Can Tesla's Self-Driving Software Handle Bus-Only Lanes? Not Reliably, No. - FuelArc News
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There was an interesting side-note in Tesla’s last earnings call, where they explained the main challenge of releasing Full-Self Driving (supervised!) in China was a quirk of Chinese roads: the bus-only lanes. Well, jeez, we have bus-only lanes here in Chicago, too. Like many other American metropolises… including Austin TX, where Tesla plans to rollout […]

From the last earnings call in 2024, Elon discussing bus-lanes:

Like, bus lanes in China are one of our biggest challenges in making FSD work in China is their bus lanes are very complicated. And there’s like literally like hours of the day that you’re allowed to be there and not be there.

And then if you accidentally go in at bus lane at the wrong time, you get an automatic ticket instantly… Anyway, we’ll get this solved.

Wait, what do you mean - this isn’t already solved? Tons of markets have time-controlled bus lanes, including American cities where FSD is fully operational.

Turns out, nope! Videos of FSD ignoring bus-only lanes are easy to find.

I feel bad for the bus drivers in Austin who will be sharing their lane with Tesla’s autonomous taxi fleet in a couple weeks…

  • KiwiTB@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    I agree that anything unsafe shouldn’t be on sale. it’s a tough one. i see tons of content implying FSD is completely incapable of self driving where as the reality is now they are down to solving the truly hard parts of chasing edge cases. Ideally there should be another decade of work yet before anything goes on the roads just to be sure, and that would also need detailed regulations for support, recording etc.

    • KayLeadfoot@fedia.ioOP
      1·
      1 day ago

      Yeah, it’s tough. Unfortunately, Teslas have struck and killed many motorcyclists in self-driving mode.

      One was in the HOV lane (think bus lane but California style). HOV lanes are for busses, high occupancy vehicles, and motorcycles in California.

      So, had the Tesla been following the rules, they wouldn’t have killed that guy. That biker probably felt safer being in the HOV lane, because it’s lower traffic and slower traffic.

      The sloppy development causes unnecessary deaths. Like, why did they remove the radar module? A radar module makes emergency braking trivially easy. Spending any time programming it to follow the rules of the road and avoid bus lanes, that ALSO would have prevented that guys death.

      It’s tough. Autonomy will cause car crashes, but so long as it causes fewer car crashes, it’s a good thing. But the bone-headed errors that seem to have no correction, that makes me angry. The wild-and-crazy hubris seems to be just a Tesla problem, too, Uber killed a single person in a bone-headed way and they quit the endeavor altogether.