September 4th, 2022

Sept 4, 2022

Version: Just before 10.69

Keep in mind these criticisms are suggested improvements. Tesla began this journey from having nothing and building it from 0% to ~99%.

  1. Railroad tracks. Car doesn't seem to be able to tell apart super bumpy slow the fuck down tracks compared to no bump at all don't slow down tracks.
  2. Non-sensical lane changing
  3. Jerky turns. Steering wheel seems to have high tolerance for variability.
  4. Too fast in slow zones.

Railroad tracks

To improve my comfort level, I am going to adjust down the +km over amount. The problem with setting the km/h or speed % over limits isn't that one is better than the other. They both suck compared to a dynamic ability to set speed more cautiously.

Tesla needs to not set speed to some static amount over. Much like pedestrians where it needs to slow down, it needs to slow down for train tracks. But since some tracks are really good, slowing down for all those is an overcorrection. It needs to be trained to tell the difference between fast tracks and slow tracks.

I think slowing down a little even for fast tracks would give drivers more peace of mind.

Non-sensical lane changing

Sometimes on highways, sometimes not, I have no idea why it wants to change lanes. Also getting over to your turn earlier would bring peace of mind. For some reason I get anxiety over being in the wrong lane for an upcoming turn.

On my way home, I get off the highway and turn left. Amazing, this works great. But then the car immediately goes into the right lane which ends about 200m up. Also, the left turn is two lanes but the way it is set up is that the far end traffic is coming up in two lanes, but one of those the lanes is left the turn to highway. This gives me a left turn lane to myself. I am very used to making this left turn when only traffic in the far lane exists. So I am finding that I am telling my car to go by pushing the accelerator, then it goes, then it immediately gets in the right lane that ends imminently while cutting off another car.

I do think the error stems from me wanting to tell it to go. The car likely wants to wait until all traffic is clear. Then at least it wont cut people off.

I know Tesla is working on left turns, hopefully this improvement made it into 10.69.

Too fast in slow zones

The car has to make decisions on what speed to go. Sometimes, this is just way too fast. I correct this by braking the car so as to add the proper input for training.

I hope the next version uses this intervention data to make improvements.

One such situation is in my neighbourhood. I had the preferred speed set to +19/km/h. So it seemed to want to proceed through the neighbourhood at 59km/h. Which is a bit fast in and of itself. But in one situation, I had two working trucks on each side of the road and it wanted to proceed at that speed tightly and I do not think the car could stop in time to not hit somebody that was occluded.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Software Developer always striving to be better. Learn from others' mistakes, learn by doing, fail fast, maximize productivity, and really think hard about good defaults. Computer developers have the power to add an entire infinite dimension with a single Int (or maybe BigInt). The least we can do with that power is be creative.