Thread by @greentheonly

Preface: Tesla autopilot is just an ADAS, so you must pay attention at all times. I am going to demonstrate one particularly bad scenario as an example.
The only reason I even considered using AP off highway is because I wanted to test some stop-sign detection. 1/

Many people are somehow not aware of the system limitations and overly trust the system and Tesla could do better educating them. This is not material to outlaw autopilot or other ADAS systems. 2/

Tesla autopilot is intended to be only used on highways, but people use it off highways anyway because they can. Watch this and hold on to your hat! (fw version 19.8.3) 3/

The internal state clearly shows two important problems: lack of back memory to remember we saw a double line - so cannot cross it! and NEVER be to the left of a double line (n LHD car). NEVER 4/

This is not a fluke, I tried this several times (do not recommend!) 5/

BTW if you did not know, Tesla cars don't learn from mistakes and interventions. Do not try to engage the system where it does not work and hope it'll generate some useful data - it won't. Disengages are almost useless as a "teaching tool". 6/

Moreover, there's no way to report an autopilot bug from a customer car at all. Your best bet is capturing some dashcam footage and contacting them by email, but even that seems to be often futile. 7/

I reported this to Tesla via their autopilot feedback email, but in 4+ days (2+ business) they did not get back to me and did not even watch the videos yet. 8/

All in all, just don't push your luck. I heard too many stories of people "teaching" their cars by triggering same failure again and again. Remember the definition of insanity, the car is not sentient! 9/

"But it's night?" In reality night is a much better time - everything is a lot higher contrast, the system would work worse during the day, but I don't want to risk trying due to more traffic. 10/

Note to the "outlaw AP" crowd: there's no putting ADAS genie back in the bottle, so you'd save a lot more lives if you actually work the educational angle in my opinion. Nobody's going to outlaw cruise control that's even more dangerous. 11/

Help people to better understand the limitations of the system so they could use it more safely. When you cry how the system should be outlawed, others tune out and stop listening, end result is bad! 12/

I wish Tesla came out with videos or slides that would demonstrate the most bad cases known just like other vendors do today in their manual, that would go a long way! But you could crowdsource this too, that would help!

FIN/