A near miss at a red light is included in the demo by Elon Musk
The Handbook of Tesla: Towards a Safe, Safe, and Fair Driver-Aided Self-Driving Autonomy
Musk is also in violation of Tesla’s own rules about how drivers should behave while using FSD. By filming the drive himself from the driver’s seat and also interacting with Twitter commenters during the drive, Musk is ignoring his own company’s guidelines that advise drivers to keep their hands on the steering yoke at all times. This is the handbook of Tesla.
The roughly 45-minute video was meant to demonstrate the prowess of v12 of Tesla’s advanced driver-assist technology, which has yet to be released to customers. And while the vehicle appears to be operating safely for the majority of the trip, it still ends up being a bizarre experience — which is typical of all things Musk.
A version of the driver’s handbook that doesn’t have to apply force to the steering wheel was discovered by a hacker earlier this year. The hacker called the version after Musk showed himself using a version that looks to be hands-free. It’s unclear whether NHTSA is referring to this version of FSD in its letter to Tesla.
Critics who say thatTesla’s approach to self-drive is insufficient and recklessly seized on the moment when Musk was forced to intervene at the traffic light.
Full Self-Driving (Beta) is a hands-on feature. Keep your hands on the steering yoke (or steering wheel) at all times, be mindful of road conditions and surrounding traffic, and always be prepared to take immediate action. Failure to follow these instructions can lead to serious injury or death.
Elon Musk Drives Through Palo Alto, California, During a Livestream of his Auto Driving Toward Zuckerberg (Mat CEO Mark Zuckerberg)
The video is also poor quality and often grainy. Between vertical and horizontal filming it flips frequently. And Musk frequently comments that he hopes someone can edit the footage to make it more interesting.
At around the 27-minute mark, Musk claims he is going to drive to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s house, which he has previously threatened to do as part of their much-publicized (but probably will never happen) fight.
Musk displays the address on-screen after performing a search on it. Musk has banned the account that tracks his private plane from X, saying it was a personal safety risk.
When Elon Musk livestreamed a drive through Palo Alto, California on Friday afternoon, he was holding his phone — which is plainly and clearly illegal under California law. The Palo Alto Police Department did not witness the crime, which is why it won’t issue a fine.
There’s no question that Musk was in control of the vehicle: he was forced to stop his “Full Self Driving” system from running a red light partway through the livestream, and he reveals that he’s in the drivers seat by turning the camera on himself near the 30-minute mark.
Palo Alto Police have better things to do in order to chase down the world’s richest man for a $20 fine. (That’s the only punishment for a first offense — you can get a point against your driving record for a second offense, but only if it happens within three years of the first violation.)
Comments on Musk’s “Should I See Your Phone in Your Hand?” – Answers to NHTSA’s Two-Year Investigation
Musk has been known to disobey the law and some are beginning to question his power. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow recently published “Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule” at The New Yorker, a piece of reporting that shows, among other things, how SpaceX’s Starlink satellites became so important to the war in Ukraine that the US government was forced to treat him with kid gloves.
Reifschneider says that there are practical reasons why the department doesn’t ticket drivers without personally observing them, and they need to be able to tell a judge what they saw.
He says that the officer needs to be prepared to testify that they saw the phone in the driver’s hand.
A newly discovered version of Autopilot that allows drivers to operate the advanced driver-assist feature without applying any torque to the steering wheel — a long sought-after feature by Tesla drivers and one used by several other automakers as well — has caught the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The same docket has been used for NHTSA’s two-year investigation into a dozen incidents in which cars with autopilot crashed into stationary emergency vehicles. The investigation is expected to be over soon. Regulators are investigating issues with seatbelts and steering wheels, as well as phantom braking, triggered by the driver assist.
NHTSA is concerned that this feature was introduced to consumer vehicles and, now that the existence of this feature is known to the public, more drivers may attempt to activate it. The resulting relaxation of controls designed to ensure that the driver remain engaged in the dynamic driving task could lead to greater driver inattention and failure of the driver to properly supervise Autopilot.
Those systems rely on a robust driver monitoring system that includes cameras and other sensors to ensure drivers keep their eyes on the road. And they are only available to use on certain roads, like divided highways. Tesla allows its customers to use Full Self-Driving (FSD), for example, on local roads, but still requires their hands to be on the steering wheel.
