Over the past 18 months, Tesla has been working with the Dutch vehicle approval organization, RDW, to get approval for its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) semi-autonomous driving system.
After a long consultation period, which included covering almost one million miles with FSD (Supervised) active and offering ride-along trials with 13,000 people in numerous European countries, the RDW deemed the technology safe to be given the green light.
Tesla’s controversial CEO, Elon Musk, has long-promised to introduce the partially autonomous cruise control system to other markets outside of the US, where it has been on sale for years. But the company has regularly butted up against regulatory red tape.
According to a press statement put out by Tesla to promote its European debut, the company says that when FSD (Supervised) is engaged, collisions are up to “seven-times less likely per kilometer driven compared to manual driving alone”.
However, safety campaigners, such as Dan O’Dowd of The Dawn Project, reiterates that “59 people have been killed in over 3,000 crashes involving Tesla’s self-driving software in the U.S. since 2021 alone”.
“The RDW’s decision is deeply troubling given Tesla FSD’s myriad of well-documented safety defects,” O’Dowd adds.
What’s more, the company’s Robotaxis, which use a similar hardware suite that relies on the vehicle’s external cameras and artificial intelligence to navigate the world, as opposed to a plethora of radar and Lidar sensors like rivals, have made the headlines because data suggests they crash four times more often than the average human driver, according to Fortune. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox
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In a bid to bolster its safety credentials, Tesla has made a number of changes to its software for the version that will go on sale in the Netherlands.
Not a Tesla App reported that those customers that had first-hand ride-along experience with Euro-spec FSD (Supervised) noticed that it differed to the technology found in the US.
Dutch owners will have to pass a mandatory safety quiz before FSD activates, for example, while the ‘Sloth’ to ‘Mad Max’ speed profiles in the US version have been ditched in favor of more straightforward ‘Max Speed’ setting in the Netherlands.
Analysis: Europe will be watching closely
While it is easy to think that the recent ruling in the Netherlands will automatically open the door for FSD (Supervised) to be used in the rest of Europe, it is highly likely that many other markets will continue to exercise caution.
Even RDW, the organization that gave the green-light to FSD (Supervised|) in the Netherlands, says that the system is not “self-driving,” adding that the “driver remains responsible and must always remain in control.”
This confusion with messaging used to promote the technology’s capabilities has caused plenty of problems in the US, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launching an investigation into the safety of the technology.
Recently, it escalated its probe to “Engineering Analysis”, which it says will evaluate the system’s ability to operate in reduced roadway visibility.
All the while, Elon Musk continues to promote the fact that every iteration of the FSD software will “far exceed human levels of safety" and that users will soon be able to text and drive, when realistically, it’s simply a Level 2 semi-autonomous cruise control system that is also offered by the likes of Ford and BMW.
This is a terrible fucking idea.
People will get killed, and brown envelopes full of crypto keys will be slid under tables to politicians.
Full Self-Driving
(Supervised)
semi-autonomous
partially autonomous
Bake half a cake. Call it Full Whole Cake. Mention in the description that the cake is only semi-whole. There you go. You’ve just become a genius innovator.
I can’t think of many more capitalist things than selling something and marketing it as something else entirely.
Can we stop calling a single country in Europe “Europe”? Europe isn’t like the US. It consists of different countries with different laws and regulations.
The trouble is: if only one European country green-lights these systems, they can
kill peopledrive anywhere within the Schengen area. You’ll have then on the roads, even outside NL.Would it even be legal to turn on the system outside the Netherlands?
Also it can set a prejudice that can and will be used elsewhere within eu for fast-tracking
It’s all Yurrup to Americans.
No otherwise the poor US has to learn where things are
Last time I checked you have to have car insurance in Holland, car insurers will quickly make this unaffordable for drivers if its as bad as we know it has been as the insurers simply will not want to keep paying out large settlements.
How can they sell it as “full self driving” if it’s supervised?
It’s FSD when they sell it to morons, it’s supervised when the car kills someone and Tesla avoids liability.
It means it’s your fault when it accelerates in a red light because there was a green balloon in the vicinity.
Schwarze Schrift auf gelbem Grund - halte Abstand, bleib gesund.
Aaah! We are going to see so many of them in the tram ditches <3
I was baited by the mention of this famous country Europe, but was disappointed because “It is only legal in the Netherlands, but more regions could follow”.
Multiple things are legal in the Netherlands, and most European regions did not follow.
The trouble is: if only one European country green-lights these systems, they can
kill peopledrive anywhere within the Schengen area. You’ll have then on the roads, even outside NL.And it almost makes sense for the Netherlands. Almost. They have amazing infrastructure. Their world class cycling lanes are pretty much disconnected from roads for the most part and even their highways are very decently lit at night. Then again, allowing Teslas to self drive isn’t the kind of mindset that got them there in the first place and I won’t be surprised when Teslas still fail under these stellar conditions.
It rains in Netherlands. That alone will kill some with Musk’s bullshit tech.
Teslas should be banned on headlight output alone
Teslas are the only car that have blinded me with their rear lights.
definitely those, but many other manufacturers blind me with brake lights now too. I have to stop excessively far back at red lights sometimes because the person in front is riding the brakes
They have matrix headlights which are allowed in the EU, its probably not a problem there on the newer cars equipped with them.
The model Y is the worst car I cross at night in any car with a low seating position and even in some vans. The beam is too bright and also aimed directly at my eyes. Yellow glasses aren’t enough.
The point is these types of lights dont shine in your eyes theyblack out around your car, but they apparently dont work well enough yet based on some other replies.
matrix headlights still aren’t good enough
Why not? They literally black out the area where another car is?
It’s reactive instead of the proactive
it will simply never be good enough to work for all cyclists and pedestrians
like sure use it on the highway whatever, but people already can’t use auto high beam in appropriate settings (look at all the people using it in cities)
Even being reactive it should be able to eventually work at least for other cars.
You dont need to react right away if the car is a certain distance away, which gives it time to work and your car to see their lights. Someone else mentioned curves and crests, so they could somehow do it off of illuminated light before seeing it, or simply blacking out that immediate area in advance (becoming proactive)? Like as you get close enough to the crest, always keep the crest oncoming side blacked out.
But I do imagine cyclists and pedestrians will be harder to not initially light up due to no lights, or much lower power lights making them harder to see.
But ya, from all these replies, they apparently dont work as well in general as advertised.
I look forward to when all cars with led lights have matrix headlights that work properly. I often feel as they blind you first before turning down, leaving my nightvision impacted.
bingo
and here’s the thing - they will never be able to work “properly”, it will always be reactive. and more dangerous road conditions (curves, hills, etc) only make it worse in a scenario where the effect greatly increases danger.
it’s for highway driving and that’s it
I nearly biked into a pothole once because of some asshole with LED headlights coming towards me. it was a big enough pothole I would likely have fallen and been run over by the suv right behind me.
Oh dang. Well if that’s the case, hopefully they can keep improving them. It’s a great solution to a real problem, even if we’re not talking about headlights that are too bright in general, since high beams will always be an issue.
That never works as advertised with a small curve on the road, or even when the teslas are 2 meters behind your sedan or coupe’s bumper. It’s not exclusive to teslas either, there are just too many variables.
They also don’t work for cross traffic or more importantly, crests.
Dang. We don’t have them here, so I just hear about how they should work. Sounds like they still have a ways to go in general.
Europe isn’t a country yet - sadly.
Regions.
Disqusting move from my neighbors
deleted by creator
facepalm
The one good thing in this is that the car remains the responsibility of the person driving it. That won’t keep everybody safe, but at least nobody will get away with saying they got a faulty/imperfect car.
It’s completely and utterly unreasonable to expect full auto drivers to be capable of being responsible. How attention works makes it impossible and is exactly the opposite of the entire value of self driving cars.
No if they say it’s full self driving it should be full self driving and Tesla should stand behind that by taking responsibility of any claims for accidents that occur while FSD is engaged.
“Your Honor, my clients joysticks were drifting. Thats why he crashed into the Winter market”
Considering the Dutch sold weapons to their invaders, before during and after the invasion, it’s unsurprising they woukd betray their own people and the rest of the EU for a bunch of money. The real surprising thing here is one would expect the Dutch of all people to know that whatever is being offered is driven by massive overvaluation due to stock market speculation, itself, a dutch invention.
"reiterates that “59 people have been killed in over 3,000 crashes involving Tesla’s self-driving software in the U.S. since 2021 alone”
more than 42,000 people were killed on the road in just the US alone, almost all by human drivers!
The real need is not perfection, it is at least as good as humans. Better than humans would be nice. Don’t be fooled by statistics, they can be manipulated to say whatever you want, and it isn’t just Tesla doing it!
Sadly even though I’m sure data exists I’ve never seen anyone independent publish anything trust worthy on how self driving compares to humans. All I’ve seen is data from someone with obvious biases. (they might be right but they still have a bias and so need independent analysis)
There are very few self driving cars on the road. There are many normal cars on the road. How many people were killed for each car?
It literally says the robotaxies crash four times as much as humans
That is a headline yes. However I have not been able to trace it down to anyone who is independent and has looked at what it really means. There are too many ways to cherry-pick numbers to make a point. I don’t want headlines, I want someone who understands traffic safety and how to work with numbers to do an in-depth analysis. This is hard work, and so far it is missing (except as done by the self driving companies and thus biased)
It’s easy to make numbers look scary yes, and it’d be better if we had more accurate numbers. The only way were going to get that though is better laws mandating their release. Even now, Tesla is allowed to redact information about crashes in their Robotaxis (which this isn’t about) which is a problem.
But lets just go by what he used on his site, which today lists 3013 crashes and 59 fatalities since 2021, but keep in mind, the FSD software was very beta until early 2024 when it finally went wide. This guy HATES Tesla, so I’m sure if there were more he’d have updated it accordingly.
Today, just over 9 billion miles have been driven on FSD since 2021.
So, 3013 crashes, over 9 billion miles is 1 crash every 2,987,056 miles, or 1 crash every 4,779,289 km.
NHSTA says 1.06 fatalities happen every 100 million miles, and the year before it was 1.16
So, 9 billion miles / 100 million miles * 1.06 = ~95.4 fatalities, and the year before would be 104.4
So Tesla has had 59, and there would have been 95.4 And while sad that there were fatalities on earlier versions of software, that isn’t the software on the road today, so they should hopefully be at a declining rate as well, but we’ll need more data to track that.
Before people used to say but Tesla’s numbers are all highway so it’s not a good comparison against the NHSTA numbers which includes city driving, and you know what, they are right about that, and it is a problem, but Tesla has finally started sharing city miles, and they’re up to 3.3 billion now, so these statistics are starting to include them and will start giving a better picture.
And I just want to stress, this is for SUPERVISED driving. Tesla’s Robotaxi’s are NOT this safe.
Human + Robot > Human OR Robot in our current state.
Edit: oh and it looks like Dan’s numbers include Autopilot, not only FSD which this is about, which is far far inferior, but that probably increases the miles driven substantially as Tesla’s reporting on FSD numbers is specifically about FSD, or would lower the crashes/fatalities in the numbers I was using. They’ve also stopped offering AP on new cars.
Edit: Updated expected fatalities to 95.4, I accidentally used 1.05 instead of 1.06 when i calculated it.
