Larry Magid: Tesla’s FSD no longer lets drivers set their own speed

Federal regulators are looking into Tesla s new Mad Max Full Self Driving FSD mode which ignores speed limits and reportedly may drive as fast as miles per hour while weaving between lanes I ve deliberately avoided trying Mad Max on my Model but I have tried the other four modes and am concerned about workable dangers and chances of a ticket for all but two of them I am also bothered that Tesla took away the ability for a user to specify the maximum speed of the car while in FSD mode FSD is an optional feature on Teslas It costs an extra to purchase or a month to subscribe Related Articles Magid Meta expands Instagram and AI teen safety efforts Magid Google refines its Pixel Watch Magid For AI and Zoom Pixel Pro leaves iPhone behind Magid My first two weeks with the iPhone Pro Magid Breathing new life into old batteries Can enhance safety if used correctly FSD has long been the subject of concerns by regulators and safety advocates and until now I ve defended it because when used cautiously it can enhance safety When using FSD I invariably keep my eyes on the road my hands on or near the steering wheel and one foot ready to hit the brakes if necessary I have only two eyes but FSD has access to seven or more cameras on all sides of the conveyance and knows for example if a car is about to pass me when I m about to make a lane change My eyes and judgment along with its cameras and algorithms add up to a safer experience as long as I pay attention and act if necessary There are also times when it sees things I can t such as when the sun is in my eyes I wish Tesla used lidar and radar sensors which can sense obstacles even in zero visibility but Tesla CEO Elon Musk thinks that cameras are sufficient I and a lot of experts disagree but for the the bulk part cameras do a good job as long as there is sufficient visibility and as long as the driver remains attentive Users can change mode but not maximum speed With the newest version of FSD Tesla has changed the function of the right scroll wheel from adjusting maximum speed to setting one of five modes Sloth Chill Standard Hurry and Mad Max Each of these modes has its own driving characteristics including speed and lane changing Sloth and Mad Max are new Chill Standard and Hurry were introduced in a previous update My car of late got an over-the-air update to version which is what I ve had the opportunity to test Took away safety feature My biggest concern with the newest update is that they took away the ability to set a maximum speed With version you could use the scroll wheel to adjust your speed up or down so that you could go above or below the speed limit just as you can with conventional driving Now your speed depends entirely on the mode you choose and the only mode that stays within the speed limit is Sloth a term that strikes me as derogatory as if obeying the speed limit is sloth-like Even Chill is likely to take you above the limit albeit by just a couple of miles per hour But when I put my car on Standard a word that implies the recommended setting for typical usage the car exceeds the speed limit by enough to trigger a ticket Hurry and Mad Max are even faster And there are no longer means for you to set your own speed other than turning off FSD and driving manually Speeding through school zone I tested Standard mode on city streets and the freeway and uncovered that it would go between and miles per hour above the speed limit including in a school zone As an experiment I drove by a school during school hours making sure there were no children or police present I set it for Standard and it passed the school at MPH even though the car s screen indicated the speed limit was MPH Had there been children present they would have been in danger and even though police can use discretion when enforcing speed limits I suspect largest part would have pulled me over To be clear this is the only time I have ever knowingly exceeded a school-zone speed limit and I promise never to do so again Image shows the car knew the speed limit was MPH but still went MPH in school zone On the freeway Standard mode cruises at about MPH in a MPH zone That s not an unusually high speed for freeway driving but it can get you a ticket and several people are not content at that speed It seems to me that Standard should be the speed limit and there should inevitably be a way to adjust it downward if that s what you prefer Hurry mode is designed to go even faster When I tried it on an open stretch of freeway it ignored the MPH speed limit and sped up to That s not strange on our freeways but it s faster than I like to drive and definitely a ticket magnet I didn t dare try Mad Max To be fair FSD will automatically adjust the speed downward if conditions require it such as when traffic is moving slower or on windy roads and of syllabus you can perpetually change modes or disable FSD only by touching the brake pedal or turning it off Tesla calls it a feature not a bug A year ago Phil Duan a principal system engineer at Tesla AI tweeted Set speed is a legacy concept from cruise control where a user sets a speed target and the car tries to match it In the world of FSD almost all user inputs are considered errors The user totally specifies a destination and a driving style chill standard hurry and FSD will just do the right thing including driving at the majority of appropriate speed In recent months Duan tweeted Turns out max speed was still too complicated so we deleted it altogether The best part is no part I disagree October Tweet from Phil Duon We re not there yet I get where Tesla is coming from It s trying to develop fully autonomous vehicles that can operate without a driver But we re not there yet Google whose parent company owns Waymo has been evolving and testing autonomous vehicles since and Waymo only operates in areas where they have been mapped You can catch a Waymo in San Francisco and in Mountain View but you can t ride one between the cities because they haven t been fully tested on that road Tesla FSD can drive anywhere including freeways alleys parking lots and other areas that have not been vetted or mapped I m OK with that as long as the driver has control but I m not OK with taking away the driver s ability to adjust the speed of the car that they despite using FSD are driving I ll continue to use FSD but the greater part of the time I ll be in Sloth or maybe Chill mode Certain people call that granny mode but as a latest grandfather that s OK with me Related Articles Californians economic hopes drop since Trump poll Joby collaborates with Nvidia to accelerate next-era autonomous flight Disneyland lays off about salaried employees General Motors to lay off more than employees across states Research finds EVs rapidly overcome their energy-intensive build to be cleaner than gas cars Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist Contact him at larry larrymagid com