Elon Musk launched the Austin robotaxi service recently, but safety concerns persist. A Tesla vehicle nearly ran a railroad crossing while a train approached, demonstrating software flaws. Despite claims of progress with the Full Self-Driving software, the technology cannot yet support a larger fleet without posing serious risks. Increasing the number of cars raises the chances of collisions, indicating the system needs to improve significantly before scaling can be safe and effective.
On the day Elon Musk expanded the boundaries of his three-week-old autonomous ride hailing service in Austin, a Tesla tried to illegally run a railroad crossing just as a locomotive approached. The robotaxi did not see that, and the safety observer had to stop the vehicle until the train had passed. There’s a little bit of work that still needs to be polished up with the software, but it's been amazing to see how well the service is working.
One of the earliest Full Self-Driving beta testers states Tesla's software has come a long way over the past four years but is still nowhere near robust enough to support the 10,000 cars Musk claimed were possible in theory. These issues prove Tesla should never have launched even with just 10 vehicles.
The FSD software works most of the time, but it blows my mind that we're still seeing issues like FSD running red lights or driving on the wrong side of the road. This shouldn't be happening on such a regular basis.
As more cars are added to the fleet, the statistical chance of a collision increases. A robotaxi service needs to be virtually flawless to scale safely; this has not been achieved with Tesla's current software.
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