Originally Posted by
PeteHski
I brought up the issue of unexpected acceleration simply because it was cited in the link about Tesla data. I’m not defending Tesla in hiding data, although I can imagine various reasons why they might not want their data to be freely available. Given the history, I am not particularly surprised they are guarded.
Your second question is far more interesting for me. Cyclists and pedestrians are actively tracked in FSD/AP, displayed on the dash and the car does actively brake to avoid collision. Simple scenario is when you are driving along with AP active and there is a cyclist in front. AP detects the cyclist and gently brakes to follow behind. This works very reliably, but the system has to be active. A lot of Tesla drivers simply don’t drive on AP/FSD and in that case it is like any other car, but you will get visible and audio warnings and emergency collision braking if you ignore them. For me that’s a lot better than having nothing at all. The usual counter-argument is that it may make you more complacent, but I don’t buy into that. Enough cyclists get plowed into by distracted drivers to make these systems invaluable. The times I’ve found it most useful are in low visibility situations, especially low dawn/dusk sun, which we all know can be deadly for cyclists.
It would be interesting to hear from any other Tesla drivers who think these systems do NOT improve their road safety to some extent. I’m a fan of AP, but I don’t think FSD adds much to it in terms of safety and fully autonomous driving while watching Netflix is still a long way from reality. Just too many complex edge cases, inconsistent road regulations and unpredictable human drivers. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the safety features of semi-autonomous systems like AP/EAP/FSD and equivalents from other manufacturers. They are improving all the time and can only get better.
I'm going to say that I'm not optimistic about FSD actually improving pedestrian/cyclist safety if the designers think that the OP video is an example of how they want the AI to function. Taking illegal actions just because you know you'll likely get away with it is not the human behavior we want AI to emulate. Even if there is no chance that the vehicle was going to hit the pedestrian, it increases the chances that the car behind the AI will hiit the pedestrian. That's one of the major reasons why the law is stop and wait at the crosswalk, not race through. Drivers take cues from each other's behavior, especially when the position of that car is directly between you and the crosswalk. If Tesla engineers want to go to the lowest common denominator of risk assessment on determining whether to take an illegal action, that doesn't bode well for the direction of future developments. This looks very much like an over-correction to deal with the "frozen by indecision" problem.