Self driving cars are still decades away

In My Humble Opinion
2228

That’s fair, but I was speaking strictly about the case of hi-def maps. I agree about purely navigational maps.

That said, I’ve seen videos where Waymos just delivered the passenger to the completely wrong place and couldn’t correct the error–probably also due to bad map data. It’s arguably a completely different problem from hi-def maps. With normal maps, you’re concerned about metainformation (names, speeds, etc.) and road connectivity. With HD maps it’s about capturing the geometry of the area.

A recent video on FSD showed the car navigating a complex roundabout with no problem–that didn’t even appear on the map because it was brand new. It continued on once it got to a road it knew about. Not sure what Waymo would have done.

2229

Besides UI and FSD updates, Tesla also does map updates. They go quickly and happen in the background but I happened to be on the software screen one time and saw one live. I have no idea how frequent they are.

I was in a parking lot one time and set FSD to go home. It would have circled the lot indefinitely if I didn’t take over.

2230

For your information. The latest released version of FSD (12.5.4.1) has the “no nag” feature but not the end to end on highway. The end to end on highway version (12.5.6) was released to early testers a couple of weeks ago but not to the masses. You shouldn’t expect any changes on the highway.

2231

I used it today on my commute, about 60 miles total.

Safety interventions.

First. I was in right lane of freeway merging into lane to the left. Car was driving next to semi truck (which I would never do) to the left, but couldn’t decide whether to speed up or slow down. Not a good feeling to be running out of road at 70 mph.

Second. Multiple lanes of the freeway stopped. Car reacted far too slowly. I think it would’ve stopped before hitting anything, but it’s not something I should be concerned about.

Third. Four way stop of four-lane road with two-lane road. Car did not go when it was my turn. But after a pause, decided to go while another car took advantage of the pause.

The pattern seems to be the car takes too long to make some decisions.

Other interventions.

The car does not like staying in the car pool or express lane. Once it decides to leave, it ignore me using the turn signal, so I have to intervene.

An actual failure of the FSD, but in a safe way. Coming up to a light on a four lane street, the nav said to turn right. The car tried to change from the right lane to the left. I intervened, then tried to restart the FSD. It beeped and refused. Made the turn manually. It again refused to restart the FSD. Stopped at the next light, another refusal. Only after making that turn did it accept self driving again.

Miscellaneous comments.

When making a left turn, the car prefers going into the leftmost lane. This is a poor choice when there’s a right turn coming up.

It handles lane changes well for the most part. Mostly assertive enough on the freeway, but needs more on surface streets.

It handles speed very smartly. Stays with traffic even when over the limit, but not too much. Stays with the crowd, doesn’t try weaving.

Display shows car’s intent well, especially for lane changes.

2232

Update on BMW’s notso hotso system now that I’m comfortable (enough) with it.

Coming up on stopped traffic ahead (e.g. at a traffic light) it really waits to the last moment to brake. I can moderate that a bit by cranking the following distance out to max, then once I see the car has noticed the slowed or stopped vehicle ahead tweaking the following distance back down. But that sorta defeats the purpose of auto-follow; it’s less work (and less nervous for the driver) to simply tap the brakes and take over manually.

While waiting at a light with a vehicle ahead and the light changes and traffic starts to move … Sometimes the car will start moving on its own and other times it needs a nudge of gas pedal or a push on the [resume] button to get it going. That might be mode confusion on my part since its easy to inadvertently disengage the system to standby while sitting there. Or maybe it’s confused rather than me.

Separately, it seems slow to begin moving when it does so automatically. More than once it has started moving just as the car behind starts honking. If it began rolling even slightly as soon as the car ahead did, then gradually build up the spacing that would reassure the driver behind that I / my car are paying attention, not asleep as so many cars / drivers are.

Switching from fore / aft to side / side …

The lane-keeping feature is … sigh … problematic as the kids say.

It’s become evident to me that it’s about 80% “center up on the vehicle close ahead”, and about 20% “see and follow the lane markings”. With a car a couple seconds ahead, my car follows that car just fine. Lane meanders and all. Absent a car ahead, the self-steering will lose track and disengage in nearly every boulevard-sized intersection then take 10+ seconds (feels like an eternity) to regain track and auto-reengage once on the other side. Over and over and over at every half-mile or mile intersection here in the Great Grid.

What’s fun is when the car ahead changes lanes. Initially my car follows the lane change. Then just before it crosses the lane line it changes its mind and returns abruptly towards the lane center. If there’s another car close enough ahead, it gloms onto following that one and the total result is crude, but tolerable. If there’s no car ahead it’ll sort of bounce between the lane lines a couple times before settling down. Or it’ll simply disengage just after making its bid back towards my lane’s center. Reminds me of the kid’s game of unexpectedly throwing something at your friend while shouting “think fast!” just a little too late to get their attention in time to catch it.

If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the car is using its side cameras to look straight down, or maaaybe 20 feet ahead trying to find lane stripes. It’s sure as heck not looking 100 or 200 feet ahead. It’s like driving looking at your hood ornament (remember those?).

Above 40mph it will perform a lane change on its own on your cue of activating the turn signal. Surprisingly, it does that great. WTF? And it’s aware of what’s in the adjacent lane just ahead, behind, and alongside. So will alarm and refuse to act if it’s concerned about cars in the way. I’m not about to test it, but I suspect it doesn’t look far enough ahead or behind to detect a vehicle in the adjacent lane with a high closure rate; i.e. somebody much slower ahead or coming up fast from behind. Why that part is so good and the rest so crude remains a mystery to me.


Bottom line:
In all, it is useful on the freeways when traffic is flowing freely or is congested. The surface street experience is better when the roads are crowded than when they are not. It really needs a herd to tell it where it belongs both fore / aft and left / right.

It sure as hell isn’t Tesla FSD, much less Waymo. I suppose my overall attitude is it’s like the circus bear walking upright: “The amazing thing isn’t that it’s good at it, but that it can do it at all.”

Maybe the next generation of hardware sensors and software will be better. But I’ll need to buy a 2026 or more likely a 2027 model to find out.

2233

My friend, the Tesla fan-boy, had his fsd Tesla take me around Chicago when i visited in June, and my experience was similar. Mostly, it drove adequately, but there were a number of incidents where my friend had to take over. And it kinda freaked me out, because he feels he’s “helping it learn” by not taking over “too soon”, so he often took over too late, IMHO.

We had just gone through a tollbooth, and for reasons neither of us could guess, it slowed down to a crawl. Cars were honking and swerving to avoid us before he took over.

A child’s ball rolled into the road 100 yards in front of us. It stopped abruptly. The child didn’t immediately emerge, however, so eventually the car started again. And it would have run over the ball, which was still in the road, if my friend hadn’t manually stopped it and motioned to the kid, who by now was near the road, to come and fetch it.

At an intersection, it played, “you go, no, you go” with another driver for ages. Basically, every time she glanced at us to make sure it was safe for her to go, the car inched forward. I guess because she was looking away from the road. Anyway, it was annoying for me, who understood what the issue was. It must have been maddening for her.

Another time we were driving down some big boulevard with a lot of traffic, and it didn’t go the same speed as everyone else. I think it was slower. But it was different enough from the ambient speed of traffic to be problematic. Finally, my friend’s wife insisted he take over and drive normally.

What Tesla is trying to achieve is cool, and if they get there, it will be great. But they REALLY aren’t there, yet.

2234

I had a weird thing happen on my Tesla this morning. I using FSD in my neighborhood and came up a little hill slowly approaching a stop sign and was hit in the face with blinding sunlight. Tessie didn’t like either and went “SCREECH SCREECH SCREECH” and the screen said to take over immediately. I did and turned left and set the FSD going again. Next was a right out of the neighborhood and it was the same thing all over again. The rest of the ride onto the freeway and to downtown was uneventful.

2235

This is fine.

2236

Listening to Tesla’s Q3 conference call. Mostly reiterating their dedication to autonomy, etc. But one interesting bit from my perspective is that Musk is sounding skeptical that HW3 will be able to achieve full autonomy. However, he also clearly said that if this happens, all HW3 customers will be upgraded for free.

I’d expect a class-action lawsuit (and I’d happily participate) if that wasn’t the case, but I’ve seen a lot of grumbling from people thinking they’d be left out in the cold if HW3 reaches its limit.

2237

I’ve had this happen twice. It’s not really unexpected when I can barely see myself. The flashing red screen and dire beeping is rather over the top, though. Like “WE’RE GONNA DIE!!!” from your neurotic aunt.

More Tesla self-driving anecdotes.

An amusing programming quirk: on some narrow residential streets with on-the-street parking, when I make a turn, the car often beeps because my turn will take it into a parked car. Of course, I straighten the steering wheel before that happens. Well, the self driving makes the turn like I do, and the same automatic warning is still triggered. So the car is warning its own driving system.

The car seems to think it’s okay to change lanes while driving straight through an intersection. That’s likely to be a problem at some point.

The car handles informal turn lanes well. Like when a wide right lane gets effectively split into a straight-through lane and a right-turn lane. It picks the correct half.

It also handles when cars stopped at a light give space for cars to left turn through them. That surprised me.

Drove on a narrow and curvy residential street with on-street parking and without sidewalks. So the car had to negotiate curves, oncoming traffic, pedestrians on both sides, and parked cars on both sides. Oh, and speed bumps. And it handled it all smoothly! Stayed near the speed limit at 25 mph, slowing to 15 for bumps. Went from slightly left of center, to far right, slowing down when it got too crowded. Never had to stop completely. It felt very safe.

2238

Is this actually illegal anywhere? It’s legal in California. I mostly don’t do it, though I’ll make an exception in rare cases.

2239

It’s not legal when the dashed line turns solid on either side of an intersection.

2240

I thought I would look it up… let’s just say that opinions are mixed:

Is it legal to drive across a solid white line on the freeway or a city street in California?

Sure is, say Milpitas, Pleasanton and numerous other police departments as well as Caltrans.

No, it’s not, say San Jose police and the Santa Clara County Transportation Agency.

It’s illegal 90 percent of the time, says the California Highway Patrol.

Legal, says Bay Driving & Traffic School. Illegal, says Comedians Plus- Learn From Us Traffic School.

If it’s not illegal, it should be, says the DMV.

“I’m willing to bet that if you call every police office in the state, you will get a different answer every time, ” said Melissa Bethel, a Highway Patrol officer in San Jose who was admonished by her bosses to stop writing these kinds of tickets on San Tomas Expressway.

Not sure it makes any difference if it’s inside the intersection or not, but I don’t see any exception from the various sources I looked at.

2241

does BMW have an update “policy”? … iow … do they update “legacy” cars () or do you only get a more up to date SW when you purchase new german steel?

I fear that BMW being a “legacy” car maker (esp. their mindset) … its the later … - not doing the incremental improvements that Tesla is doing (even if it were at a slower pace) …

2242

Turns out that Tesla is at least at level 4 by the standards of that chart:

“VIP’s” (employees) only, and there is a safety driver… but it means at the least that their ridehailing infrastructure is coming online. I.e., all the boring backend stuff that gets you from picking a destination on a map to the car being summoned and picking you up.

2243

The car has an OTA update capability. Whether it covers more than the maps used by the built in nav system I cannot say.

When I’ve pushed the “request update” button, the result so far has always been “you’re fully up to date.”

I think they think they’re only using it for government forced recalls for SW updates and maybe map data. They absolutely positively are not upgrading e.g. 2022 models to 2025 software. Totally different generations of hardware and UI design.

2244

Regardless of what any law might say, such a lane change is dangerous and should never be done in any circumstances outside of an emergency evasion. A driver in opposing traffic waiting to make a left turn is unconsciously but carefully judging the speed and distance of oncoming traffic to see if it’s safe to make the turn. If you change lanes in the middle of the intersection and are suddenly not where the other driver expected you to be, the outcome could be very bad. And signaling a lane change in the middle of an intersection is very confusing to the cars behind you, because it will tend to be interpreted not as a lane change signal but as an idiot trying to make a turn out of the wrong lane.

The key to safe driving is “always be predictable”, and this violates that principle.

2245

And if there is no other traffic?

2246

If there’s no other traffic, go nuts! Drive on the wrong side of the road for all I care! :laughing: The principles of safe, accident-free driving apply almost entirely to interacting with other traffic, including pedestrians and cyclists, including circumstances where such other traffic is there but for a moment you didn’t see it.

I’m not about to write a driver’s manual here, but the serious answer to your question is to augment my comment as follows: “Always be predictable. Always assume there’s other traffic that you may not have seen.” That last point has been hammered into my driving consciousness over the years by things like lane changes that could have ended badly if I had not double-checked that the lane was clear, or making a left turn at night on a dark intersection where there was clearly no oncoming traffic, and noticing only when I started the turn that a couple of kids were crossing the other road in the darkness. And if I may be allowed to say it, thus was built, year by year, a record of 50 years of driving without an accident.

2247

Well, I’m not 50 years old, so I can’t claim that record. But I have been driving for 31 years and never had an accident. In fact I haven’t had less than one degree of separation from an accident in the past ~25 years. I.e., I haven’t had to actually use my safety margin (full brake application, emergency lane change, etc.). The only reason I know what ABS brakes feel like is because of one instance in the mid 90s.

I certainly agree with the basic principle. But I also drive as conditions warrant, and on rare occasions that might mean changing lanes mid-intersection. Sometimes that’s the safest possible thing–for instance, if you’re in a lane that comes to a stop, and changing lanes is the only way keep the intersection clear when the light changes.

ETA: Not counting that time I rolled backwards into a guy at 0.5 mph because he creeped up super close on a hill and I was still learning to drive stick.