Finally an actual intelligent question that isn’t just ‘fuck Tesla’.
FSD has gotten very very good. On the highway, it is a better driver than I am. I have had my car for a few years, I have driven many hundreds of hours on FSD, and it has only really tried to do something stupid twice, both of them some time ago on much older software. I don’t even have the most recent software because my car is computer is generation 3, I’m running the last one that was available for HW3 (version 12) but I have a lot of time on it so I am quite familiar with what it can and cannot do.
As such, I gain trust by experience, by watching it perform. So I know which situations I can trust it to do the right thing, and which situations I cannot.
That means in one of the situations where I trust it, such as on the highway, I can turn it on and leave it the task of staying in lane and maintaining speed. I can focus my attention then on maintaining overall situational awareness of the world around the car. Even if I am doing something else like eating a sandwich, which would otherwise distract my attention and make me a less safe driver, I feel the result is overall more safe because the computer is watching 360° around the car and I am maintaining situational awareness of what I can see. I believe this creates the most safe situation.
Using highway driving like that, there have been a couple situations where the car reacted to something that I hadn’t even seen yet and potentially avoided an accident. For example, there was one situation where a very reckless driver was coming up from behind in the right lane and merging into our lane. I didn’t see it because I was looking forward, Tesla did because the cameras are looking everywhere. Tesla’s reaction was to slow down and change lanes away from the guy, which was the correct response. The car started reacting before I was even aware of the threat, and because the car had already cleared the space it was changing lanes into, it was able to start that lane change faster than I could because I would have looked over the shoulder first…
There have also been a few situations where I reacted to something the car was not reacting to yet and while it would not have resulted in an accident, it did increase safety by my intervention. Basic example is I am in the far right lane, there is an entry exit lane to the right which is ending and I know it is ending but the car doesn’t necessarily. I know the car slightly ahead and to the right of me is going to have to merge into my lane, so I manually slow down the car to give him a space to come in whereas Tesla would have just maintained speed and he would have had to slow down and go behind me.
I would strongly encourage you to disregard a lot of The crap you read in the news and online, much of it written by people who intrinsically hate Elon and anything he has ever touched, and go test drive the car. I’m not saying go buy the car, I’m saying go have the experience of actually using FSD so you can see first hand exactly what it is like.
I simply dont see a benefit to the technology in my own life. I’m willing to hear others give their experience though. I think for me, whether its a better driver or not is secondary to accountability. I’m accountable for my mistakes, whereas a co pany like tesla has many many reasons why they should avoid accountability.
If FSD were a state or federal government initiative with the goal of improving society, I think that would go a long way. At least something like that.
Finally an actual intelligent question that isn’t just ‘fuck Tesla’.
FSD has gotten very very good. On the highway, it is a better driver than I am. I have had my car for a few years, I have driven many hundreds of hours on FSD, and it has only really tried to do something stupid twice, both of them some time ago on much older software. I don’t even have the most recent software because my car is computer is generation 3, I’m running the last one that was available for HW3 (version 12) but I have a lot of time on it so I am quite familiar with what it can and cannot do.
As such, I gain trust by experience, by watching it perform. So I know which situations I can trust it to do the right thing, and which situations I cannot.
That means in one of the situations where I trust it, such as on the highway, I can turn it on and leave it the task of staying in lane and maintaining speed. I can focus my attention then on maintaining overall situational awareness of the world around the car. Even if I am doing something else like eating a sandwich, which would otherwise distract my attention and make me a less safe driver, I feel the result is overall more safe because the computer is watching 360° around the car and I am maintaining situational awareness of what I can see. I believe this creates the most safe situation.
Using highway driving like that, there have been a couple situations where the car reacted to something that I hadn’t even seen yet and potentially avoided an accident. For example, there was one situation where a very reckless driver was coming up from behind in the right lane and merging into our lane. I didn’t see it because I was looking forward, Tesla did because the cameras are looking everywhere. Tesla’s reaction was to slow down and change lanes away from the guy, which was the correct response. The car started reacting before I was even aware of the threat, and because the car had already cleared the space it was changing lanes into, it was able to start that lane change faster than I could because I would have looked over the shoulder first…
There have also been a few situations where I reacted to something the car was not reacting to yet and while it would not have resulted in an accident, it did increase safety by my intervention. Basic example is I am in the far right lane, there is an entry exit lane to the right which is ending and I know it is ending but the car doesn’t necessarily. I know the car slightly ahead and to the right of me is going to have to merge into my lane, so I manually slow down the car to give him a space to come in whereas Tesla would have just maintained speed and he would have had to slow down and go behind me.
I would strongly encourage you to disregard a lot of The crap you read in the news and online, much of it written by people who intrinsically hate Elon and anything he has ever touched, and go test drive the car. I’m not saying go buy the car, I’m saying go have the experience of actually using FSD so you can see first hand exactly what it is like.
I simply dont see a benefit to the technology in my own life. I’m willing to hear others give their experience though. I think for me, whether its a better driver or not is secondary to accountability. I’m accountable for my mistakes, whereas a co pany like tesla has many many reasons why they should avoid accountability.
If FSD were a state or federal government initiative with the goal of improving society, I think that would go a long way. At least something like that.