Having a car is a godsend to anyone living in a country that has a land area bigger than the maximum number of chunks that the Minecraft engine can generate… wait… “[…] Minecraft worlds can potentially stretch for 60 million meters or about five times the diameter of Earth.” … Yep, sounds about right.
Anywho, driving that distance is much better than walking, so thank god for cars. But don’t thank god for self-driving cars just yet as, though novel and exciting, they aren’t yet at a point where they can make sure you won’t regret your drive home. At least in Tesla’s case, anyway, according to this one story.
A Redditor recently had to ask to be let out, and was not taken seriously, when the driver of the car—specifically told not to use the full self-driving (FSD) mode on their Tesla—enabled the full self-driving mode. As if their request was a dare of sorts. Or the driver was too proud of it. Whatever the case, the story’s now on r/AITA.
More Info: Reddit
Not everyone is excited about self-driving cars, but mostly because the tech still has a ways to go before it's perfect
Image credits: Charlie Deets (not the actual image)
The story goes that Redditor u/denisennp was out for a night on the town with her boyfriend and his family. When it came time to go home, they all squeezed into the dad’s car, which was a Tesla, and were on their way home.
Suddenly, the dad struck up a conversation with OP who works as a systems engineer and has ample experience with self-driving tech. You see, the dad had recently bought the FSD upgrade, and testosterone and pride was probably running through his veins and hence he wanted to show it off.
But some people get so excited about it, they forget the reality of things—so much, in fact, that they don't hear simple requests
Image credits: u/denisennp
The crux of the conflict related to the driver—the dad—having bought an FSD and trying to show it off with a self-driving systems engineer on board
Image credits: Roberto Nickson (not the actual image)
OP, being a systems engineer for this very same tech, knew the ins and outs of it all, so she politely declined the offer. A short back and forth later, the dad was surprised to learn OP was not willing to be in the car if he turned his fresh purchase on, so insisted he turn it on anyway.
Despite OP’s best efforts and claims she’d leave the car if he’d turn it on, everyone else in the car tried to laugh it off, seemingly thinking it was a joke. It wasn’t. And they understood that when OP started yelling, asking to be let out as the doors were locked. The dad knocked it off, surprised by the reaction.
And the engineer knew very well that with where the tech is—especially with Tesla—they wouldn't trust their life with it
Image credits: u/denisennp
Her boyfriend chimed in and started to calm her down, writing it off as the alcohol talking, but she wouldn’t even step into an autonomous Tesla sober, so that was not the problem. It did become a problem once they all got home, though. In the boyfriend’s eyes, she overreacted, despite her explicitly asking his dad to not turn on the FSD function. And besides that, there was laughing—nobody took her seriously.
OP was never given a chance to properly explain why she was against the FSD—something that she elaborated on in a comment after the post. Long story short, Tesla’s approach to making the self-driving functionality safe is put on the shoulders of the people who buy and use it, compared to every other company that hires professionals to mold and shape.
“This allows them to avoid paying for some of the usual research and development costs like safety drivers and live monitoring, and it also offloads a lot of liability of testing a very very new and unreliable technology from them as a corporation onto their consumers,” explained OP in her comment.
Nobody took her seriously, laughing off her claim that she'd leave the car if the dad didn't turn off the self-driving function
Image credits: u/denisennp
And it all turned into this big drama where the boyfriend thought OP was overreacting over the FSD
Image credits: Mussi Katz (not the actual image)
So, the dilemma was passed on to the r/AITA community, who voted that OP’s not wrong. Many have pointed out that she had full right to say no, especially if it made her feel unsafe, she deserved respect and being taken seriously (let alone seriously as someone who knows better about the tech), and Teslas are just like any other car—with a potential to cause accidents. Why poke the bear?
Others thought it’s just stupid to think it’s funny to give people a scare, and then try to laugh it off. In some people’s opinion, this was borderline misogyny, and the boyfriend didn’t deserve OP in the first place for this very behavior.
Whatever the case, the post managed to draw in 16,600 upvotes (92% positive) with a handful of Reddit awards, and the engagement led to over 2,700 comments from Redditors. You can check out the post in its entirety here.
Reddit's comment section took her words seriously, though, with OP detailing her reasons why she's against the Tesla-based FSD
Now, a little bit of informational context: Tesla offers various FSD upgrade options depending on people’s pockets. According to Not A Tesla App, there are Teslas with FSD already built in, but can also be available as a separate upgrade for an already-owned Tesla for $15,000 as of September, 2022.
Historically, back in August of 2019, it used to cost $5,000, but each upgrade increases the price, and now the very same upgrade is recorded to cost $19,500 in Canada. But if that’s not an option, then there are subscription options available as well for $199 and $99 per month for the Basic and Enhanced versions respectively.
Folks online voted that the woman was right to feel the way she did, saying that everyone else should be ashamed of themselves
As for the crash test and safety statistics. Tesla itself claims that during the 3rd quarter of 2022, it recorded one crash for every 6.26 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot. Those who didn’t use the tech—it was 1.71 million miles driven per crash. On the one hand, statistically, it already does a better job than a human. And that’s what tech is supposed to do, right?
But Forbes reports that of the nearly 400 crashes that were reported to be caused by partial autonomous driving tech, Tesla was responsible for nearly 70% of these cases. So, at least according to the data, if you’re gonna be proud of having a self-driving car, there’s cars that do a much better job out there, driving autonomously in the wild.
Oh, and if that isn’t enough, someone has bothered to create a dedicated website that records Tesla-related deaths. So, there’s that.
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