Featured Stein nearly crashes in Full Self Driving

Here is his experience:

I have no problem with his story. My experience:

• Full Self Driving (and AutoPilot) needs mentoring - the instruction and disclaimer are easy for new drivers to skim over. We have a term for that phenomena, RTFM (Read The Fine Manual) but the corollary is "and understand it."
• Edge case flaws - sometimes called "chasing the nines" as in 99% done, 99.9% done, 99.99% done, etc, etc. In this case:
  • Wearing glasses - the instructions point out wearing sun glasses and other glasses can revert from hands free to steering nag mode. Stien wears glasses which a mentor would point out.
  • My testing found UV protecting safety glasses also act like sun glasses and disables, hands free driving mode.
  • If you don't read the manual, an alert text shows up on the screen and he reports 'deliberately looking away' which makes it likely the alert message was not seen.
• His accident scenario matches my actual accident in manual mode in Louisville KY. I was making a right turn into a parking lot and the other driver clipped my bumper cover. Both of us were driving manually at the time and streets were damp from rain.
• I understand his service center demo car no longer has ultrasonic sensors. My 2019 does and uses them enough to give an error and disables "summon mode," a part of Full Self Driving. Mine front, center right sensor was hit by road debris, likely small rock, and there was both a warning and disabled summon mode of Full Self Driving. I replaced the sensor with a part from eBay and the problem was solved.

Stien and I have different skills. He is a financial analyst and I am a retired engineer. He uses accounting and financial skills for a living and I live by the Moto, "The world is broke and engineers are here to fix it." So I know how systems like Full Self Driving work and drive looking for errors. Once I map them, I operate around them. In contrast, he lacks my skills . . . as do 99.9% of the less engineering skilled people.

I have no problem with his report. But it has no effect on my choice to fully exploit Full Self Driving. The current version as did the earlier ones and AutoPilot handled so many human limitations, it is safer than my manual driving. But untrained, it can and will scare the h*ll out of many others.

Bob Wilson

 

The talking heads?

Bob Wilson

 

No problem, that is Robotaxi mode . . . not released, yet.

Bob Wilson