6B Miles Driven

https://www.tesla.com/fsd/safety

by mensetmanusman • 8 months ago

43 92 8 months ago

silexia• 8 months ago

Pretty amazing to have driven six billion miles with 7x less major accidents. How many lives have been saved?

amluto2• 8 months ago

Tesla appears to have an impressive history of automatically disengaging FSD immediately before a collision, and this page is quite light on details of what they’re comparing to what, so I would take it with a large grain of salt.

jfoster• 8 months ago

For how many seconds after FSD is disengaged do accidents still get attributed to FSD?

DarmokJalad17016• 8 months ago

and this page is quite light on details of what they’re comparing to what

In the page:

"If FSD (Supervised) was active at any point within five seconds leading up to a collision event, Tesla considers the collision to have occurred with FSD (Supervised) engaged for purposes of calculating collision rates for the Vehicle Safety Report."

They are pretty open about how the stats are reported.

sixQuarks• 8 months ago

True, we need to see the details of how they compute all this data. I do remember reading that they include crash data up to like a minute after FSD has been disengaged so these types of crashes should be included.

Nevertheless, the latest version of FSD I can certainly believe is seven times less likely to get into an accident than the average driver. I experienced it daily.

stldev• 8 months ago

Are they saving lives? The latest NHTSA FARS analysis I saw (iSeeCars, report is through 2022) shows Tesla at 5.6 fatalities per billion miles vs the 2.8 average.

cedws• 8 months ago

Voyager 1 is 15B+ miles away. Kind of mind blowing.

vkou• 8 months ago

Your mind will be really blown when you consider how far all people in the world walk in a week.

armen03• 8 months ago

It would be more meaningful if we could see the data controlled for all the factors auto insurance is priced on (driver age, zip code, credit score, vehicle age, etc.)

Does Tesla offer massively lower insurance premiums for drivers that do the majority of their driving with FSD?

josephcsible8• 8 months ago

Does Tesla offer massively lower insurance premiums for drivers that do the majority of their driving with FSD?

Yes: https://www.tesla.com/support/insurance/fsd-discount

armen03• 8 months ago

The discount is "up to 10%". I would call that a modest discount.

DarmokJalad17016• 8 months ago

I use it every single day and it is amazing! I have had my car for 6+ years now and it has only gotten better. Starting with "Navigate on Autopilot" when I originally got the car in 2019 which was pretty janky, it has only gotten better and better (with the rare regression in some cases).

As of the last year or so, I don't even have to touch the steering wheel anymore!

Keyframe• 8 months ago

I don't even have to touch the steering wheel anymore!

Is that legal where you live?

hgomersall• 8 months ago

Even if it's legal, it's pretty stupid.

Workaccount27• 8 months ago

On ford and I believe Chevy's systems you can let go of the wheel, however their systems only work on pre-mapped roads, and those roads are 99% interstates and highways.

DarmokJalad17016• 8 months ago

It is legal. I still have to pay attention to the road. There is attention monitoring using the in-cabin camera which falls back to steering wheel torque detection if the cabin illumination is too low.

tomrod2• 8 months ago

Yeah, I'll be honest, that sounds awful. I like public transit and I like driving myself. Hybridizing with me in the drivers seat but not touching the wheel sounds annoying and tiresome.

doph2• 8 months ago

I share this opinion. I've used FSD quite a bit during the free trial periods and each time come away with the sense that it's like driving with a newly licensed teenager at the wheel. If I have to be as alert and ready to avoid an accident as when I'm in command of the car, then this offers no improvement to the experience, just an added layer of stress trying to anticipate the actions of yet another actor in the environment.

DarmokJalad17016• 8 months ago

My experience has been different. I find that not needing to have hyper-focus for extended periods of time with constant micro-adjustments has a big effect on fatigue - especially on long trips. Not needing to touch the wheel while using gaze-detection for attention tracking just reduces the annoyance IMO.

I find it very similar to operating an airplane with a reliable autopilot. The GFC-700 is super good at what it does. But it is still on me to monitor what it is doing, while at the same time significantly reducing my workload.

303uru• 8 months ago

What kind of setting do you live in? I live in the outskirts of Denver (Cherry Creek) and commute downtown and I have to intervene all the time.

doph2• 8 months ago

I'm in Los Angeles, which can be a challenging place to drive. Each time they give me a free trial of FSD for a month, I enable it and test it with excitement and optimism. Each time I only use it for a day or two before it does something dangerous enough to scare me.

DarmokJalad17016• 8 months ago

Los Angeles suburb - my commute is either highways or city streets depending on the traffic. It works really well here.

amluto2• 8 months ago

I make a point of test driving an FSD car ever year or two, in the Bay Area. A few years ago it could go far less than one block along a calm residential street before trying to hit a trash bin or parked car, and I gave it quite a few chances.

The time after that (three years ago?) it really could not deal with traffic control features in intersections.

Last year it drove itself happily along the Tesla shop’s recommended route, went several miles including freeway driving, flawlessly. And then, on the way back, it tried to get back on the freeway by turning left from a lane that was clearly and unambiguously not the left turn lane, with a green light (but not a left arrow), and would have gotten T-boned by an oncoming car if I had not taken over.

So I rank it as “not ready”.

Also, the mere existence of Mad Max mode makes it very hard to respect FSD.

ajross4• 8 months ago

Ditto. The volume of knee-jerk hatred these posts engender here really just fails in the face of the capabilities of the actual system.

Like, it's OK to shout and scream about LIDAR and supervision and disengagement and all. But... it still drives itself! Really well.

Workaccount27• 8 months ago

The problem is that if it drives well for 30,000 miles (unsupervised) on residential roads before steam rolling little billy on his bike, you will get a deluge of people who swear the system is excellent.

But when you incorporate that tech into a fleet doing 100k residential miles a week with no supervisor, your mowing down 12 kids a month.

para_parolu• 8 months ago

It is a miracle consumer technology but it does mistakes. I have 40k miles in last 2 years mostly using fsd (since v13). And my anecdotal experience is that it drives itself well until it doesn’t. So far I was lucky enough to pay attention when it was critical. Which is hard to do because car doing good most of the time.

xnx3• 8 months ago

I don't even have to touch the steering wheel anymore!

What's the usefulness of this if you still have to pay attention at all times?

jiriro• 8 months ago

The level of engagement during the FSD (I only oversee the FSD) is about 10% of the engagement during “I drive”.

Nobody can be told what FSD is. You have to see it for yourself.

efficax• 8 months ago

Given how famously the tesla switches self driving off moments before an accident, these statistics are impossible to trust (but also because musk is famously a liar)

josephcsible8• 8 months ago

From the article:

If FSD (Supervised) was active at any point within five seconds leading up to a collision event, Tesla considers the collision to have occurred with FSD (Supervised) engaged for purposes of calculating collision rates for the Vehicle Safety Report.

cma4• 8 months ago

If it takes you off the road into the grass with no traction at 80mph it could reasonably be 5 seconds before you hit a tree.

the_arun• 8 months ago

They do good marketing for sure. I would like to see same from Toyotas & Hondas of the world.

xnx3• 8 months ago

Good progress, but important to keep in mind that the number of unsupervised miles is zero.

cma4• 8 months ago

I think they made one delivery they claimed was unsupervised. It might have had lead cars and chase cars like early Waymo, and a custom build with HD mapping, I'm not sure.

xnx3• 8 months ago

Yes, and likely also a live teleoperator ready to "grab the wheel".

kristofferR3• 8 months ago

So Tesla is charging $8000 to activate full safety software features in their vehicles?

How is this not way more controversial than having to pay extra to activate features like heated steering wheels in other brands?

josephcsible8• 8 months ago

No, only FSD is $8000. All of the safety features are free in every Tesla.

kristofferR3• 8 months ago

Didn't you read the link? According to Tesla FSD is a safety feature

boarsofcanada• 8 months ago

“Free” in what sense? After paying for a luxury product at premium prices, you’re getting exactly what you’re paying for, right?

cma4• 8 months ago

It is supposed to include hardware upgrades too. Chevy and others upcharge for semi autonomous safety features too, but I'm not sure to what extent that is pure software or added hardware.

Workaccount27• 8 months ago

You won't catch me defending Tesla often, but at least they actually do regular software updates and committed to needed hardware updates.

Ford and Chevy otoh are doing exactly the self sabotaging greedy bullshit you expect. Chevy already told previous gen super cruise owners that they are no longer getting updates or more mapped areas, and ford just segregated their line into before and after 2025. 2025 cars getting the latest bluecruise version, earlier cars don't have the hardware (but you still need to pay annualy for that deprecated older version!)

Ford also has never exteneded the mapped area in 4 years, and releases minor updates maybe once a year, where you will wait another 8 months to get the OTA.

All while having the nerve to charge $500/yr.

brettgriffin2• 8 months ago

So Tesla is charging $8000 to activate full safety software features in their vehicles?

I think you're being obtuse, but to be clear, many car manufacturers offer trims don't include features that would qualify making the car 'safer' - blind spot detection, back up cameras (I think these are legally required now but were a premium feature for over a decade), parking assistance, crash detection, etc.

I have a Tesla and use FSD every day, and while it is a safety feature, it is _the_ pinnacle 'luxury' feature that a car can have today and they honestly do not charge enough for it.

kristofferR3• 8 months ago

Well, I think that is also morally reprehensible in all other cases where it's also a matter of activating software safety features.

Most of the things you mentioned aren't software locked behind a paywall, hopefully, you don't swipe your credit card and get those features added via OTA in minutes. If your car doesn't have back seat airbags it's hopefully not because you haven't paid for the back seat airbag in-app purchase.

rconti6• 8 months ago

I have a 2018 Model 3 with basic autopilot. I have an FSD question. Does FSD have different driving behaviors from basic autopilot? I'm not saying "capabilities"; obviously it has more capabilities, but I mean the actual driving choices.

I get that FSD (maybe) has/requires better hardware than my car. But what I hate about autopilot is all around basic driving:

* Lane centering. It's extremely aggressive about lane centering, if you're in the right lane and an onramp joins from the right, the car aggressively drives to the right as soon as it perceives that the lane is wider.

* Throttle/brake behavior. It waits too long to brake (despite having radar in my car, which can supposedly "see" more than one car ahead), and when it does apply the brakes it doesn't do so smoothly. It tips in somewhat aggressively, and you can feel the discrete steps in brake force application change. Ditto for acceleration when the traffic in front of me moves.

There's no reason to think that any of this has anything to do with compute power, it all seems to be programming decisions that have been made for whatever reasons, so I can't see why FSD would be different.

And yet, if FSD drives like this, I don't get how anyone can think it's good? On the other hand, I've also heard people say they think autopilot is good, which it's clearly not, so it makes me judge their driving skill rather than the different models. But perhaps there's some matrix of hardware revisions and software/decision models out there that I'm unaware of, that explains differences in driving behavior, if they exist?

josephcsible8• 8 months ago

FSD doesn't drive like that. It's a completely different software stack, not just Autopilot with extra capabilities.

rconti6• 8 months ago

It strikes me as incredibly weird to maintain two separate stacks, especially because FSD was "available" when I bought my car. In retrospect, though, I guess it wasn't actually available to use, just for purchase.

So I suppose they had a parallel development process for FSD while building autopilot features?

But since there is a hardware support overlap, it seems like at some point you'd migrate autopilot cars to the FSD software stack, with limitations added in via feature flags.

cogman102• 8 months ago

All behaviors I've observed with FSD in my 2018 model 3.

It's possible v14 is better. v12 was certainly better than v11 in all those regards. But there are still issues with the car making dumb lane choices in v12.

mschulkind• 8 months ago

Basic autopilot is unrelated to FSD these days. Every aspect is improved.

Isn't there a trial you can try?

cogman102• 8 months ago

A 2018 vehicle is 2 major version behind on the FSD it can use. Tesla is on v14 and 2018 vehicles are stuck on v12.

There's been rumors of a v14 lite coming out because tesla REALLY doesn't want to deal with the fact that they promised the 2018s could be fully autonomous.

rconti6• 8 months ago

Honestly, I just dismiss all of the promos they throw at me.

Just yesterday I got an ad in the app "refer a friend and try FSD (supervised), and get $15!"

So I opened up the app just now and I suppose I got my answer that proves my initial premise was incorrect -- I need a hardware upgrade for FSD. Womp womp.

(That said, it still seems like the lane centering and brake/throttle behavior should have been easily fixed without a FSD hardware upgrade).

Workaccount27• 8 months ago

Interventions Elon, interventions.

Tesla really trying to engineer good will, and unsurprisingly only using their own data, which paves over things like "driver intervention prevented FSD from crashing in this instance" or "FSD disengaged 2s before crash, therefore driver error".

Rather than play statistics games with self-reported dressed up supervised driving data to try and trick people into rolling the mortality dice with a robotaxi, just let the cars drive around empty. But he can't do that, because these cars are not FSD.

Even worse, the government could easily mandate LIDAR for autonomous cars, and that would basically kill Tesla overnight.

kentonv2• 8 months ago

How do you meaningfully count interventions, though?

I intervene on FSD all the time, but only due to differences of opinion, like I want to take a different route, or I think it's being too cautious, or I want to change lanes earlier / later than it decided to. In a year of use I can't remember a time when I intervened to prevent an accident.

So if you just looked at number of interventions in my data, it doesn't really tell you anything except that I'm too much of a control freak to just let it do its thing...

Workaccount27• 8 months ago

Tesla has the data from Austin, they closely track when the supervisor pulls the e-stop. But that data, the most critical data, is unsurprisingly absent here.

The dude has got six weeks to get those supervisors out of the car, and he isn't even giving the most critical data around them. Not a good sign.

Elon will probably find a near closed loop around an empty development in Austin, put two robotaxis there without a driver, and let people do a loop. Tesla contractors will walk the area an stop people from crossing when a robotaxi is near. Then he will proclaim there are driverless taxis in Austin and that they will expand to the rest of the US by mid 2026, and then talk about how actually optimus robots in 2027 are the real thing to focus on.

nixass• 8 months ago

And how many miles have other manufacturers done with their own advanced adaptive cruise control systems?

jeffbee2• 8 months ago

If we take this at face value then the only remaining explanation for why the insurance industry reports that Tesla drivers have more accidents than drivers of any other brand is that Tesla drivers are a self-selected group of extremely bad drivers, which is itself notable.

iaw2• 8 months ago

7x fewer major and minor collisions!!!!*

* Compared to the estimated U.S. average.

They have a huge store of data on accidents in teslas per mile driven. Why don't they compare their actual data on accidents? Well, they would, but it probably is worse with FSD.

jeffbee2• 8 months ago

For the claims they are making the only peer is Waymo.

If they want to put themselves in a peer group that only has driver assistance systems, then the comparison should be to other similarly-priced and new vehicles, no U.S. average 12-year-old Corollas.

Anyway what is most amusing about this promotional material is that from the very first frame it inadvertently highlights how much worse it is than Waymo. The "Avoiding T-bones" scenario only seems like the car came out of nowhere because Tesla's camera system is so limited. Waymo would have seen it coming a mile away.

rconti6• 8 months ago

I think the parent is suggesting that they could compare the FSD accident rate to human-driven Teslas that they also have data on.

jhot• 8 months ago

But how many of those miles are spent hanging out in the left lane of a highway while other drivers, having to pass on the right, send death stares to the person in the passenger seat?

kentonv2• 8 months ago

In my experience FSD doesn't like staying in the left lane. It'll use it to pass but then gets out of it as soon as it can. Often too soon as it just has to shift left again to pass the next car...

prmoustache• 8 months ago

Marketing page with data from the brand. Conclusion: those numbers aren't worth anything, unless they come from independant organism they are just advertising and no more believable than old cigarettes ads.

paxys• 8 months ago

Tesla Autopilot/FSD is by all accounts an impressive piece of tech, and the stats about accident prevention are pretty convincing. The problem IMO is that Tesla & Musk have muddled the conversation so much over the years and made so many promises that it is impossible for the average consumer to know what is or isn't real at this point.

Do I need to have my hands on the steering wheel or is the car actually self driving? Can my Tesla drop me off where I need to be and go park itself? And then can I summon it when I'm done? Can I turn my Tesla into a taxi that picks up other people and earns me money? Is it even possible for a Tesla to drive itself unsupervised?

All of these have been promised over and over again for the past decade, and at this point it is impossible for anyone to set the right expectations for themselves.

josephcsible8• 8 months ago

Those questions all have very clear answers.

Do I need to have my hands on the steering wheel or is the car actually self driving?

You don't need to have your hands on the steering wheel, but you do need to be paying attention to the road.

Can my Tesla drop me off where I need to be and go park itself?

Not yet.

And then can I summon it when I'm done?

Yes.

Can I turn my Tesla into a taxi that picks up other people and earns me money?

Not yet.

Is it even possible for a Tesla to drive itself unsupervised?

They can (e.g., https://youtu.be/BO1XXRwp3mc), but it's not enabled for consumers yet.

pragmatic• 8 months ago

Doesn't matter I and almost everyone in my circle won't touch a Tesla.

The cybertruck was a huge boondoggle and only doctors and true beleivers bought them but over time I don't see them in the parking lot when I see the doctors in the building hmmm.

Also Elon "skipping around like a dipshit" (Tim Waltz) and now claiming he's worth a trillion dollars.

By his own admission his identity is entertwined with Tesla's.

He poisened the brand for me and many others.

bgwalter• 8 months ago

That is old news. Today we learn that Optimus will be a world class surgeon and "democratize" medical care, that Grok 5 has a 10% chance of achieving AGI, that Grokipedia will be named Encyclopedia Galactica and that Elon will put 100GW of solar powered "AI" satellites into orbit.

https://xcancel.com/XFreeze/status/1989453462770237688#m

two_handfuls• 8 months ago

The problem with this is the source. Tesla lies constantly and it has from the very first FSD demo [1, 2] if not earlier.

1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-autopilot-staged-engineer...

2: https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/21/business/tesla-nhtsa-self-dri...

verdverm2• 8 months ago

Waymo's Safety page for comparison

https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

bigtex2• 8 months ago

Don't forget he promised robotaxis in 2019:

“Next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road,” said Musk on October 21, 2019. “The fleet wakes up with an over-the-air update. That’s all it takes.”

https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil...

josephcsible8• 8 months ago

Yes, we all know that when Elon makes promises about the future, he's always late delivering on them. But this is about the capabilities of something that's already here, and those kind of claims are way more reliable.

bigtex2• 8 months ago

What makes you trust the data provided by Tesla?

6B Miles Driven

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