It will be a while before Terminators in the form of Arnold Schwarzenegger will wipe out humanity. Because for the time being, artificial intelligence cannot even tell the difference between the public road and the bollard next to it. In a year, there will be self-driving Teslas everywhere, says Elon Musk, but if they are as blind to obstacles as this one, it will be chaos …
As we wrote before: a Tesla is not a self-driving car. Autopilot is a collection of semi-autonomous driving assistants, such as those supplied by other manufacturers. In the United States, Tesla has rolled out the so-called Full Self-Driving Beta functionality on a trial basis. This enables the car to largely drive itself in certain cases. At least, in theory…
Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is far from perfect and sometimes creates dangerous situations
The system is far from perfect and creates dangerous situations, where the car overlooks cyclists, suddenly drives on the wrong side of the road and makes other mistakes. Youtube is teeming with videos of hesitantly stumbling Teslas with FSD Beta enabled. However, we never saw a collision. Until now.
FSD Beta is no more than Level 2 autonomous, needs active human supervision
The name Full Self-Driving suggests a lot, but in practice the system is no more than Level 2 autonomous. This means that the car can only drive itself in limited cases and always needs active human supervision. The driver in this video paid close attention, but failed to react in time when his Tesla took a far too sharp right turn and hit a plastic pole. The damage was limited to a damaged lower bumper.