couple questions - I live in the roundabout capital of the US, Carmel IN. We have over 100 of them. The car often activates turn signals on FSD when going through roundabouts - not good. It will activate the right turn signal when entering and then left turn signal midway through….just weird and confusing for other cars. Does anyone else notice this on roundabouts/rotaries?

Also - I’ve got the refreshed S and the snapshot icon is not visible on my center NAV screen. Is that just a bug or is it somewhere else? I must’ve helped today as I uploaded over 15GB’s of data back to the mothership tonight but was never able to snapshot feedback. The only time I see the camera icon is if I tap controls.
 
Here's a phantom brake that happened to me. A bike was traveling on the sidewalk in the direction of the red arrow. I could see that there wasn't an issue because I knew the bike would soon turn to follow the sidewalk parallel to the road. FSD, however, assumed we were on a collision course and slammed on the brakes.

I find that 10.5 is worse at reacting to tree shadows than 10.4 was. It's particularly bad when the canopy completely covers the road.

BikeSidewalk.png
 
Today I have tested 10.5 in a challenging environment: I drove to Pier 39 of San Francisco from home (suburb), then crossed the SF city to golden gate park, then went back home. For all the FSD beta part, there were zero disengagement. This is surely the significant improvement people are talking about, I agree. But... some other part feels way off. The turning is way better and smoother and therefore keeps disengagement free, but the control of throttle and brake is very bad, I’d say more jarring than 10.4, and way more phantom brakes. I have to constantly intervene. It was super bad during the night drive, where the center divider is bushes. Phantom brake almost every block, stop in the middle of road from no reason.
 
We've definitely seen cases where it's clear phantom braking is not warranted, like shadows of trees. Or when there's really nothing at all. So these need to be eliminated.

I think smooth phantom braking is acceptable for now, when the car is legitimately being cautious (thinking another car is moving into our lane too closely) or being overprotective of VRUs. The slamming on the brakes should be warranted, which it often isn't today.

The day we have L5, when we're not even looking out of the car, we will take safety for granted, and passenger comfort becomes top of mind. So any hard braking event should be rare (as it is when we drive safely - think 100 safety score), and any other braking should minimize jerk and deceleration.