I don’t know about laws, but Teslas automatically record and save everything in the event of a collision. My brother was hit by another car while driving a Tesla a few years ago and it was very easy to retrieve video from the Tesla’s cameras and show who was at fault.
There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents.
Note: it’s important to distinguish between Autopilot and FSD here. “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer.
> There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents
It’s tough to say given many data sources are aggregated. For what it’s worth, my parents’ car is a Tesla with FSD and I’ve stopped it from, off the top of my head, racing into a red-lit intersection, running over a small dog and running into a closing garage door.
I still use it. It mostly works. But I’m vigilantly monitoring it in a way that isn’t supported by Tesla’s marketing (which frequently shows drivers engaging it hands off).
The garage door I can certainly believe. Its AI brain just won’t be trained to look for that sort of thing.
I’m surprised about the red lights and animals, however: ours seems very cautious around any kind of live animal on the road, even braking and manoeuvring to avoid birds on the road. It’s not so good at avoiding the corpses of already dead ones, however (bump!).
I get the impression that it kind of comprehends the world as a horizontal plane. It’s focused on objects on the surface and isn’t looking for hazards coming from above. Could that be improved? Sure! Is it a priority for them? Maybe not…
Both only happened once. But they were shocking when they did. (To be fair, my Subaru tried to push me into oncoming traffic because it was avoiding a “collision” from the guy in the other lane turning weirdly. Turned at collision-avoidance feature off.)
> “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer.
I'm not sure the point you're making here - that just sounds like "Tesla couldn't care less about updating their software and it's still "not good". People it hits are still dead. "Oh well, it's not like Tesla had updated the software, so you can't blame them".
Oh, I absolutely agree. Ideally Telsa would dump the old Autopilot stack and put all cars (that have the hardware to support it) on a free version of FSD, nerfed so that it's roughly feature-equivalent to Autopilot.
That way everyone would get the safety advantages of FSD, including the really important stuff like better driver attention monitoring. Unfortunately, Tesla keeps Autopilot bad because it forces more people to pay for FSD, and in this case they seem to care more about profits than safety.
does it makes sense to compare the two given that waymos are driven in a limited set of circumstances and most of the times below speeds that could kill you on a crash?
If Tesla was bold enough to intentionally auto disengage seconds before an accident (to avoid liability) then can they be trusted to maintain telemetry throughout dicey circumstances?
I also don't trust the motives of a company that names something "Full Self Driving" knowing it's not fully self driving. Never mind their shenanigans around avoiding or disregarding regulations and reporting requirements.
That's how it is now, and (like most things safety-related) Tesla had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it. Just like the initial attention/distracted monitor only required your hand on the steering wheel once every fifteen minutes.
They also considered AEB-activation to mean that meant that FSD wasn't active, even if AEB only kicked in because of FSD's decisions.
Certainly Tesla will. And that will inform how their PR team responds to this collision.
Maybe some plaintiffs will if they can manage to subpoena the data from Tesla in some hypothetical future court case.
The reason I will never buy a Tesla is because it is one of the most advanced surveillance systems against the driver, but there is no one empowered to inspect the car / company (comprehensively, not superficially).
> I seriously doubt FSD would drive into a house.
Strawman. You seem to be insinuating that FSD intended to aim for a house. Usually the chain of events would start with something like “FSD was engaged on the road and in the intended lane” then “FSD lost track of the boundary of the lane” or maybe “FSD identified an obstruction in the lane so it maneuvered out of lane”.
The reddit post from the grandchild says "autopilot", which is really just lane keeping and adaptive cruise control.
I believe autopilot would totally run into a house. It doesn't respect stop signs or red lights. If the house is at a T intersection the autopilot might try to drive right through it. I agree about FSD though
Adaptive cruise control certainly shouldn't run into a house, for the same reason it should detect a stationary (or slow) object in front of you and gradually slow to a stop before it.
If not then I suspect a Tesla will turn out to be quite surprisingly forgetful about what it was up to in a road traffic collision.
RTC is a UK term that took over from RTA (road traffic accident) - it describes what happened rather than heading off into the weeds as to cause.