Tesla is so, so close to developing full self-driving for its vehicles. In fact, according to Elon Musk, the cars will have the option to fully drive themselves by 2018!


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Wait a minute…


Yeah, if that six-year-old estimate wasn’t enough of a clue, getting a car to drive by itself is really, really hard, especially if you stubbornly refuse to use LIDAR sensors to do so. While convincing a car to stop, go and turn is *relatively* easy, all things considered, actually preparing it for the road is an exceedingly difficult task.


In the past, we’ve seen so-called “self-driving” cars be fooled by people wearing stop sign shirts, traffic cones being placed onto their hoods, and… pigeons. Yes, we really are living in the future we always dreamed of!


This is, understandably, a problem for a car company that wants to tell its buyers that they have a full self-driving car. But instead of “not telling people their car has full self-driving,” Tesla has opted to fix this problem by changing the meaning of the phrase “full self-driving” — or, erm, “supervised full self-driving” — to something else entirely.


You thought that a “full self-driving” car was supposed to drive itself fully? No, you idiot — you’re supposed to constantly monitor it and intervene every few miles or so. In fact, if you don’t, this could happen:




According to a post on Tesla Motors Club, a user was utilizing full self-driving when his car went barrelling toward a moving train (again).


“I have owned my Tesla for less than a year, and within the last six months, it has twice attempted to drive directly into a passing train while in FSD mode,” the user writes.


This time, he managed to capture the accident with his car’s built-in cameras, which shows him approaching a train on a foggy day, then jerking off to the side when he realizes that the car isn’t going to stop for him. At least the cameras worked!



Of course, this post resulted in the normal fanboys telling the driver that he should have been more attentive and that Tesla wasn’t at fault for the accident. While both of these things might be technically true, I can forgive a guy for thinking that a “full self-driving” car would be able to stop for a goddamn train.


Note to Tesla: If your car can’t stop for a train, maybe it’s time to reconsider how you’re doing the whole “full self-driving” thing.