FSD on Pikes Peak

[Ogre]

FSD is getting much better. On the older versions it can’t even do moderately tight turns, these hairpins are super impressive.

Increasingly hearing about FSD runs on challenging roads going well which excites me since I do a fair number of runs on mountain roads.

Still, I need full hands off myself. I want to be able to rely on the car on return trips from long weekends and truly relax.

 

[JBee]

How many hours of driving with FSD before you feel confident enough to relax?

For me it would take a fair while I think. Its pretty good though, I've done Pikes Peak a few times, always impressive, except for ICE performance at altitude! I'm not much better either tho... ?

 

[Ogre]

How many hours of driving with FSD before you feel confident enough to relax?

For me it would take a fair while I think. Its pretty good though, I've done Pikes Peak a few times, always impressive, except for ICE performance at altitude! I'm not much better either tho... ?

I already lean on autopilot pretty hard. I don’t think it would take king at all for myself.

 

[Cybr on]

FSD is getting much better. On the older versions it can’t even do moderately tight turns, these hairpins are super impressive.

Increasingly hearing about FSD runs on challenging roads going well which excites me since I do a fair number of runs on mountain roads.

Still, I need full hands off myself. I want to be able to rely on the car on return trips from long weekends and truly relax.

Same on Highway 17 and 92. Our 2017 S did pretty well. I’m happy with her upgraded system, But the 2020 m3LR AWD was like I said before, a dream to drive in the windings. I’ve taken these roads countless times IN FSD and FSD just gets better and better. 17 MS, well, she sorta likes to hug the inside line in turns and that can get a weeee bit sketchy. Especially, on 92 getting into half moon bay. I’m like wow girl easy trigger! Always at the ready with hands on steering wheel. Again, we are here to help make teslas vision come true (and those who share same vision, come true) by using FSD (if you have it) appropriately in the way it is described in the manual. This will aid in the success in FSD and help her grow!
Seems like my 17 just does not want to grow as fast. ?

 

[CyberGus]

How many hours of driving with FSD before you feel confident enough to relax?

I already eat, drink, and play Pokemon while driving, all without any ADAS whatsoever.

Anything's an improvement lol

 

[Crissa]

I already eat, drink, and play Pokemon while driving, all without any ADAS whatsoever.

Anything's an improvement lol

Having your spouse drive doesn't count, Gus.

-Crissa

 

[JBee]

Having your spouse drive doesn't count, Gus.

-Crissa

No back seat drivers allowed in Texas in the CT either...

 

[JBee]

I already eat, drink, and play Pokemon while driving, all without any ADAS whatsoever.

Anything's an improvement lol

That's cheating if you are driving your Delorean though, you can just go back in time to your last checkpoint and respawn if you stuff it up.

 

[FutureBoy]

How many hours of driving with FSD before you feel confident enough to relax?

For me it would take a fair while I think. Its pretty good though, I've done Pikes Peak a few times, always impressive, except for ICE performance at altitude! I'm not much better either tho... ?

How long till comfort? I think most people will feel comfortable way sooner than they anticipate. But at certain moments they will suddenly be shocked and scared.

As an example, my dad was a fairly jumpy passenger when I was learning to drive. But he calmed down eventually and got to the point where he could even sleep in the car while I drove. Many years later, he was still fairly comfortable with my driving but I had moved here to Washington and he had never been here. The first time he came to visit me, we were out on a drive and everything was still calm.

A bit of background... In a few random places in Washington, they have HOV lanes that are on the same side of the highway as the exit ramps. If you know about this it's no big deal. One of the locations at the time was very near my house.

So my dad comes to visit. We get in the car to take a drive somewhere. He is in the front passenger seat. As I'm driving down one interstate, I take an exit ramp to go off and merge onto another interstate that has this HOV on the exit side setup. Just after I merge onto the interstate, I am in the HOV lane. Then right ahead there is another exit just before a bridge that the interstate goes over. I'm trying to stay on so, I continue on straight in the HOV lane without exiting before the bridge. All my dad sees is that I missed the exit, am headed for the bridge at full tilt, and he thinks I'm in the breakdown lane because of the solid white line between me and the other lanes of traffic. Suddenly he literally slams his hands and feet out in front of him with an expression of absolute terror on his face. And I calmly continue on over the bridge.

Safe to say, he was right back at the terror stage of being a passenger thinking he was going to die. Even though there really wasn't any extraordinary danger in the situation. Well, except for the possible issues around him acting in terror and possibly causing me to have a cascading terror reaction (which I didn't in the moment).

I think what most people are going to experience with FSD will be an initial relatively short time of unease as they get accustomed to being driven around by a robot. But the unease will subside relatively quickly. But in the back of their minds, there will be a subconscious observational routine running that will be watching out for danger. At some moments of ambiguity, that subconscious routine will not trust what inputs it is getting and it will scream in terror to the conscious brain. At that moment, if the terror was warranted, the experience will add to that person's distrust of FSD. If the terror was not warranted, there will be a bit of a calming effect for the subconscious routine. After a few (or many?) of those calming effects, the subconscious routine will also get comfortable with FSD. But this part may take a long while. Especially if there are multiple terror incidents that prove out to be warranted.

Oh, and the younger crowd that grows up with FSD? They won't even worry in the least. They will instead be terrified if someone decides to take the wheel and shut off FSD.

 

[JBee]

How long till comfort? I think most people will feel comfortable way sooner than they anticipate. But at certain moments they will suddenly be shocked and scared.

As an example, my dad was a fairly jumpy passenger when I was learning to drive. But he calmed down eventually and got to the point where he could even sleep in the car while I drove. Many years later, he was still fairly comfortable with my driving but I had moved here to Washington and he had never been here. The first time he came to visit me, we were out on a drive and everything was still calm.

A bit of background... In a few random places in Washington, they have HOV lanes that are on the same side of the highway as the exit ramps. If you know about this it's no big deal. One of the locations at the time was very near my house.

So my dad comes to visit. We get in the car to take a drive somewhere. He is in the front passenger seat. As I'm driving down one interstate, I take an exit ramp to go off and merge onto another interstate that has this HOV on the exit side setup. Just after I merge onto the interstate, I am in the HOV lane. Then right ahead there is another exit just before a bridge that the interstate goes over. I'm trying to stay on so, I continue on straight in the HOV lane without exiting before the bridge. All my dad sees is that I missed the exit, am headed for the bridge at full tilt, and he thinks I'm in the breakdown lane because of the solid white line between me and the other lanes of traffic. Suddenly he literally slams his hands and feet out in front of him with an expression of absolute terror on his face. And I calmly continue on over the bridge.

Safe to say, he was right back at the terror stage of being a passenger thinking he was going to die. Even though there really wasn't any extraordinary danger in the situation. Well, except for the possible issues around him acting in terror and possibly causing me to have a cascading terror reaction (which I didn't in the moment).

I think what most people are going to experience with FSD will be an initial relatively short time of unease as they get accustomed to being driven around by a robot. But the unease will subside relatively quickly. But in the back of their minds, there will be a subconscious observational routine running that will be watching out for danger. At some moments of ambiguity, that subconscious routine will not trust what inputs it is getting and it will scream in terror to the conscious brain. At that moment, if the terror was warranted, the experience will add to that person's distrust of FSD. If the terror was not warranted, there will be a bit of a calming effect for the subconscious routine. After a few (or many?) of those calming effects, the subconscious routine will also get comfortable with FSD. But this part may take a long while. Especially if there are multiple terror incidents that prove out to be warranted.

Oh, and the younger crowd that grows up with FSD? They won't even worry in the least. They will instead be terrified if someone decides to take the wheel and shut off FSD.

I'm not a autopilot critic at all and am active in UAV autopilot development, in particular for eVTOLs, since 2010. I don't mind your analogy on a persons state of mind as such, but if you look at it from an engineering and physics perspective the situation changes significantly.

My concern stems from the limitations in time to respond to a FSD failure. No system is infallible and as such "how it can fail" becomes a vital metric to assess risk. One critical part of that is understanding the time to respond, from determining a failure to the point of it been correctable. In the case of UAVs, in testing we always fly at "3 mistakes high", that means the AP can make 1-2 mistakes and we still have enough time to recover the aircraft with manual control before it hits the ground. The air is soft, but the ground is not.

With a ground based vehicle that time to respond buffer is way more critical, because for most of the time you drive, especially on the freeway, you are only a split second away from disaster, and humans aren't that good to boot up from "chill mode" assess the situation and take of manual control in that short a time frame. In an aircraft the response time are only critical in proximity to the ground, its not the speed that kills you, its the sudden stop.

Hence for me the "relax" component won't be because I get the "feeling" I'm safe, rather that I know that I won't experience a disengagement when I'm not capable of responding to the situation in time. And there will be times FSD won't even disengage that means constant monitoring by the driver. Checking FSD and the road is more work load not less atm. This will also depend on the road and traffic conditions as well, and in my neck of the woods, traffic is a non-issue except for wildlife.

I suppose at this stage that is why they still check for driver participation via the steering wheel. At some point hands free will migrate to the internal camera based monitoring before we end up with steering wheel deletion and rearward facing seats.

 

[FutureBoy]

I'm not a autopilot critic at all and am active in UAV autopilot development, in particular for eVTOLs, since 2010. I don't mind your analogy on a persons state of mind as such, but if you look at it from an engineering and physics perspective the situation changes significantly.

My concern stems from the limitations in time to respond to a FSD failure. No system is infallible and as such "how it can fail" becomes a vital metric to access risk. One critical part of that is understanding the time to respond, from determining a failure to the point of it been correctable. In the case of UAVs, in testing we always fly at "3 mistakes high", that means the AP can make 1-2 mistakes and we still have enough time to recover the aircraft with manual control before it hits the ground. The air is soft, but the ground is not.

With a ground based vehicle that time to respond buffer is way more critical, because for most of the time you drive, especially on the freeway, you are only a split second away from disaster, and humans aren't that good to boot up from "chill mode" assess the situation and take of manual control in that short a time frame. In an aircraft the response time are only critical in proximity to the ground, its not the speed that kills you, its the sudden stop.

Hence for me the "relax" component won't be because I get the "feeling" I'm safe, rather that I know that I won't experience a disengagement when I'm not capable of responding to the situation in time. And there will be times FSD won't even disengage that means constant monitoring by the driver. Checkinf FSD and the road is more work load not less atm. This will also depend on the road and traffic conditions as well, and in my neck of the woods, traffic is a non-issue except for wildlife.

I suppose at this stage that is why they still check for driver participation via the steering wheel. At some point hands free will migrate to the internal camera based monitoring before we end up with steering wheel deletion and rearward facing seats.

Yes, I can see your point. I think I'd separate the relax or comfort portion between an engineering view and a non-engineering view. Those who are somewhat to very aware of what AI truly is and how it works will have a much different view of FSD than those who exist in the simulation unawares.

 

[Crissa]

Oh, stiff-armed is exactly the wrong reaction.

-Crissa