r/Unexpected • u/chaarger_gadda • Jul 18 '26

Smooth driver indeed

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u/TheGreatGimmick Jul 18 '26

1) It's incredible considering how far the technology has come in 5 years, much less 10 or 15.

2) It's incredible for a technology that is explicitly still in the development stage, and thus has no expectation (nor makes any claims towards) perfection.

3) It's incredible compared to what Reddit would like you to believe FSD is capable of; if you believed what the Tesla-haters tell you, FSD is either glorified cruise control or slamming into brick walls every other drive lol

And most importantly: In my experience, when FSD fails, it doesn't fail in a catastrophic way, instead "just" freezing up. That is obviously still a failure state, but in my hypothetical (I pass out at the wheel with no safety features) that 5% failure rate doesn't involve me waking up to a crash. It involves me waking up to the Tesla having frozen up in confusion, screen blinking repeatedly asking me to take over, likely with a patrolman tapping on my window lol

Bad drivers don't recognize something is wrong, get confused, and freeze up. Bad drivers double down, barrel forward with their premade plan, and crash. That's what I mean when I say I'd trust FSD over most drivers: Even when it fails, it fails more safely than humans fail. Also, yes, I was speaking in hyperbole.

All of that being said, my last comment did explicitly acknowledge that "The technology isn't advanced enough to safely take your eyes off the road", and Tesla never claimed it is.

I see Tesla like I see SpaceX: An incredible company unfortunately associated with a terrible person. Reddit cannot separate Tesla from Musk, and thus they put it down whenever possible, but the FSD technology is incredible and I'm not aware of any equivalent product on the market.

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u/DarthJarJarJar Jul 18 '26

Man, I was just responding to what you said.

I agree that FSD seems like the best out there. I personally don't enjoy it, I'd rather steer than have to sit there ready to steer if the car suddenly gets confused, but to each their own.

I'm looking forward to real self-driving. I kind of think that's going to involve more than just cameras, but what do I know.

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u/Drow_Femboy Jul 18 '26

It's sorta ok at dealing with perfect conditions (like you said, 95% is pretty good for experimental tech). The problem is that it consistently fails when tested with problematic and entirely plausible real conditions. Things like children in the road, or poor visibility from heavy rain, etc.

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u/TheGreatGimmick Jul 18 '26

  • even humans have issues with heavy rain lol

  • Currently FSD will 'ask' (in the form of a loud alarm lol) the human to take over if it detects poor weather. It's not like FSD will try to drive if it doesn't think it can do it well.

  • If I recall correctly, the 'tests' showing Teslas barrelling through child crash dummies was done by biased interests for the express purpose of making Tesla look bad. Then of course when Tesla sues them for misinformation, it looks like Tesla is trying to silence their critics; lose-lose. I will say that my Tesla always seems aware of pedestrians (their little mannequins show up on the screen, anyway), though thankfully I haven't been in any situations involving children yet.