The new Tesla Model 3 should be banned from the whole of Europe until they put the indicator stalk back. It is virtually impossible to safely and legally traverse a roundabout without it.
How do people indicate without it? Is the car supposed to automatically turn it on once it senses you leaving the lane?
It has little buttons on the wheel for left or right instead of a stalk. Problem is when you’re going through a roundabout you’re twirling the wheel around so it is almost impossible to to know where the buttons are at any given point in time. A stalk stays put, the buttons are anywhere depending on where the wheel is at. I think this video demonstrates it most clearly - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBFxbKTEWu8
Do you fully rotate the Tesla wheel though? I know with electronic steering racks it’s possible to control the car like an F1 is driven so you never need to go hand over hand to make a turn. The steering is speed sensitive and at higher speeds the wheel is less responsive. Lexus is introducing this in the US on a model. Does the Tesla not have the same?
The video you posted has a circular wheel versus the thumbnail of the post has an F1 style wheel.
The wheel in a Model 3 has a typical steering wheel motion 1 1/2 rotations or whatever either way - you have no idea where the buttons will be at any given moment especially on a roundabout where you could be rolling right, rolling left and having to signal at the same time. Even if it were steer by wire and yoke like, the buttons are still moving around. So drivers have no chance of indicating safely or as the law requires. Basically all of this nonsense so Tesla can cheap out on a stalk which is probably a $10 part.
Which is why I think they should be banned or recalled in Europe.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=QBFxbKTEWu8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
In the article it says they replaced it with force touch buttons but the driving instructors all found the buttons to be disorientating and dangerous on roundabouts whilst trying to turn the wheel. The stalk makes for a mich more fluid and less distracting method.
Tesla believe that no turn signals will be needed once they perfect self deiving cars (likely never…)
What the fuck is the point of an indicator after you’d already started the action. That light ain’t indicating any more about the driver than the fact that they bought a Tesla after 2022, and that tells you everything you need to know about them.
That’s just too late to signal…
When I drive roundabouts I keep my hands on the wheel in the same spots so in relation to my thumb, the turn signals are in the same spot?
I think if the wheel wasn’t a yoke shape, it’d be different because I might just put one hand on top, but in this case it works OK.
Since the yoke forces you to keep your hands on the same place relative to the button, presuming you’re keeping your hands on the wheel
Give it another few years and I think all Teslas will use the new steer by wire in the CT and the problem will go away anyway.
Edit: maybe few is generous, whenever the next major refreshes happen after a few years.
I am more concerned about why the Witcher 3 is featured on the car’s screen. Does it double as a PC?
Edit: Spelling
Yea, fof models X and S, they have a discrete GPU and can run steam.
I assume the GPU is intended to be used by the autopilot AI?
Imagine crashing because you set the graphics too high in your game, and it got priority on the GPU so the self driving AI process hanged. Better reboot the car before the cops show.
Nah it’s so you can get some gaming in while you’re cruise controlling home and drunk
… What?
With what OS?
I thought that was cloud streaming.
Yeah, it’s not designed with roundabouts, (i.e. road infrastructure designed with logic and common sense) in mind.
It’s not designed with any common sense in mind. They just figured they could a) cut costs and b) make the vehicle look “cleaner”, because Musk and the people who work for him are intellectually incurious morons who refuse to learn why things are designed the way they are before trying to reinvent them.
The thing about breaking the rules is that if you want to really do it well, you have to understand why those rules exist in the first place. That’s hard to do when you start from the position of just assuming that you’re smarter than everyone else.
i am not sure they even kept the cost down since they had to reintroduce the option of normal steering wheels, this just another case of Musk thinking it looks cool so it should be, but then done poorly because they don’t have the engineering expertise to do it properly like lexus did it
This is just another case of Cybertruck shit.
It was designed to cut costs and hope fanbois would think it was innovation. It’s so dangerous a change it should be banned in countries where drivers are expected to properly indicate while traversing roundabouts.
Cuz that’s the only place you want to signal intent to other drivers?
Well, in a roundabout how else are the other drives gonna know you turn right?
There are other places you signal intent. At every turn in fact
For those that don’t want to read the article:
Tesla is going with buttons on the steering wheel instead of a stick to the left of the wheel
In Norway, you have to indicate your exit in a roundabout by activating your turn signal, and he found it difficult while turning the steering wheel, which you have to do in a roundabout. A driving student would fail their test if they don’t activate their turn signal in a roundabout in Norway.
He said:
I tested the Model 3, and noticed that I lost both focus and direction in roundabouts. It’s not directly life-threatening, but you run the risk of both driving on curbs and other cars if there are two lanes.
After posting his findings in a group for driving schools, he was met with agreement by many other instructors who said that they experienced the same issue and the risk is much higher with students.
It’s like car features that have been around for 70+ years are the way they are for a reason.
Reminds me of the guy that built that sub that got crushed. There are standards in place for good reasons and ignoring them is a bad idea.
Yup, and just like the sub Tesla did multiple things that were substandard because they worked in controlled environments and even worked ok the real world for a short time before failing.
People who actually know how to signal in a roundabout are a rare breed. Dunno how it’s in other countries but the German rules actually make sense: Don’t signal when entering. There’s exactly one way to go, so why would you. Don’t signal when driving around the roundabout as that’s straight ahead (even if it’s a circle). Do signal before the exit you want to take, this is for the benefit of people waiting to enter (or maybe those behind but only on 2-lane roundabouts). As a corollary: If you signal while you enter you’re pining straight for the first exit… but honestly avoid it too many people signal wrong so it’s better to not play fast+loose.
Australian rules are (we keep left and go clockwise around roundabouts)
- If turning left, indicate left throughout the entry and exit
- If turning right, indicate right, indicate left after the exit before the one you are using
- If going straight ahead don’t indicate on entry, indicate left after the exit before the one you’re taking
I’m sure most people follow the rules, but I see a lot who indicate wrong, and the drivers of the various premium brands don’t indicate at all ever
That’s not the way I learned in France, where they make you signal left before entering and use the inner lane, only if you’re going further than halfway through the roundabout.
You signal right before entering only if you’re taking the first exit.
In any case you signal right after driving past the last exit before your own.
in the Netherlands people often do signal left while on the roundabout but that feels mostly because of cyclists who also do so.
Wtf, seriously? I’ve tried using media buttons on the steering wheel during a turn. It’s not reliable in the slightest, because it’s a moving target.
Does the non circular steering non-wheel never go past 90 degrees or something?
I once accidentally dialed 911 from my steering wheel phone buttons while pulling a turn. Surprised the shit out of me and the dispatcher didn’t sound like this was the first call of the type. This is a fucking terrible idea.
Tbf you are supposed use the signal before turning wheel
Covered in the article. In Norway you are required to signal when exiting a roundabout. It’s a fair concern.
If you are going hand-over-hand in a roundabout, you’re doing something very wrong…
That’s not the issue, imagining driving through a roundabout that curves left and having to find a button somewhere on the steering wheel, which is at an angle, in order to indicate right before turning tight in order to exit the roundabout.
A stalk will always be in the same position. The same cannot be said for buttons.
imagining driving through a roundabout that curves left and having to find a button somewhere on the steering wheel
Your don’t have to “find” anything, it’s right next to your thumb
Drivers frequently change their hand placement as they turn the wheel. You lose precision and basic ability to manipulate the wheel if you don’t.
Tesla is going with buttons on the steering wheel instead of a stick to the left of the wheel
Its even worse than that. The buttons are smooth surface (like a touch screen) with haptic feedback. These are truly a horrible idea:
If I had one of these Tesla cars I’d look into retrofitting the stalks back in.
While in the EU Teslas were already “banned”, if you want a proper cat B license, and not just a cat B(78). If you take the test in a car with automatic transmission you get a code 78 license, with which you can legally only drive automatic transmission vehicles.
Is the EU mostly manual transmissions?
In the US, seeing a manual transmission these days is somewhat rare. I used to work at a car dealership’s service department as a valet, and most of us younger guys who’d never driven a manual before had to get someone else to drive it whenever one showed up. (That happened maybe once a month or less.)
Manuel transmission used to be the norm. The last couple of times I rented a car/got a loaner at the mechanic, I was asked if an automatic would be OK. I have met people who avoid automatics altogether. Probably because they’re unsure of how to drive them. TBF the first time I test drove an automatic, the first stop I made, I was glad to be wearing my seat belt, as I was used to use left foot, push that pedal hard and then brake… My wife and I were almost climbing down from the dashboard after that.
When I said earlier that manuels used to be the norm, that’s because of the emergence of EVs and PHEVs. Our EV was our first car with no clutch.
Sooo after writing that boring drivel above, I decided to look it up on the most used second hand car platform. Turns out the about half the cars registered as pure ICEs are automatics. But then sampling the search results it’s evident that a lot of the cars on the first page, have been registered wrong, and are in fact hybrids. So I don’t have a solid figure. I’ve loitered the sales floor of my mechanic for 30mins, while my car is in for diagnosics. Looks like about 3 out of last 20 or so ICEs I’ve looked at are automatics.
I live in the UK, I’ve only ever driven manuals. I know one or two people with automatics, wouldn’t fancy having one myself though. I feel like the manual shift gives me more control.
I prefer manuals, they’re more fun to drive, but the future is inevitably automatic with EVs.
Yes Europe is mostly manual. You pay a heavy premium to get a car with automatic transmission. Anecdotally, I bought a Skoda ~5 years ago and had to pay ~20% more for automatic transmission than manual.
Had a quick look at used cars here.
https://www.ooyyo.com/france/used-cars-for-sale/c=CDA31D7114D3854F111BFB6FAA651453/
Seems very much dependent on which country you’re in. France seems 50/50, Germany a lot more Automatic, Belgium prefers manual. Been to Iceland a few times and that is mostly automatic. The UK is mostly manual.
I was even told that my insurance would be lower because manuals were harder to steal because so few people can drive’m.
I wish that was true in my city. I love driving the manual shift car but it certainly hasn’t saved us anything on car insurance. The idea of a car thief who can’t drive stick shift is so funny, needs a movie. The only benefits beyond fun and not worrying about an automatic transmission failing is some odd respect from valet guys and mechanics and old men.
At least in my country and in the middle of the EU, manuals are still more popular than automatic ones. Usually because no one really wants an electric cars (due to lack of infrastructure and high price), people just get the basic petrol cars with manual transmissions.
Nah, automatic are common.
The reasoning is, if you know how to drive manual you also know how to drive automatic, but not vice versa.
I’m an American living in Denmark. Everyone here knows how to drive them even if their current car is automatic. They are becoming more popular, though.
Of course everyone knows how to drive an automatic, there is nothing to learn if you already know how to drive a manual. You just push the pedal and the car moves.
Used to be, but the transition to mostly automatic is happening as we speak
Tesla’s reasoning for going away with a method universally used for signaling turn for decades is that it enables them to remove a physical part, the stalk, and it believes activating a turn signal will soon be unnecessary with the advent of self-driving.
Spit my drink up a bit when I read that.
Meanwhile Teslas are quickly building a reputation of being impossible to repair, so replacing an industry standard component that never breaks for a digital system is a great way to keep the title.
Leak of Tesla’s next-gen Steering wheel:
Yikes, that is incredibly dangerous. Hopefully, they get recalled to fix that issue. No turn signal stick is going to cause a lot of accidents if people are unfamiliar with the car or are spinning the steering wheel and pressing the wrong button (or no buttons, because it’s too difficult).
Can we just ban them entirely? Horrible cars.
Tesla fucking up traditional driving controls only make sense if their self-driving system is working so the driver has no need to touch the steering wheel except in rare case. How good is Tesla’s full self driving these days?
It regularly kills people. It can’t be used on a lot of road types (but people still do because Tesla makes no effort to prevent it). It’s still marketed as Full Self Driving despite the fact that Tesla has stated on the record that it is, and I quote, “Not capable of driving itself.”
They’re trying to have their cake and eat it too. Any time it benefits them, they claim that their cars are completely autonomous vehicles powered by the most advanced AI. Any time they get their wrists slapped, they claim that it’s an assistive feature like cruise control that cannot and will not ever replace the human behind the wheel.
It regularly kills people
Could you link an article saying so? I couldn’t find anything with a quick google search about people being killed by Tesla FSD
Edit to add: this fairly recent article https://insideevs.com/news/655983/tesla-full-self-driving-beta-crash-stats-revealed/ says they’re pretty safe.
Maybe search for killed while on autopilot?
That’s all the people who were asleep on the highway or driving at very high speed in town
The recent versions don’t allow either of those behaviours now, so those crashes aren’t happening anymore.Full self driving doesn’t do that
And the deaths I’m interested in are these ones being caused by FSD, not lane keeping and cruise control. Loads of brands do lane keeping and cruise control and implement it no better than Tesla
Just keep in mind that FSD is only as safe as they claim because it’s supervised.
I would hope that even a reasonably working system would be better with a human vigilantly watching it than a human driving regularly.
The system would have to be really bad to be worse than that.
No
But does FSD change the logic for the lane keeping and the speed & distance?
Aren’t one of the features “navigate on autopilot?”
It is quite different. Navigate on autopilot is lane keeping, cruise control, and automatic highway exits. FSD tries to do all driving tasks - turns at stop signs, at lights, keeping to the correct side on roads with no centre line, negotiating with oncoming traffic on narrow roads…
Yeah it adds more capabilities for sure. But if you are on a moderate to high speed road where autopilot works fine, then is the control logic any different?
Obviously there are various tours of accidents that autopilot would never get the chance to cause, like maybe turning right at an intersection and hitting a pedestrian. But do they act differently on a main road where teslas have done things like run into tractor trailers?
I don’t need to provide you with evidence that FSD has caused crashes. There’s plenty; if you can’t find it you’re not looking.
As to your point about accident statistics, that’s responding to a different point than the one I was making. I didn’t say that it kills people more often than they kill themselves (through dangerous, inattentive or reckless driving). I just said that it regularly kills people. There’s potentially some hyperbole there, you can quibble over definitions of “regularly” if you want to be a pendant, I really don’t care.
The point is that when it does go wrong, it often goes spectacularly wrong, such as this case where a Tesla plowed into a truck or this thankfully low speed example of a very confused Tesla driving into oncoming traffic.
Could a human make these errors? Absolutely. But would you, as a human, want to trust yourself to a vehicle that is capable of making these kinds of errors? Are you happy with the idea of possibly dying because the machine you’re in made one critical error? Perhaps an error that you yourself would not have made under the same circumstances?
A lot of people will answer “yes” to that, but for me personally any autopilot that requires constant supervision to make sure it doesn’t kill me is more of a negative than a positive. Even if you try to pay attention, automation blindness will inevitably kick in. And really what is even the point of self driving if you have to be paying attention? If it’s not freeing you up to focus on other things then it might as well not be there at all.
Tesla say it crashes enough to deploy an airbag about one fifth as often as human drivers (once per 3,200,000 miles versus once per 600,000)
So safer than the average driver, presumably less safe than a safe driver
Be wary of cherry picked data.
The average human driver has a car that’s five years older than the oldest model 3. This means five years more age on various safety equipment, five years more primitive collision avoidance systems, cars without stability control, etc.
The autopilot system only engages in ideal circumstances. Poor visibility, poorly marked road, bad weather, all scenarios that are high risk that autopilot wont touch that also cause a lot of human accidents.
I’m talking full self driving beta, not autopilot. FSD works on bad roads, car parks, any weather it can see in, including moderately heavy rain. It won’t work in heavy fog, but I won’t drive in that either. Autopilot has a long history of only working on highways which upped its safety, but also a history of working hands off and at any speed.
Also note that the initial beta was only open to the safest, most responsible, drivers according to Tesla data (Tesla have a lot of data on their drivers, many opt in to sharing everything in the hope of hurrying better automation) so the cars were very well supervised
I’m really hanging out for insurance data once this system is out of beta
Even with FSD, I don’t think we can be anywhere close to a comparable cohort.
To expand on the safety equipment, I wager the average driver with their 12.5 year old car also doesn’t have regen braking. So while 99% of Teslas likely have near pristine brake systems due to age and regen braking, the average driver is more likely to experience “surprise, your brakes are out!”
Also, particularly based on my time with rural folk with cars in the woods, I’m highly doubtful that no matter how aggressive FSD may be, it won’t be as daring as some dubious human operators in that “average” cohort.
Also, I’d wonder how Tesla would treat an FSD deactivation by driver intervention. If a crash is unavoidable and imminent, I’d imagine an aware driver might manage to yank the wheel in time to deactivate, but still get in an airbag deploying crash.
There’s also some potetntial slush around “accidents that activate airbags”. Different models have different sensitivies.
But all this falls second to a primary concern: never trust what amounts to marketing data from any company compared to something like NHTSA data.
Would be interesting if someone could do the legwork to manage “like for like” to tell safety due to: -General age of car in general -Regenerative braking versus standard -Stability control, collision avoidance, automatic braking and so forth -Like for like driving conditions -Data for Teslas including human operation, autopilot and FSD. Particularly if human operator, but FSD was on less than 10 seconds before impact.
“surprise, your brakes are out!”
That really doesn’t happen from wear. Brakes only surprise fail on long descents where the driver doesn’t use engine braking. If brakes fail like that you have the hand brake/e-brake
EVs of course use regen braking almost always in that situation - though they can’t when their battery is full - my car expects to arrive at the coast at 20% battery, at the top of the coastal mountain range it’s at 15%, but at the beach it has regenerated to 20%
The rest I generally agree. We need better data, especially better data from someone other than Tesla.
Full Self Driving is still in beta stage.
AI DRIVR has good content on Tesla FSD if you’re actually interested in knowing how good it is.
They say it’s beta but beta would imply that it’s at least somewhat close to ready, which it clearly isn’t even after being in “beta” for a long ass time.
No, I’m actually interested to know. Are most Tesla owners activate self driving during their daily commute? Tesla doesn’t sell their vehicle here so the only times I actually see a Tesla are in car shows.
We’ve had news stories - and a friend’s coworker too - of people sleeping on the highway portion of their commute. The friend’s coworker did it daily for months, setting an alarm when it was probably going to be ‘street’ driving time so he’d wake up and be ready.
The friend’s coworker did it daily for months
That’s both extremely stupid and irresponsible but also quite impressive on Tesla’s part.
Being able to sleep (or not paying any attention to the road) is the entire reason I would get a self driving car (assuming it’s safe to do so). But aren’t you required to keep your hands on staying wheel when engaging full self driving? And I think the car has camera to monitor driver attentiveness too. Can you really fall asleep during commute like that?
The comment about roundabouts is the same for Australia. You wait a roundabout entrance, with your indicator telling people what you intend to do on the roundabout, and that indication stays until you are ready to leave the roundabout, which you are then required to indicate left (unless you were already indicating left!).
Having moving buttons on the steering wheel is an absolutely absurd idea. Not just for indicating, anything important (I dont mean volume control for the radio, or phone answer button) should never be on a rotating object, where it can be inaccessible or “not where it should be” in a time of need (or required).
That’s a regional thing - I was very confused when I lived in QLD and that’s how people were driving. In Victoria everyone indicates the final direction before they enter the intersection (eg indicate right before entering if you’re taking 3rd exit, indicate left if you’re taking first exit).
I think that is what I said.
But on exiting we will have to indicate left. so if I’m taking the 3rd exit, I am indicating right, until just before I get to it, where I then change to left indicate to say I’m exiting. Even if you are going straight (so not indicating) you are still require to indicate left when about to exit.
Its less meaningful on a 3 or 4 road roundabout, but when the roundabout has 5 or more roads, or maybe even a double roundabout (There is one here, and its an accident hotspot!!) then indicating your leaving is very important.
Pretty sure that this road rule in a national rule, not per state. But I know that some places do not enforce the exit indication.
It’s not law in VIC iirc, it’s a common courtesy but not a requirement. Like when indicating to jump in a lane, giving the driver who let you in a wave. Or blinking your headlights when there is a copper in the direction you came from.
I found it, just to put it to bed. It is a National rule, but it is interpreted differently between states.
https://www.yingtongli.me/blog/2019/06/16/arr-roundabout-exit.html
I wished that the link was more from our government, however I followed up the National laws this posts states, and they are indeed correct. Australian Road Rule 118 says it is required (in any circumstance) but only if practical. And that seems to stem from Vic and other states with larger 3 or 4 lane roundabouts (which would suck).
The post also comments:
A casual search of internet forums reveals many confused drivers believing that this is optional, or is not a road rule, or is, indeed, a silly thing to do. From personal experience, the vast majority of drivers do not indicate left when leaving roundabouts. The law, however, is clear that a left change of direction signal must be given when leaving a roundabout, ‘if practicable’.So I’m happy to indicate left on leaving the roundabout, it doesnt bother me anyhow. But it would be a total headache for Tesla drivers, and my indicators are on my wheel and not in the right location at the time, would not constitute as “impractical” as far at the process. The car might be impractical, the the process should not have been,
Yeah if a roundabout is small - single lane, 2-3 exits, 10m or less in diameter - you can get away with doing this (indicating your final direction).
Once they get bigger - bigger diameter, multiple lanes, more exits - its safer to indicate your intention to enter and exit the roundabout.
Style over substance, and a ugly style at that. Of course lots of people are gonna love it and say it is the best thing ever.
lots of people are gonna love it and say it is the best thing ever.
Kind of funny reading this in a thread filled with a bunch of tripping over each other trying to show how they hate Tesla the most.
The Fediverse does not represent the real world. There is big anti-corporate and anti-Elon bias here. Most people just don’t give a shit.
I understand that. It’s the irony of seeing someone partaking in a circle jerker shitting on other people for circle jerking.
Does anyone remember K.I.T.T from Knight Rider in the 80’s?
Same steering wheel! Haha
But K.I.T.T. actually delivered on the full self driving part.
Hahaha yeah that’s right! Jump master.
You got games on your tesla?
Norway, where Tesla is becoming the most popular car brand
How the fuck are Norwegians affording that
Because they are rich. Also Norway has quite large government subsidies for EVs. IIRC they are exempt from the 25% VAT for example.
EVs aren’t exactly cheap, but petrol cars are even more expensive.
