Technology

It’s called “Full Self Driving (Supervised)”. It’s fully driving itself, but the driver has to supervise to make sure it doesn’t break the law. There’s nothing hard to understand about this.

A learner driver taking a drivers license test is still fully driving the car, even though they’re being supervised and the instructor can take over to prevent an accident.

According to Elektrek, Butler had previously told Harris County officials that his vehicle had been on Autopilot (the standard Tesla self-driving system, which is less advanced than FSD) when it collided with Avila's two-story home.

It wasn't even FSD apparently, according to the driver.

Having actually owned a Tesla with Enhanced Autopilot in the past... Autopilot doesn't work at all like this situation would require. Autopilot requires clearly visible lane lines, and is limited to 5 mph over the speed limit unless you are on a highway. A residential street certainly isn't going to allow the vehicle to do the claimed 73mph on Autopilot.

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's Head of AI, also commented on the post, supporting Musk's claims Butler was directly operating the car in the events that lead to the fatal crash. "Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area," he said. "They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash."

This reads to me as a guy who maybe had autopilot on, then hit the accelerator instead of the brakes when he came to the end of the street, because Autopilot won't stop and turn. Basically the same most of those Prius sudden acceleration crashes from years back. Drivers just hitting the wrong pedal.

I read, years ago, that Tesla will switch it back to driver control in the seconds before impact, so they can't be blamed with self driving. I've seen this accusation more than once.