According to Tesla’s advertising, supervised semi-autonomous driving (FSD Supervised) is around ten times safer than driving without FSD. A report from the Reuters news agency, which cites several unnamed Tesla employees, paints a different picture: Elon Musk’s car maker is comparing apples with oranges, they say. Meanwhile, FSD Supervised has now been approved in another EU country, Estonia, after the Netherlands and Lithuania.
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According to the Reuters report, Tesla compares FSD airbag deployment accidents with U.S. federal crash data, which includes far fewer serious accidents without airbag deployment. If airbag deployment were used as a benchmark, the additional safety of FSD would already be reduced from 10 to 1 to 3 to 1.
Employees report weaknesses
In addition, according to the report, Tesla ignores the age of the vehicle when making comparisons. With an average age of 4.1 years, its own fleet is ahead simply because of the more modern safety systems – this cannot be attributed exclusively to FSD and thus distorts the statistics in Tesla’s favor. On average in the US, cars are 12.8 years old. Further criticism concerns the counting method: Tesla only evaluates accidents within five seconds of the FSD being switched off. However, the US traffic authority NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) prescribes 30 seconds.
In addition to the statistical distortions, Reuters also claims to have learned about inadequacies in the FSD software. The employees surveyed work in the evaluation of video recordings and data recordings from the vehicles. Their work is intended to improve the AI used in the vehicles. For example, the system does not reliably recognize school buses that use extendable stop signs and warning lights to prevent overtaking at stops. These notices would be ignored. There are also increasing problems with emergency vehicles, construction sites that the car cannot recognize properly, and pedestrians passing through zebra crossings.
Constantly controversial topic online
There is a lively exchange on social networks about the reliability of FSD. Critics repeatedly show videos of vehicles that do not correctly recognize situations and behave incorrectly. FSD supporters counter with photographs that show how traffic accidents were avoided and how the vehicles fit smoothly into the traffic. Tesla accompanied this with its safety statistics.
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However, according to Reuters, the US company does not disclose the raw data. It also makes certain recordings a secret internally. Near-collisions with pedestrians are evaluated by selected employees who call themselves the “Trauma Team”.
Significant preparation effort for Robotaxi
The alleged inadequacies also affect Tesla’s robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. The launch was preceded by nightly route recordings and hundreds of hours of data labeling, while Musk claimed that FSD works everywhere without mapping. Currently only 50 vehicles are in use instead of the planned 500, some of which are still accompanied by safety drivers.
According to Reuters, there are four investigations by traffic authorities in the USA into FSD or Tesla’s autopilot function.
FSD Supervised now also in Estonia
In Europe, FSD Supervised has now been approved for use in another country after the Netherlands and Lithuania: the transport authority in Estonia announced on Friday that it recognized the type approval of the Dutch road traffic authority RDW. Before approval, there were extensive series of tests in the Netherlands in which FSD Supervised had to prove its reliability. For Germany, there is currently no statement as to whether FSD Supervised will also be approved here.
(mki)
