What are your most common intervention scenarios?

I've been in the beta program since 10.2 and - while there have certainly been regressions - FSDb has gone from being erratic and scary to quite predictable, almost boring! Zero intervention trips are now common, and even my long daily commute only has a couple of them, usually at predictable locations.

On that note, I thought it might be interesting to start a thread about the most common intervention scenarios still encountered regularly by beta testers. My list is below - if these scenarios were mastered by FSDb, the vast majority of my daily drives would be close to zero interventions.

1. Unprotected Left Turns (ULTs): Specifically, the 'two part' ULT. While FSDb seems much better at gauging traffic distance and velocity, the recently introduced 'two part' driving logic (where it uses the median to wait for an opening on the far side of the intersection) is more trouble than it's worth. In my experience, it attempts this maneuver regardless of whether there is actually sufficient space in the median. This freaks out the cars coming from the right, who assume that I am about to drive right into them as my car approaches the median at high speed.
2. Flashing yellow left turn arrows: These are common in my area. The car should behave as if there were no left arrow, and yield to oncoming traffic but proceed otherwise. Instead, it just waits at the flashing yellow even when there is no oncoming traffic.
3. Right turn on red: FSDb still ignores these signs. This one is surprising, because I remember Karpathy describing the challenge of reading these signs in a presentation quite some time ago. I would have thought FSDb would at least attempt to identify these signs.
4. Toll booths: This is technically the old NoA highway stack and not FSDb. I'm hopeful V11 will be better at toll booths. These are E-ZPass toll booths without arms, so the car just needs to navigate through the toll lanes. It also has to deal with the unmarked open space on the other side of the tool booth (for some reason at one location near me there are no lane markings at all for ~100 feet after the toll booth, so all the vehicles just drive in a pack until the lane markings begin again).
5. (Some) speed bumps: FSDb is fairly good at recognizing speed bumps, but sometimes it misses them completely and I have to disengage so that I don't go airborne.

So that's my 'top 5' list of remaining major issues. Anyone else?

"Tesla Autopilot Engaged in Model X" by Ian Maddox is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Admin note: Image added as thumbnail for Blog.

 

[Phlier]

I agree with your entire post, but as I've recently written a rather long post on my issues with the current FSDb version, I'll refrain from retyping the whole thing here, rather than to add the most egregious of them that I forgot to put in my recent post:

Traffic circles.

 

[Supcom]

A good start would be to address a few of these:

Not complying with school zone speed limits
Not complying with not passing loading school buses
Bad default speed limits
Hesitancy at stop sign intersections
Swerving wildly between lanes after a right turn onto a highway frontage road
Inability to get onto a highway on ramp after turning right at certain intersection without attempting to stop in the middle of a multilane frontage road.
Overreaction to car ahead slowing to make right turn
Aborting lane change when no other traffic nearby
Moving into left turn lane when continuing straight
Failure to reduce speed in a timely manner when speed limit is reduced
Inability to navigate 270 degrees around tiny neighborhood roundabouts
Inability to slow to safe speed when going straight through tiny neighborhood roundabouts
Inability to detect and avoid road debris
Failure to comply with No Turn On Red signs

 

[EVRider-FL]

10.69.3.1 is my first FSD Beta build. My most common intervention, if this counts as an intervention, is pressing the throttle when the car is too hesitant to turn at an intersection, which happens a lot. I’ve had a couple of cases where the car failed to move into the right lane to take a right turn, even though there was no other car in the way. Sometimes the car doesn’t change lanes soon enough for an upcoming turn, even though it’s telling me about the upcoming lane change way in advance, so I initiate a lane change; the car needs to be more proactive about changing lanes when the opportunity is available. Also, the car slows down unnecessarily for flashing yellow lights.

That said, the Beta has worked pretty well for me and the car hasn’t tried to kill me yet.

 

[kabin]

Leaving much out my list would be stopping 30ft before intersections and the slow creep(aka 10-15 second crawl). General indecisiveness - FSDb responsiveness is inherently too slow for real world city driving. Lane changes are frequently suboptimal - late brake into turn lane/median with part of vehicle obstructing traffic flow. Poor comfort from excess brake application, phantom braking, erratic steering, ... Excess use of bright headlights.

 

[uscbucsfan]

Turning lanes, School Zones, Busses, Construction Zones are all pretty consistently intervened for me.

 

[teca01]

Potholes

 

[uscbucsfan]

Potholes

Those and railroad tracks...forgot about those.

 

[redmunds]

1. I have a road with a median near my house where I frequently make a left turn. The problem is that the median is not wide enough to pause in the middle which is common with ULT, but FSDb seems to think it can fit, so I need to recognize this case and intervene.

2. There's another road where I drive with an unmarked speed limit (which defaults to 20 mph here). The first section is pretty wide with parallel parking so going 20 + 5 mph is no problem. In next section, the road narrows and the parking becomes 45 degree parking, so it's much tighter, but speed limit stays the same. FSDb maintains the same speed limit even though road has much less room for error, so I almost always intervene.

 

[Aayyo]

my new experience after 6 months of fsd beta:
False collision warning in a parking structure and stellar safety score tanked to 92%.
Failure to to stop for red light warranting hard breaking.
Turning off fsd without warnings Only for me to realize fsd is off when it does not follow traffic signals

 

[Lukez]

Randomly turning on turning signal when there is no where to turn or change lanes, can't keep it on to not confuse other drivers around me

 

[tarheeldan]

Lane changes and cones. It won't change into the lane it should because it's scared of nearby cones. Unfortunately this happens at the turn into my apartment complex. The cones have been up for over 6 months, not sure what happened with construction :/

Hesitancy on unprotected right turns, when it's obviously clear.

 

[BigNick]

First, I need to state that I am never going to pay $15K for FSD until it is L4+, and even then it's not likely.

I would be willing to pay $199 per month to subscribe and check it out, once it's better than its current state, which means these things would need to be fixed:

Speed bumps, railroad tracks, etc:
Considering taking a speed bump or a set of raised tracks at the wrong speed can result in a destroyed HV pack in the worst scenarios, I would think this needs to be solved pronto. Ditto for detecting and reacting to road debris (such as an errant tow hitch.) Watch the preceding cars navigate the obstacle as a guide, then gauge the gnarliness of the bump via cameras to determine how slow to go over. Record the coordinates and send back to Tesla to add to its maps.

Not complying with not passing loading school buses:
Isn't this an automatic license suspension (or worse) in some jurisdictions? How hard can it be to identify and properly react to a large yellow box on wheels with flashing red lights and a stop arm on the left side?

Frontage road behavior:
I always thought this was due to the proximity of the frontage road to an Interstate highway and the car not being sure of "where" it was due to GPS. But the cameras should be able to quickly distinguish between the two. These are typically busy areas.

Hesitancy:
Is it possible HW3 is just too slow to process enough "stuff" so the car can behave as a normal driver in real-time? The rumored HW4 should provide a processing boost.

Circles/Roundabouts/Rotaries/Whatevertheheckyoucalltheminyourneckofthewoods:
Depends on how often you drive through them. They're becoming more and more common in the USA. Some handling multiple lanes of traffic now. These need to be handled as well as normal intersections.

Failure to reduce speed in a timely manner when speed limit is reduced:
Lots of local police departments use these as "fishing holes" typically just inside the town limits. But i think there's an overall issue regarding reading road signs. My car can't tell the difference between a sign that is for southbound Route 30 and a Speed Limit 30 sign. It will slow down in a 45 MPH zone at the same spot on southbound 30 because it thinks the speed limit is reduced when it's not. It's still 45 MPH there. You gotta read more than just the numbers!

 

[azred]

A good start would be to address a few of these:

Not complying with school zone speed limits
Not complying with not passing loading school buses
Bad default speed limits
Hesitancy at stop sign intersections
Swerving wildly between lanes after a right turn onto a highway frontage road
Inability to get onto a highway on ramp after turning right at certain intersection without attempting to stop in the middle of a multilane frontage road.
Overreaction to car ahead slowing to make right turn
Aborting lane change when no other traffic nearby
Moving into left turn lane when continuing straight
Failure to reduce speed in a timely manner when speed limit is reduced
Inability to navigate 270 degrees around tiny neighborhood roundabouts
Inability to slow to safe speed when going straight through tiny neighborhood roundabouts
Inability to detect and avoid road debris
Failure to comply with No Turn On Red signs

Yep, sounds similar to my list and that list is pretty convincing proof that Musk’s YouTube cheerleaders who brag about lack of interventions are somewhat less than truth tellers. My biggest gripe is the lack of honesty from the Big Guy. I understand the $$ motives of the YouTubers who fib.

I still use the Beta often but seldom if my wife is in the car. She hates the quirky behavior and I can understand why it is much more jarring as a passenger who isn’t intensely immersed in the driving of the car.

P.S. It is ridiculous that school zones haven’t been the highest priority.

 

[alexgr]

1. School zone speed limit
2. A 2/3 lane road looses a lane some 500-1000 ft after an intersection. The car stays in the right lane and starts panicking when the lane abruptly ends.
3. Not accelerating (waiting too long to start acceleration or slow acceleration) when changing lane on highways.
4. Very bad still on predicting what others will do, so I let the FSD do lane changes in heavier traffic, turns into traffic, etc. only when I feel totally pissed off at the entire world.

Generally, the FSD became significantly better, and even sometimes useful, since November last year.

 

[vapor trail]

Interesting and informative thread. Tesla engineers should take note!

I live in a gated neighborhood. My car would happily smash through the gate every time if didn't intervene. Seemingly zero awareness.

 

[MX100DM3P2017]

Randomly turning on turning signal when there is no where to turn or change lanes, can't keep it on to not confuse other drivers around me

This is so annoying. Driving on FSD on Navigation this happens all the time. Phantom request to move to left lane that does not exist or request to change lanes when not necessary (example, I need to exit to the right in < a mile, AP wants to move to left lane while in Standard Mode). Also, when freeway exit requires left lane split to new left lane, AP does not move left. I have to intervene every time. Phantom breaking is still a problem. All these problems are happening in my MX 100D with all hardware upgraded, software version 2022.36.6. Have a trip next week and will test out the latest update received, 2022.36.20. Hoping for better results.

 

[Supcom]

P.S. It is ridiculous that school zones haven’t been the highest priority.

I think that getting the car to do basic driving is a far higher priority than school zones. As an L2 system, you, the driver can simply disengage or change the speed limit when approaching a school zone. You are paying attention, right?

School zones are actually far more difficult that they would, at first, appear. School zones are denoted in a dizzingly varied way. There is NO standard for signage. Some even state things like "during school days" or "when children are present". Some have multiple time periods listed. Some have flashing lights, some do not. Use google maps to search out random schools across the country and look at the street view images of the signs. You'll be glad you haven't been assigned the school zone task at Tesla.

 

[alexgr]

I think that getting the car to do basic driving is a far higher priority than school zones. As an L2 system, you, the driver can simply disengage or change the speed limit when approaching a school zone. You are paying attention, right?

School zones are actually far more difficult that they would, at first, appear. School zones are denoted in a dizzingly varied way. There is NO standard for signage. Some even state things like "during school days" or "when children are present". Some have multiple time periods listed. Some have flashing lights, some do not. Use google maps to search out random schools across the country and look at the street view images of the signs. You'll be glad you haven't been assigned the school zone task at Tesla.

3 years ago I was told at a Tesla center point blank that within a few month Teslas will be able to drive kids to schools fully autonomously. Personally, I totally understand two things: 1) there will be no FSD for many years ahead (like 10+) and I have considered paying for the FSD as a donation; 2) Elon and Tesla have intentionally misled people who paid for FSD without full understanding of #1.

 

[azred]

I think that getting the car to do basic driving is a far higher priority than school zones. As an L2 system, you, the driver can simply disengage or change the speed limit when approaching a school zone. You are paying attention, right?

School zones are actually far more difficult that they would, at first, appear. School zones are denoted in a dizzingly varied way. There is NO standard for signage. Some even state things like "during school days" or "when children are present". Some have multiple time periods listed. Some have flashing lights, some do not. Use google maps to search out random schools across the country and look at the street view images of the signs. You'll be glad you haven't been assigned the school zone task at Tesla.

Gee, after six years of owning this software, I thought it already did “basic driving.” And oddly enough I thought the three or four school zones I encounter almost every weekday would be part of basic driving. The fine for ignoring them certainly leads me to believe the government considers them to be a part of basic driving.

Yes, I am paying attention. If I wasn’t I would have lost my driver’s license or life by now while trusting this software.