If there are no consequences for lying, then why would they ever stop lying?
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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Just the fact that it crosses that double wide white line, that means under no circumstance do not cross this line! Only to end behind a perfectly visible veritable wall of bollards! All this in high daylight too!
The strongest danger of Tesla FSD I think, is that in most situations it drives very confidently, and very well. So people begin to trust it.
But then suddenly it does something insanely stupid like this, or cross a red light without hesitation, or completely ignore a stop sign.
This is when you die. Not the 90% of the time it drives fine.
Remember that the bar for self driving cars isn't perfect driving, it's better-than-human driving, and humans are generally pretty bad at driving, so that bar isn't as high as you probably hope it is.
I'm not suggesting they've reached that bar, only that "sometimes a mistake happens that results in death" is also a problem with human driving, but we know that self driving cars don't get drunk or distracted by their phones, so they've already got a leg up on the competition.
The human safety supervisor of a Tesla Robotaxi who crashed was apparently sleep deprived and having a mental health episode, so, if you think self-driving cars will insulate you from human foibles, just you wait. The futures going to get real weird!
Broadly I agree, though. The goal is better-than-human. It really shouldn't ever cross a solid line, though.
That was this case, it's all self-reported so take it with a grain of salt, but it was interesting food for thought: https://electrek.co/2026/07/28/tesla-self-driving-manager-rolling-hazards-lawsuit/
The goal is better-than-human. It really shouldn’t ever cross a solid line, though.
The goal should be far fewer cars of any sort on the street. Investing in self driving cars instead of better infrastructure is stupid. Especially when the cars are privately owned
A non-existent car is ALSO safer than a human-driven car, so it'll sound weird coming from an automotive journalist, but I totally agree. There's no car safer than a railway car.
A human can drive decades without accidents. I've done that myself. Day and night, rain, snow and fog.
Most autonomous systems are not allowed to be used in any of those conditions!
So there's a long way for FSD to match a competent driver.
“sometimes a mistake happens that results in death” is also a problem with human driving
The shit show Tesla is doing is nowhere near an average human driver, and the FSD has been shown to be lethal multiple times even under good circumstances that shouldn't pose any problems. All Tesla has is as good as a human driver 90% of the time. Then it fucks up. Tesla FSD would for sure not be able to get a drivers license here in Denmark.
IDK the rules in USA. But if a reasonable drivers test is included, I think Tesla FSD would be very likely to fail it.
So Tesla is definitely not anywhere near "better than a human". Not even under optimal conditions like daylight and no bad weather.
Aside from the interactive voice response, Tesla self-driving would easily pass a road test here. Although I never tried to get it to parallel park and certainly not “parallel park between those two cars”.
The driving part is easy though. What I remember of the driving test was basic skills and confidence, and self-driving has those. Real life driving is a plethora of unexpected stuff and edge cases: that’s where self-driving still needs work but is also not covered in a road test
OK, to be fair the roads in USA are 100 times easier to navigate than in Europe. At least when I compare Californian cities to Copenhagen and other European cities.
But when the Tesla AI can be confused by the above, I'm not so sure it will easily pass a drivers test. Something that is completely obvious to a human, obviously is not to the AI of a Tesla Robo Taxi, that even has extra sensors compared to a normal Tesla.
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But take that to the next step. Let’s say it reaches the point where it drives better than humans. The problem is it’s not perfect, and has different weaknesses than humans. Even after self-driving is statistically safer, there will be accidents where a human could have done better. Would we accept it under those circumstances? Because those are the circumstances
Even after self-driving is statistically safer, there will be accidents where a human could have done better.
I think "could have" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here and it's making the question seem more complicated than it is. You can't make decisions based on hindsight from specific examples. If, hypothetically, self driving cars are statistically safer, then they're safer, regardless of any specific anecdote that suggests otherwise.
Maybe I'm not grasping what you're saying?
By “statistically safer” I mean as an overall metric. However there will still be specific scenarios where self-driving is less safe, or even just people believe they could have done better. People will naturally focus on those specific scenarios and reject self-driving even when it is overall safer
Can you give me a hypothetical example? I'm not understanding the scenario you're referring to.
As a fake example, let’s say Tesla full self-driving is overall safer than humans, however it doesn’t recognize traffic poles and will try to drive through them. People would probably reject FSD as not yet ready despite the evidence that it was safer than humans
I appreciate the clarification, but I doubt there will be a way for both scenarios to exist simultaneously; that is to say, I think any sufficiently common "exception" would result in self driving cars not being statistically safer than human drivers.
It would have to be something sufficiently obscure, like, I dunno, going down a eastern-facing switchback road in the fog at sunrise. (Maybe too obscure.)
That being said, I remember reading an article or maybe watching a video about the challenges for making a self driving car feel safer for people. Stuff like turn speed on main roads vs in residential neighborhoods. The forces being felt are exactly the same, and the safety is exactly the same, but (apparently) people feel like one is acceptable but the other is dangerous.
If your ultimate question was along these lines, then yes, I agree there is more than just statistics that will be necessary before people are comfortable with mass adoption of self driving cars. And not for nothing but that tool Musk isn't helping anything by putting out "self driving" cars before they're actually ready.
making a self driving car feel safer
Without judging the effectiveness, Tesla has made great progress on this. If you read through recent FSD reviews you’ll see many claim things like “the car drives more confidently”
I was a driver for Waymo for several years, working overnights. When I first started, you'd be lucky if you could go more than 2 or 3 minutes without having to comment/document something, and normally have a few dozen disengages in a shift, so it kept you on your toes. By the time I left about 4 years later, I was really glad that I'd moved up and wasn't driving every night because I honestly didn't know if I could do it. Drivers would tell me they'd have nights with only one or two disengages the entire night. That job 1000% got harder as the software got better.
Exactly it's way harder to stay vigilant when nothing happens for hours. When that becomes days and weeks, it becomes near impossible.
I have a relatively "stupid" car by today's standards. It can only keep lanes, and adjust speed according to traffic and speed limits. Nothing more than a fancy cruise control really.
And even that makes mistakes, but it's simple enough that it doesn't create "situations" because you still have to actually drive yourself.
It's kind of funny when approaching a round about, it slows down automatically, and I enter the round about at a comfortable speed, but then suddenly half way through, it accelerates back to highway speed if you don't prevent it. This is extremely weird IMO, since you are still in the middle of turning to follow the round about?!
It took me a bit by surprise the first time that it suddenly accelerated in a situation where it absolutely shouldn't. But not much. because I was absolutely paying attention, as it can't navigate by itself.
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Teslas are programmed to turn off autopilot half a second before a crash so statistics can say "autopilot was off at the time of the crash".
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Watching the video, I get the feeling like the car software hit a wall and asked for human help.
Traffic infractions for people have to balance the severity of the infraction and the human who did it. But this is a systemic failure and corporate is responsible. The fines need to be corporate-level to match.
My bad, that was me controlling it remotely. Once you get a taste of that phap phap phap sound while mowing them down in GTA V, you start needing that satisfaction everywhere...
the robotaxi might have "sentience", it already doesnt do what its being told to do, and does things on its own.
I mean, I guess "impeccable safety record" is in the eye of the ~~beholder~~ stakeholder?
Fixed that for you
And that's why regulation on all of these self-driving vehicles need to be much more tightly regulated. You cannot trust a for-profit company, much less one run by a known liar, to self-regulate.
I'd say any "bollard" you can drive over isn't a bollard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_bollard
"Traffic bollards" or "flexible bollards" seem to be the terms for this type of bollard. They're intended to guide traffic, rather than to stop it dead as a security measure.
Just like any pedestrian… amirite?!?!
/s
Jimmy Bollard
What good is a bollard if the bollard doesn't mow down the car?
y'all not got bendy bollards? most bollards are bendy.
is that just a Chicago thing? they don't trust us with solid bollards, it would be a mass-casualty-incident instantly
British bollards on the other hqnd tend to be stout and solid, after the Battle of Trafalgar it was found the French guns that were captured could not be retrofitted into British ships so they got turned into London bollards as a way of rubbing it in. While only a few of these still exist, they inspired the general shape of London bollards for a long time.
Also can't believe I can remember bollard lore but not important things
British bollards are hilarious. These would kill half of American drivers.
This setup in Watford makes great Youtube content, even police can't avoid hitting them.
And then drivers would learn to slow the fuck down. Problem solved
They jinxed it or was it cursed from the beginning?
Before the teslas came out everyone was shitting on how stupid elon musk was for insisting he didnt use lidar, despite how glaringly obvious it was it wouldnt work.
What's even more amazing is 10 years ago or how ever long it was we where "2 years" away from full self driving. To this day there is no full self driving from Tesla, yet we are still some how 2 years away.
Everything elon musk says is a lie to inflate his ego and his stocks. From the Tesla tunnel, to solar roofing, etc, etc.
Those posts are called bollards? I have been calling them useless pains in the ass sticks (upias for short). They make it impossible to make a right turn out of my street without crossing into the on-coming traffic lane. The lawn crews are slowing removing them when they ride over them.
The small, light posts are called typically called traffic poles, at least around here. A bollard is a heavy, strong thing made of concrete or metal. The poles are meant to direct traffic and to gently deter drivers from crossing them. Bollards are intended to stop vehicles dead without giving a shit how much damage they cause.
Poles can be very good for traffic when used correctly but sometimes street planners make mistakes. Either that or people insist on going against what the poles are suggesting.
I'm just glad I live in a part of the country that doesn't have these things.
Clearly it saw them. It makes more sense to believe it realized it was in a bad place and it had only one option to extricate itself. I know this video makes the clicks but the problem was how it got into that situation. The problem had already happened.
From the video, I was wondering what the fuck road crews were thinking, and seeing myself do exactly the same. I see the picture lower in the article showing the approach but I still don’t understand since the car could not get into that situation without running over the traffic poles. The details are important here.
But wtf is that trying to do? I’ve never seen anything like that
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