At least six crashes have been reported to the agency under its standing general order, which requires an automaker to inform the regulator of any crash involving a partially automated driving system like FSD (or an autonomous driving system like Waymo’s). And of those six crashes, four resulted in injuries.
The second scenario involves Teslas operating under FSD crossing into oncoming traffic, driving straight in a turning lane, or making a turn from the wrong lane. There have been at least 24 complaints about this behavior, as well as another six reports under the standing general order, and NHTSA also cites articles published by Motor Trend and Forbes that detail such behavior during test drives.
Perhaps this should not be surprising. Last year, we reported on a study conducted by AMCI Testing that revealed both aberrant driving behaviors—ignoring a red light and crossing into oncoming traffic—in 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of testing that required more than 75 human interventions. The rest of the time, the system was capable of quite sophisticated behavior; “its seeming infallibility in anyone’s first five minutes of FSD operation breeds a sense of awe that unavoidably leads to dangerous complacency,” said AMCI Testing’s director, Guy Mangiamele.
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