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Comment by gibsonf1 | Hacker News Reader

Thats an interesting claim, that the highway would trigger use of autopilot and not FSD. How do you know that? I think Tesla, who would know for a fact the status of FSD during this accident, might want to tweet that FSD wasn't on if it wasn't. But they haven't. Also, as a human, why would you hit the breaks in the fast lane with cars approaching? This does not happen very often, especially on the incredibly crowded Bay Bridge.

I actually was there at this accident and swerved just in time to miss the cars piling up (you can see my car in both videos of the accident just getting out). It was a truly scary thing.

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FSD does not support highways yet, so it automatically switches to autopilot when you enter a highway. You can tell because they use completely different UIs, visualizations, settings, etc (FSD and autopilot are fully separate software).

Tesla has been promising FSD v11 which will support highways for a very long time already, but it isn't out yet.

Doesn't that make it even more unsafe? Two different systems that behave in different ways, one may require more intervention than the other. Car switches between the two when it wants and the driver is supposed to know the intricate differences between the two?

FSD beta, as the name implies, is for people that want to play with the experimental version. You have to request access to the beta, and then you may or may not be granted (although since ~1 month ago basically anybody that requests it will get accepted in a few minutes).

So it's kind of expected that its users are a bit more aware of it's intricacies.

Also, even though it switches and the UI is different, I don't think it makes much of difference as a driver. Both systems are Level 2 and require constant driver supervision.

Autopilot although much simpler, is more tried and true. The delays of FSD v11 are most likely because they are having trouble achieving equal performance to Autopilot on highways.

Your whole spiel about how people have to request access to FSD doesn't seem very relevant. The feature is being sold to the general public to be used on public roads. That means it has to be safe enough to be used by the general public on public roads, "beta" sticker or not, access request process or not.

Even if you buy FSD, you have to request it be in the FSD beta feature. If you aren’t in the FSD you get some features above non FSD like parking assist and summon. Everyone gets Autopilot which is really just the combination of adaptive cruise control and lane keeping.

https://www.notateslaapp.com/tesla-reference/878/tesla-fsd-b...

So you're saying that it is literally impossible to use FSD on the bay bridge? If so, why hasn't Tesla pointed this subtlety out?

Literally impossible is kind of a strong statement, but yeah people have driven there and shown that it uses Autopilot there (because it's classified as highway on the map data), which is the expected behavior as FSD does not support highways yet.

Interesting, I wonder what the behavior is when someone turns FSD on when they are already on a highway as claimed in this case, as opposed to someone who has it on before entering. Maybe that's the issue, if you turn FSD on when already on a highway, the car starts FSD, senses its on a highway then given its programming that FSD should not operate on a highway, consequently hits the brakes? Tesla knows whatever happened in fact for sure.

You can't "choose" which one[1]. It's the same button/stalk. The car chooses by itself.

This is almost 100% the driver just confusing the name or a slip of the tongue, which is understandable. He bought FSD, he probably has it enabled and uses it, and knows that on highways the UI changes. Just doesn't know that when the UI changes it's the old autopilot.

[1] Technically you can disable FSD beta, thus it will always use autopilot

Regardless of how it actually works, wouldn’t a corporation have a very strict policy of never ever allowing any talk about ongoing situations like this on sm/marketing/pr channels?

Humans do stupid stuff like hit the brakes and then get out of the car on a busy highway when road raging against someone who won’t let them pass.

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