Without knowing the "full" details of this crash, it is outrageous that Tesla calls it "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" on their website. This is like naming a product "Healthy Dog Food (Rat poison)". If it requires supervision, it is not "full". Period.
I thought previous lawsuits would've forced Tesla to call it "Advanced Driver Assist" or something.
As long as Tesla doesn't insure their cars (whenever in self-driving mode) completely for the price of their FSD, it's not FSD, just scammy marketing by a chronic charlatan.
Why do news outlets so often use the phrase "high rate of speed"? Speed isn't a discrete event, it can't really have a rate, unless it is a rate of change, in which case they would be referring to acceleration.
It’s a bit weird terminology, but since the meaning is well understood I don’t see the big deal. Speed itself is a rate of change in position per unit time, so it’s just needlessly verbose
1) I’ve put enough kms on FSD - it’s taken me across Australia a few times, probably 10,000kms in total - to know that it isn’t going to drive into a house.
2) Even if FSD is enabled, there’s loads of things you can do to create an accident like press the brakes or accelerator pedals, which doesn’t necessarily disengage FSD right away, so let’s just wait for the telemetry to get released.
3) Regardless of who was controlling it, why did this guy let his car jump the kerb and go through a house? Why was he going fast enough?
> 1) I’ve put enough kms on FSD to know that it isn’t going to drive into a house.
Is it possible FSD on this vehicle was a different version? Can't FSD change from one drive to the next, based on software updates or even external conditions?
Perhaps you drove in a different region with differing conditions?
> 3) Regardless of who was controlling it, why did this guy let his car jump the kerb and go through a house? Why was he going fast enough?
Why is it called "Full Self Driving" if the person behind the wheel must control (or even just monitor) the speed?
That’s exactly the thing. We’re on FSD 13 and America is on FSD 14, we’re always about a year behind. Yours is significantly better than ours (being RHD market), but ours still wouldn’t drive through a house.
You’re extremely confident about this just based on your experience of it not happening to you. It’s good that it hasn’t driven you into a house but that doesn’t mean it can’t fail in a way that does drive someone else into a house.
Well, I’ve seen it very confidently and correctly navigate rural unmarked roads, and drive around rocks and logs across the road and things like this. I find it hard to believe it would drive through a huge stationary object like a house, which I imagine is definitely in the training data.
I guess I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I think at this stage it’s improbable.
> Regardless of who was controlling it, why did this guy let his car jump the kerb and go through a house? Why was he going fast enough?
There are decades worth of man-machines UX research to prove this: the more you lean on automated systems to perform a manual task, like specific vehicle operations, the more your reaction time and relefexes for that specific motor skill will suffer.
Non-level 4 driver assistance tech should only be used for helping prevent accidents and not pretend to be actual full self driving
I don’t know about laws, but Teslas automatically record and save everything in the event of a collision. My brother was hit by another car while driving a Tesla a few years ago and it was very easy to retrieve video from the Tesla’s cameras and show who was at fault.
There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents.
Note: it’s important to distinguish between Autopilot and FSD here. “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer.
> There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents
It’s tough to say given many data sources are aggregated. For what it’s worth, my parents’ car is a Tesla with FSD and I’ve stopped it from, off the top of my head, racing into a red-lit intersection, running over a small dog and running into a closing garage door.
I still use it. It mostly works. But I’m vigilantly monitoring it in a way that isn’t supported by Tesla’s marketing (which frequently shows drivers engaging it hands off).
The garage door I can certainly believe. Its AI brain just won’t be trained to look for that sort of thing.
I’m surprised about the red lights and animals, however: ours seems very cautious around any kind of live animal on the road, even braking and manoeuvring to avoid birds on the road. It’s not so good at avoiding the corpses of already dead ones, however (bump!).
Both only happened once. But they were shocking when they did. (To be fair, my Subaru tried to push me into oncoming traffic because it was avoiding a “collision” from the guy in the other lane turning weirdly. Turned at collision-avoidance feature off.)
I get the impression that it kind of comprehends the world as a horizontal plane. It’s focused on objects on the surface and isn’t looking for hazards coming from above. Could that be improved? Sure! Is it a priority for them? Maybe not…
At minimum it needs to pay attention to railroad crossing bars and bridges.
They show a 2D representation to the driver because that’s good enough for drivers, but I wouldn’t assume that represents how the system operates internally at every stage. Even navigating requires the concept of bridges crossing roads without intersecting them.
> “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer.
I'm not sure the point you're making here - that just sounds like "Tesla couldn't care less about updating their software and it's still "not good". People it hits are still dead. "Oh well, it's not like Tesla had updated the software, so you can't blame them".
does it makes sense to compare the two given that waymos are driven in a limited set of circumstances and most of the times below speeds that could kill you on a crash?
If Tesla was bold enough to intentionally auto disengage seconds before an accident (to avoid liability) then can they be trusted to maintain telemetry throughout dicey circumstances?
I also don't trust the motives of a company that names something "Full Self Driving" knowing it's not fully self driving. Never mind their shenanigans around avoiding or disregarding regulations and reporting requirements.
Certainly Tesla will. And that will inform how their PR team responds to this collision.
Maybe some plaintiffs will if they can manage to subpoena the data from Tesla in some hypothetical future court case.
The reason I will never buy a Tesla is because it is one of the most advanced surveillance systems against the driver, but there is no one empowered to inspect the car / company (comprehensively, not superficially).
> I seriously doubt FSD would drive into a house.
Strawman. You seem to be insinuating that FSD intended to aim for a house. Usually the chain of events would start with something like “FSD was engaged on the road and in the intended lane” then “FSD lost track of the boundary of the lane” or maybe “FSD identified an obstruction in the lane so it maneuvered out of lane”.
The reddit post from the grandchild says "autopilot", which is really just lane keeping and adaptive cruise control.
I believe autopilot would totally run into a house. It doesn't respect stop signs or red lights. If the house is at a T intersection the autopilot might try to drive right through it. I agree about FSD though
Something is terribly broken in the software release process that constantly allows a worse user experience (including autonomous) as Tesla 'matures' its operations. I'm driving a Tesla, that recently added a 'warning' over a center-display showing the three rear-pointing cameras.
1. The cameras only show while operating in reverse;
2. The warning entirely obscures 30-50% of the view in one or more cameras;
3. The warning tells you that there is dirt or debris on the camera.
So, you are warned, that your vision, via the cameras could be better -- by deliberately worsening the view.
I wonder if they will implement dead zones for self-driving. I was using a Lime scooter in a new city and when I entered a university campus, the scooter slowed to a crawl.
I don’t understand why a person would need FSD in a suburb street.
My nightmare has become reality. Software engineers now rule the world.
Life and death policies being made by people who last week you were arguing about whether using Kubernetes is worth it for a throwaway project, or whether tabs or spaces are more appropriate.
I just wonder how bad it will have to get before they decide we need to be reigned in. Going by how the 20th Century went, if it's anything like that we're in for a rough time before we get there--like, to a place where software engineers have to act like, well, engineers.
Whether if it is either autopilot or Fools Self Driving mode, if this driver did not have their hands on the wheel then he is absolutely in deep trouble.
Tesla themselves got into trouble after previous crashes and are finally telling their drivers to keep their hands on the wheel at all times, and toned down their false advertising.
Whatever they do or don't say in the fine print, they and their CEO clearly communicate to every Tesla owner I've met that you do not have to keep your hands on the wheel. tesla.com/fsd has a splash page showing someone driving the car hands-free. I do agree that the driver should also be held responsible.
It's just not a serious technology. Street-by-street speed limit data exists, and where it doesn't, there are laws across the US as to what speed limits are based on area. Tons of map data to tell you where is residential and commercial, a street and a highway, an on-ramp, and so on.
But FSD doesn't abide by speed limits, and Waymo does, and it is truly self-driving.
So, it's all bullshit. Since day one, it's never been a real attempt at autonomous, legal, safe driving.
Recent lawsuits [1] seem to suggest both are. The driver committed manslaughter and should go to jail. The company sold a dangerous product that killed someone and should pay massive damages.
You might not think so, but there are many people that believe Tesla marketing that FSD is better than paying attention. I struggle convincing my parents that they shouldn't drive if they are likely to fall asleep behind the wheel and it's helpful to categorize an FSD crash separately from a human driver crash.
Without knowing the "full" details of this crash, it is outrageous that Tesla calls it "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" on their website. This is like naming a product "Healthy Dog Food (Rat poison)". If it requires supervision, it is not "full". Period.
I thought previous lawsuits would've forced Tesla to call it "Advanced Driver Assist" or something.
As long as Tesla doesn't insure their cars (whenever in self-driving mode) completely for the price of their FSD, it's not FSD, just scammy marketing by a chronic charlatan.
Why do news outlets so often use the phrase "high rate of speed"? Speed isn't a discrete event, it can't really have a rate, unless it is a rate of change, in which case they would be referring to acceleration.
It’s a bit weird terminology, but since the meaning is well understood I don’t see the big deal. Speed itself is a rate of change in position per unit time, so it’s just needlessly verbose
Ok, 3 things.
1) I’ve put enough kms on FSD - it’s taken me across Australia a few times, probably 10,000kms in total - to know that it isn’t going to drive into a house.
2) Even if FSD is enabled, there’s loads of things you can do to create an accident like press the brakes or accelerator pedals, which doesn’t necessarily disengage FSD right away, so let’s just wait for the telemetry to get released.
3) Regardless of who was controlling it, why did this guy let his car jump the kerb and go through a house? Why was he going fast enough?
Sad for all involved.
Edit: my experience is HW4 by the way.
“Wait for the telemetry”. Like that case where it took years and reverse engineering to pull the footage that Tesla claimed did not exist?
Surely, we can trust Tesla will be providing all relevant information to the authorities without delay.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/08/29/tesla-a...
> 1) I’ve put enough kms on FSD to know that it isn’t going to drive into a house.
Is it possible FSD on this vehicle was a different version? Can't FSD change from one drive to the next, based on software updates or even external conditions?
Perhaps you drove in a different region with differing conditions?
> 3) Regardless of who was controlling it, why did this guy let his car jump the kerb and go through a house? Why was he going fast enough?
Why is it called "Full Self Driving" if the person behind the wheel must control (or even just monitor) the speed?
That’s exactly the thing. We’re on FSD 13 and America is on FSD 14, we’re always about a year behind. Yours is significantly better than ours (being RHD market), but ours still wouldn’t drive through a house.
You’re extremely confident about this just based on your experience of it not happening to you. It’s good that it hasn’t driven you into a house but that doesn’t mean it can’t fail in a way that does drive someone else into a house.
Well, I’ve seen it very confidently and correctly navigate rural unmarked roads, and drive around rocks and logs across the road and things like this. I find it hard to believe it would drive through a huge stationary object like a house, which I imagine is definitely in the training data.
I guess I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I think at this stage it’s improbable.
The computer does not see things like you see things ;)
I believe how good your FSD is also depends on how new your Tesla is because older ones are underpowered and maybe use an underpowered vision model
"I coded like 500 line of C, I know for a fact segfaults cannot happen"
That's how you sound
"I haven't encountered a rare edge case, therefor the rare edge case must not exist"
> Regardless of who was controlling it, why did this guy let his car jump the kerb and go through a house? Why was he going fast enough?
There are decades worth of man-machines UX research to prove this: the more you lean on automated systems to perform a manual task, like specific vehicle operations, the more your reaction time and relefexes for that specific motor skill will suffer.
Non-level 4 driver assistance tech should only be used for helping prevent accidents and not pretend to be actual full self driving
"I've driven drunk enough times to know I'd never cause an accident"
The telemetry will tell the story, not the clickbait news headline based on preliminary information. I seriously doubt FSD would drive into a house.
Are there any US federal or state laws stipulating some sort of black box style recording of data for accident investigation?
If not then I suspect a Tesla will turn out to be quite surprisingly forgetful about what it was up to in a road traffic collision.
RTC is a UK term that took over from RTA (road traffic accident) - it describes what happened rather than heading off into the weeds as to cause.
I don’t know about laws, but Teslas automatically record and save everything in the event of a collision. My brother was hit by another car while driving a Tesla a few years ago and it was very easy to retrieve video from the Tesla’s cameras and show who was at fault.
> telemetry will tell the story
Idk, the death-toll gap between Tesla and Waymo seems to tell a story enough.
There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents.
Note: it’s important to distinguish between Autopilot and FSD here. “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer.
This article never mentions FSD, only Autopilot.
> There are very few (if any?) known deaths caused by FSD accidents
It’s tough to say given many data sources are aggregated. For what it’s worth, my parents’ car is a Tesla with FSD and I’ve stopped it from, off the top of my head, racing into a red-lit intersection, running over a small dog and running into a closing garage door.
I still use it. It mostly works. But I’m vigilantly monitoring it in a way that isn’t supported by Tesla’s marketing (which frequently shows drivers engaging it hands off).
The garage door I can certainly believe. Its AI brain just won’t be trained to look for that sort of thing.
I’m surprised about the red lights and animals, however: ours seems very cautious around any kind of live animal on the road, even braking and manoeuvring to avoid birds on the road. It’s not so good at avoiding the corpses of already dead ones, however (bump!).
> I’m surprised about the red lights and animals
Both only happened once. But they were shocking when they did. (To be fair, my Subaru tried to push me into oncoming traffic because it was avoiding a “collision” from the guy in the other lane turning weirdly. Turned at collision-avoidance feature off.)
> The garage door I can certainly believe. Its AI brain just won’t be trained to look for that sort of thing.
Why not? That’s likely to come up at minimum thousands of times per day, and likely vastly more as the system improves.
I get the impression that it kind of comprehends the world as a horizontal plane. It’s focused on objects on the surface and isn’t looking for hazards coming from above. Could that be improved? Sure! Is it a priority for them? Maybe not…
At minimum it needs to pay attention to railroad crossing bars and bridges.
They show a 2D representation to the driver because that’s good enough for drivers, but I wouldn’t assume that represents how the system operates internally at every stage. Even navigating requires the concept of bridges crossing roads without intersecting them.
> “Autopilot” is Tesla’s old assisted driving stack that comes free in most vehicles and has had no significant updates in years. “FSD” is an entirely different software stack that only works with newer vehicles and that Tesla charges $$ for. It’s much more advanced and IMO a lot safer.
I'm not sure the point you're making here - that just sounds like "Tesla couldn't care less about updating their software and it's still "not good". People it hits are still dead. "Oh well, it's not like Tesla had updated the software, so you can't blame them".
does it makes sense to compare the two given that waymos are driven in a limited set of circumstances and most of the times below speeds that could kill you on a crash?
If Tesla was bold enough to intentionally auto disengage seconds before an accident (to avoid liability) then can they be trusted to maintain telemetry throughout dicey circumstances?
That's not what they do, and any crash happening within 5 seconds of fsd disengagement is considered to be using fsd.
Apparently they do at least intentionally disengage, often with little time to react. When they could instead start braking and alert the driver.
https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report
I also don't trust the motives of a company that names something "Full Self Driving" knowing it's not fully self driving. Never mind their shenanigans around avoiding or disregarding regulations and reporting requirements.
And _we_ will never see the telemetry.
Maybe NTSB will.
Certainly Tesla will. And that will inform how their PR team responds to this collision.
Maybe some plaintiffs will if they can manage to subpoena the data from Tesla in some hypothetical future court case.
The reason I will never buy a Tesla is because it is one of the most advanced surveillance systems against the driver, but there is no one empowered to inspect the car / company (comprehensively, not superficially).
> I seriously doubt FSD would drive into a house.
Strawman. You seem to be insinuating that FSD intended to aim for a house. Usually the chain of events would start with something like “FSD was engaged on the road and in the intended lane” then “FSD lost track of the boundary of the lane” or maybe “FSD identified an obstruction in the lane so it maneuvered out of lane”.
The reddit post from the grandchild says "autopilot", which is really just lane keeping and adaptive cruise control.
I believe autopilot would totally run into a house. It doesn't respect stop signs or red lights. If the house is at a T intersection the autopilot might try to drive right through it. I agree about FSD though
Here is a video from the youtube channel Better Biomed, from the scene, apparently it was his house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L_8x-Y0jqg
Many Tesla owners I know are 100% convinced Assited Driving is 100% safe and reliable and can not go wrong.
Something is terribly broken in the software release process that constantly allows a worse user experience (including autonomous) as Tesla 'matures' its operations. I'm driving a Tesla, that recently added a 'warning' over a center-display showing the three rear-pointing cameras.
1. The cameras only show while operating in reverse;
2. The warning entirely obscures 30-50% of the view in one or more cameras;
3. The warning tells you that there is dirt or debris on the camera.
So, you are warned, that your vision, via the cameras could be better -- by deliberately worsening the view.
Genius.
Cameras get dirty and it is unreasonable to think that they wouldn't. This would force my hand to clean the cameras. Why is this a bad thing?
Made my day lol. Brilliant.
I wonder if they will implement dead zones for self-driving. I was using a Lime scooter in a new city and when I entered a university campus, the scooter slowed to a crawl.
I don’t understand why a person would need FSD in a suburb street.
If FSD proves to be demonstrably safer in such a scenario then it would make sense to use it there.
All of the optimism surrounding this industry hinges on "ifs" that never materialize.
It's shocking. I can't understand why people repeatedly fall for it.
My nightmare has become reality. Software engineers now rule the world.
Life and death policies being made by people who last week you were arguing about whether using Kubernetes is worth it for a throwaway project, or whether tabs or spaces are more appropriate.
I just wonder how bad it will have to get before they decide we need to be reigned in. Going by how the 20th Century went, if it's anything like that we're in for a rough time before we get there--like, to a place where software engineers have to act like, well, engineers.
They do that on bikes as well. At first, I was very confused about what was happening.
> don’t understand why a person would need FSD in a suburb street
My parents have a Tesla. It’s convenient. I engage my Subaru’s lane-keeping in suburbs, too, to reduce driver fatigue.
The Subaru behaves predictably. The Tesla is mostly more capable, but does something dumbfucked and dangerous every few dozen trips.
> to reduce driver fatigue
Fatigue is not the only, or even the biggest, risk to driving safely. Being distracted is frequently one of the biggest risks.
It’s also a convenient way to commit to the speed limit.
Crazy I saw one of the victim's grandchildren post on Reddit yesterday and thought it should make the news.
The grandchildren's post: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/1uardtu/driver...
Someone needs to go to jail for this.
Either the driver or someone at Tesla (their pick, who cares).
This cannot go unpunished.
Machines can never be held accountable.
It seems your standards are pretty arbitrary.
Personally I want to know that a provable crime was actually committed before calling for someone to be jailed.
Also jailing basically doesn’t solve this problem?
Whether if it is either autopilot or Fools Self Driving mode, if this driver did not have their hands on the wheel then he is absolutely in deep trouble.
Tesla themselves got into trouble after previous crashes and are finally telling their drivers to keep their hands on the wheel at all times, and toned down their false advertising.
Hands on wheel doesn’t absolve the FSD from stopping the car before hitting the wall/object. And the person. This was completely avoidable.
I can't imagine the lawyers going after him when they can go after the world's only trillionaire.
The latest FSD does not attempt to check if your hands are on the wheel at all.
Does it do alternate checks for human awareness, like gaze detection?
Yes. But if you place screens strategically, the camera won't be able to see that you use them.
Whatever they do or don't say in the fine print, they and their CEO clearly communicate to every Tesla owner I've met that you do not have to keep your hands on the wheel. tesla.com/fsd has a splash page showing someone driving the car hands-free. I do agree that the driver should also be held responsible.
It's just not a serious technology. Street-by-street speed limit data exists, and where it doesn't, there are laws across the US as to what speed limits are based on area. Tons of map data to tell you where is residential and commercial, a street and a highway, an on-ramp, and so on.
But FSD doesn't abide by speed limits, and Waymo does, and it is truly self-driving.
So, it's all bullshit. Since day one, it's never been a real attempt at autonomous, legal, safe driving.
The title is misleading and shifts blame from the driver to the machine.
Ultimately the driver is responsible.
Edit: For the folks who seem to think that this is marketed as unsupervised self driving, from Teslas own website it states
“Currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”
https://www.tesla.com/fsd
> Ultimately the driver is responsible
Recent lawsuits [1] seem to suggest both are. The driver committed manslaughter and should go to jail. The company sold a dangerous product that killed someone and should pay massive damages.
[1] https://electrek.co/2026/04/16/tesla-facing-up-to-14-billion...
You might not think so, but there are many people that believe Tesla marketing that FSD is better than paying attention. I struggle convincing my parents that they shouldn't drive if they are likely to fall asleep behind the wheel and it's helpful to categorize an FSD crash separately from a human driver crash.
The tell is the the name. Full Self Driving.
Being responsible and being at fault are two different things.
If full self driving was active then the driver was Tesla.
If it is Full-Self Driving, the machine is the driver. The company providing is ultimately responsible.
Looks accurate to the content to me.