It is no secret that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta is still very much a work in progress and has a long way to go before coming close to being completely safe and reliable. Now, a video recently shared to Twitter shows just how many improvements still need to be made to the system.
This clip was published by Tesla fan account ‘Whole Mars Catalog’ on Twitter and was filmed from inside either a Tesla Model 3 or Model Y in San Francisco. In the video, a woman can be seen entering a crosswalk from the left side approximately 60-80 feet ahead of the Tesla. Immediately, the car’s onboard systems recognize the pedestrian and she appears on the infotainment screen.
Read: Tesla To Roll Out Free One-Month Full Self-Driving Trial Once It’s “Super Smooth”
However, rather than stopping for the pedestrian, the car drives right through the crosswalk and comes within just a couple of feet of hitting the woman. What’s particularly staggering about this close call is that the Twitter page that shared the post proceeds to praise the system for how it responded. Indeed, the page has made dozens of replies on the post, defending the system for how it behaved, claiming that in big cities like San Francisco, it is common for motorists to drive like this.
“One of the most bullish / exciting things I’ve seen on Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta 11.4.1,” the page writes. “It detected the pedestrian, but rather than slamming on the brakes it just proceeded through like a human would knowing there was enough time to do so.”
I, for one, would not want any car, autonomous or not, to disregard a pedestrian crossing and blast through it.
A look into Californian law reveals that what the Tesla did in this case is illegal in the state and had there been a police officer nearby, the car’s owner could have been ticketed. Indeed, California’s vehicle code clearly states that “the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection.”
It appears as though the Tesla’s behavior in this video reflects one of the most recent updates made to the beta.