I saw a Tesla driving down I-5 yesterday and the person in the driver's seat was wearing headphones and holding their phone in a way that made it seem like they were playing video games (landscape mode, both thumbs hovering). In the passing lane. Barely doing the speed limit. Simply unacceptable on this highway where the right lane typically travels 0-5mph below the speed limit and the left lane travels 5-15mph over.
We locked eyes and you could tell they were embarrassed but I highly doubt they stopped. It looked like actual tech/screen addiction to me. I think they were just worried I was a cop, but when they saw just a normal car they went right back to it.
In some ways we can't blame Tesla for this kind of thing. But it's hard to believe they're doing anything to discourage or mitigate antisocial behaviors.
At the very least Tesla should have a "merge right when appropriate" priority in their Autopilot offering. It seems drivers all over the Bay area have forgotten this basic traffic-mitigating rule too. Many transplants seem oblivious why people passing on the right are so much more aggressive than those passing on the left.
> At the very least Tesla should have a "merge right when appropriate" priority in their Autopilot offering. It seems drivers all over the Bay area have forgotten this basic traffic-mitigating rule too.
You expect this from a company that writes software that will intentionally roll through stop signs?!? Or that lets you set parameters on how much to exceed the speed limit by?
I love the european style of driving on the right, but blaming Tesla for not following it in California where doing the opposite is standard seems like going too far. I think Tesla reasonably is trying to match local conditions, and why shouldn't they? Making California drivers not pace each other on 2 lane roads & block all traffic, or making them cruise in the right lane rather than the left when they have the option, is a tough mission to add on top of creating FSD
> is a tough mission to add on top of creating FSD
To be blunt, "sucks to be them". They want to make billions from the technology, there's going to be some tough problems along the way. That doesn't make it incumbent on anyone else to allow, excuse, or otherwise give them a pass.
So you're saying that if anyone wants to interact with FSD & american drivers, you're requiring them to also solve this problem?
How far would you go here, balancing this added feature to the benefit of making FSD release sooner and lowering traffic accidents? What's your exchange rate in time - there are ~100 fatalities nationally per day - would delaying FSD by 10 days to fix this annoying behavior be worth the delay? What if the delay was longer? How long would you wait? Or what if the delay were unknown - would you assert you are sure it's short, and ram it through? What if you were wrong, that including this behavior caused a long delay in FSD - would you feel bad then?
Or are you certain that they're just being obtuse by not including it? Or do you have another theory for why Tesla isn't including bundling this specific software behavior along with their efforts to create superhuman safety FSD?
if (isSafeToMergeRight and not rightLaneTrafficPaceAddsTimeToEstimate):
mergeRight()
So complicated... the hard part is the first test but that's expected to be part of FSD already. And the second test is a simple state estimation procedure on top of the relatively harder detect-cars function, which also should be part of FSD already. So I'm not sure what you think this suggestion adds in complexity.
I would rather let people who are experienced in low-cost manufacturing of cars, batteries, rocket engines, etc make decisions about what features they think would add complexity to themselves, rather than me deciding from the outside what I would like to force them to do, as a prerequisite to improving the number one cause of death for large age ranges of Americans.
Would you delay solving this problem in favor of improving the annoying way people drive on the left in California? I hate it too but if we can get FSD soon, it'd save a lot of people's lives.
FSD does have a merge right rule, but it can be turned off. The sort of person who'd do what you describe sounds like someone that would turn it off too. :facepalm
Of course, it could also have been one of the cases where the car just navigated poorly and thinks it needs to be in the left lane for some reason. The vehicle's lane selection is not great, IMO.
We locked eyes and you could tell they were embarrassed but I highly doubt they stopped. It looked like actual tech/screen addiction to me. I think they were just worried I was a cop, but when they saw just a normal car they went right back to it.
In some ways we can't blame Tesla for this kind of thing. But it's hard to believe they're doing anything to discourage or mitigate antisocial behaviors.
At the very least Tesla should have a "merge right when appropriate" priority in their Autopilot offering. It seems drivers all over the Bay area have forgotten this basic traffic-mitigating rule too. Many transplants seem oblivious why people passing on the right are so much more aggressive than those passing on the left.