[foobarian]

I've been driving on local and highway roads for 30 years now and I have never come across a piece of debris so large that driving over it would damage my car. Seeing that video, I don't have high confidence that I would have dodged that hazard - maybe 70% sure? The thing is, usually there is plenty of traffic ahead that acts very obviously different in situations like this that helps as well.

All that to say that I don't feel this is a fair criticism of the FSD system.

[root_axis]

> I have never come across a piece of debris so large that driving over it would damage my car

More likely you simply drove around the debris and didn't register the memory because it's extremely unlikely that you've never encountered dangerous road debris in 30 years of driving.

[foobarian]

I think it's probably because of mostly driving in enough traffic that other cars would have encountered any critical objects first and created a traffic jam around an impassable section.

[quickthrowman]

You’ve been driving for 30 years and have never seen a semi truck tire in the middle of the road after it ripped off the rim of a truck?

[foobarian]

Honestly no, not in the middle of the road, but plenty on the side. The only things I come across in the middle of the roads are paper bags or cardboard for some reason.

But also, I doubt you would break your swaybar running over some retreads

[franktankbank]

Driving I-5 up to Portland I had to dodge a dresser that was standing upright somehow in the middle of the lane. The truck in front of me moved into the other lane revealing that thing just standing there, I had to quickly make an adjustment similar to what this tesla should have done. Teslas also have lower bellys, my jeep would have gone over the debris in the video no problem.

[dzhiurgis]

30 years of driving doesn't equate same amount of miles driven.

Probably good parable for Waymo vs Tesla here. One is generalized approach for entire world while another is carefully pre-mapped for a small area.

[ModernMech]

> All that to say that I don't feel this is a fair criticism of the FSD system.

Yes it is because the bar isn't whether a human would detect it, but whether a car with LiDAR would. And without a doubt it would, especially given those conditions: clear day, flat surface, protruding object is a best case scenario for LiDAR. Tesla's FSD was designed by Musk who is not an engineer nor an expert in sensors or robotics, and therefore fails predictably in ways that other systems designed by competent engineers do not.

[foobarian]

I don't disagree with that characterization of the technical details. However I felt the task those drivers set out was asking a different question: how good would the FSD system be at completing a coast-to-coast trip? I don't think this can be answered after hitting a singular, highly unlikely accident without a lot more trials.

Imagine there was a human driver team shadowing the Tesla, and say they got T-boned after 60 miles. Would we claim that human drivers suck and have the same level of criticism? I don't think that would be fair either.

[ModernMech]

If you don't disagree on the characterization of the technical details, then you must realize how very fair it is for us to criticize the system for failing in the exact way it's predicted to fail. We don't need 1000 more trials to know that the system is technically flawed.

[foobarian]

What if there is no debris the other 999 times, and the system works fine? The video does not give me that information as a prospective Tesla customer. This looks like a fluke to me.

[mynameisvlad]

Those 999 other times, the system might work fine for the first 60 miles.

This is a cross-country trip. LA to New York is 2776 miles without charging. It crashed the first time in the first 2% of the journey. And not a small intervention or accident either.

How you could possibly see this as anything other than FSD being a total failure is beyond me.

[fuzzfactor]

>asking a different question: how good would the FSD system be at completing a coast-to-coast trip?

>They made it about 2.5% of the planned trip on Tesla FSD v13.9 before crashing the vehicle.

This really does need to be considered preliminary data based on only one trial.

And so far that's 2.5% as good as you would need to make it one way, one time.

Or 1.25% as good as you need to make it there & back.

People will just have to wait and see how it goes if they do anything to try and bring the average up.

That's about 100:1 odds against getting there & back.

One time.

Don't think I would want to be the second one to try it.

If somebody does take the risk and makes it without any human assistance though, maybe they (or the car) deserve a ticker-tape parade when they get there like Chas Lindbergh :)

[rainsford]

As a prospective Tesla customer this one test tells you that Telsa's FSD is not always able to identify or avoid objects in the road large enough to significantly damage your car in situations where humans can identify the object from a significant distance away. Running 999 other tests where there are no objects in the road does not improve your understanding of Tesla's ability to handle objects in the road. Ideally maybe you'd actually want to run 999 more tests with objects in the road to see if Tesla fails every time. If it identifies and avoids the object 99.9% of the time, then you could say this particular test was a fluke.

Now you can certainly argue that "objects in the road" is a category of failure mode you don't expect to happen often enough to care about, but it's still a technical flaw in the FSD system. I'd also argue it points to a broader problem with FSD because it doesn't seem like it should have been all that hard for the Tesla to see and avoid the object since the humans saw it in plenty of time. The fact that it didn't raises questions for me about how well the system works in general.

[ModernMech]

Tesla in 2016: "Our goal is, and I feel pretty good about this goal, that we'll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York, from home in LA to let’s say dropping you off in Time Square in New York, and then having the car go park itself, by the end of next year" he said on a press call today. "Without the need for a single touch, including the charger."

Roboticists in 2016: "Tesla's sensor technology is not capable of this."

Tesla in 2025: coast-to-coast FSD crashes after 2% of the journey

Roboticists in 2025: "See? We said this would happen."

The reason the robot crashed doesn't come down to "it was just unlucky". The reason it crashed is because it's not sufficiently equipped for the journey. You can run it 999 more times, that will not change. If it's not a thing in the road, it's a tractor trailer crossing the road at the wrong time of day, or some other failure mode that would have been avoided if Musk were not so dogmatic about vision-only sensors.

> The video does not give me that information as a prospective Tesla customer.

If you think it's just a fluke, consider this tweet by the person who is directing Tesla's sensor strategy:

https://www.threads.com/@mdsnprks/post/DN_FhFikyUE/media

Before you put your life in the hands of Tesla autonomy, understand that everything he says in that tweet is 100% wrong. The CEO and part-time pretend engineer removed RADAR thinking he was increasing safety, when really he has no working knowledge of sensor fusion or autonomy, and he ended up making the system less safe. Leading to predictable jury decisions such as the recent one: "Tesla found partly to blame for fatal Autopilot crash" (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93dqpkwx4xo)

So maybe you don't have enough information to put your life in the hands of one of these death traps, but controls and sensors engineers know better.

[jjav]

> What if there is no debris the other 999 times, and the system works fine?

This argument makes no sense. I take it that you're saying that if we provide the Tesla a road which contains nothing to hit, it won't hit anything?

Well, sure. Also, not interesting.

In a real world drive of almost 3000 miles there will nearly always be things to avoid on the way.

[foobarian]

> I take it that you're saying that if we provide the Tesla a road which contains nothing to hit, it won't hit anything?

Not quite. I am saying that basing the judgment on a rare anomaly is a bit premature. It's a sample size of 1, but I base this on my own driving record of 30 years and much more than 3000 miles where I never encountered an obstacle like this on a highway.

> Also, not interesting

I would have liked to see the planned cross-country trip completed; I think that would've provided more realistic information about how this car handles with FSD. The scenario of when there is a damn couch or half an engine on the highway is what's not interesting to me, because it is just so rare. Seeing regular traffic, merges, orange cones, construction zones, etc. etc. now that would have been interesting.

[orwin]

Unless you're on your phone, with that clear of a view and that much space, 100% you would dodge that, especially in a sedan where your clearance is lower than a truck.

[rainsford]

> Seeing that video, I don't have high confidence that I would have dodged that hazard - maybe 70% sure?

Really? The people in the video clearly identify a large stationary object in the road a good 7 seconds before hitting it. You don't exactly need lightning quick reflexes to avoid hitting something in that scenario. Maybe more importantly, the Tesla did not seem to see the object at all at any distance. Even if you don't think you could have avoided it, do you think you would have entirely failed to see it and driven right into it at full speed? Because that's what the Tesla did.

Such an event might not be super common, but that doesn't make it an unfair criticism of Telsa's self-driving. Even if they've never seen a large object in the road before or react the wrong way, humans are generally capable of recognizing it when it happens and at least considering it's something they should take action on. The fact that Tesla can't do the same makes this an area where FSD is categorically worse than humans, and "avoiding stuff in the road" feels like an area where that's not a good deficit even if there generally isn't stuff in the road.

[queenkjuul]

Come to Chicago, you'll see some debris in the first few days, and plenty of humans dodging it at high speeds

[cameldrv]

No way. I call in road debris on the freeway once every couple of months. People swerve around it and if it’s congested, people swerving around it create a significant hazard.