Self Driving Observation

[Richard__G]

I'm not going to try the FSD trial just offered for various reasons.

I recently fully tested the non-full Self Driving feature included in my plan on a 5 hour trip (down & back) to visit a friend. Some observations:

• It's a better driver than I am when it comes to staying smoothly centered in the lane.
• Coming out a highway construction zone, if presented with switching from one lane to two lanes, and the car is headed straight on to the dividing line between the 2, it gets confused and simply shuts down.
• I experienced several rapid slowdowns when there was nothing to cause it.

Once I understood its' limitations, it became my somewhat "challenged" driving buddy . It really made the drive a lot easier, but I definitely had to maintain constant vigilance on its behavior.

 

[ElectricAnt54]

I'm not going to try the FSD trial just offered for various reasons.

I recently fully tested the non-full Self Driving feature included in my plan on a 5 hour trip (down & back) to visit a friend. Some observations:

• It's a better driver than I am when it comes to staying smoothly centered in the lane.
• Coming out a highway construction zone, if presented with switching from one lane to two lanes, and the car is headed straight on to the dividing line between the 2, it gets confused and simply shuts down.
• I experienced several rapid slowdowns when there was nothing to cause it.

Once I understood its' limitations, it became my somewhat "challenged" driving buddy . It really made the drive a lot easier, but I definitely had to maintain constant vigilance on its behavior.

I’m almost done with my 30 day free FSD. Gotta admit, I’m very impressed & use it almost every drive. It’s not perfect but rate of improvement since switching to neural nets is promising. I’ll probably rent it every few months as my current car is not my forever car.

I bet the unexplained rapid slowdown happened when you were on a smaller highway & not a major interstate freeway. Smaller highways is where I experience rapid slowdowns. When I say rapid, it’s nothing dangerous such as suddenly slamming on brakes. It tends to happen when there has not been a speed limit sign around for a while & I think the car slows down due to defaulting to an assumed default speed limit or perhaps uses the map data to check speed limit which may be different than last posted speed limit or maybe the system uses map data when there are no speed limits posted and the map data indicates speed has changed perhaps due to crossing in to keep city / county etc. When I am in a major interstate, I rarely (if ever) encounter unexplained slowdowns.

On the flip side, when using Enhanced Auto Pilot (part of fsd suite) on interstate freeways, I notice it tends to slow very slightly just before overpasses. This never happened to me using free basic autopilot + autosteer.

 

[Richard__G]

Interesting, so one can subscribe one month and unsubscribe the next? That would certainly be an incentive for me to try it out.

I was on a major interstate right at the speed limit when the slowdowns occurred. I guess I can live with it as it wasn't very severe.

Thanks for the info!