SANTA BARBARA, Calif., March 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Dawn Project is issuing a safety warning to all Tesla owners: you will soon be given a free month of Tesla’s defective Full Self-Driving (FSD) software. You will be told that the car can now “drive itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention”. The Dawn Project’s safety testing has proven that is a lie, do not turn it on.
The fine print of Tesla’s owner’s manual states that buying FSD “does not make Model S autonomous and requires a fully attentive driver who is ready to take immediate action at all times.” The warnings go on to state that FSD “may do the wrong thing at the worst time” and FSD may cause your car to “suddenly swerve even when driving conditions appear normal and straight-forward”. Unless you want your car to behave like this, do not turn on FSD.
You will also be told that using this software makes you four times safer than driving manually. As proven by safety testing by The Dawn Project, that is also a lie. In fact, Tesla FSD is a worse driver than every 16-year-old with a licence, all of whom passed the DMV driver’s test, which FSD failed miserably.
According to Tesla’s own data, people who paid up to $12,000 for Tesla’s FSD software turn it off 85% of the time. If FSD really made people four times safer than driving manually, they would not turn it off almost all the time. What they learn by using FSD is that it is far less safe than driving manually! Don’t fall for Tesla’s siren song and pay them $12,000 for software that you too will turn off almost all the time.
Tesla’s sales team will also try their hardest to make you take a demonstration drive of FSD. To avoid embarrassing mishaps in the demonstrations, Tesla employees will have cherry-picked an easy route that doesn’t have any major problems. Full Self-Driving will likely perform reasonably well on that short route. Leaving you with the false impression that the software works well.
The most experienced FSD drivers, and Tesla fans, warn new users of FSD that the software “will at some point randomly try to kill you”.
Only after you have paid Tesla $12,000, will you learn about FSD’s many dangerous safety critical defects, such as running stop signs, swerving into oncoming traffic, blowing past stopped school buses and so on. Tesla quietly publishes some examples of FSD’s safety defects in the owner's manual, but you are unlikely to hear about these from the sales team. You can read them here.
Founder of The Dawn Project, Dan O’Dowd, commented: “This is a despicable tactic by Elon Musk who, in the face of declining revenues, is desperately trying to improve Tesla’s margins by foisting an unfinished self-driving car on unsuspecting safety conscious consumers.
“It is completely irresponsible to ship this unfinished beta test software to almost every Tesla in America. The disclaimers and warnings listed on Tesla’s website show that this product is unfinished and unsafe for general release. Tesla is showing a reckless disregard for public safety and lives may be lost if inexperienced drivers believe Musk’s false claims about the safety of Tesla’s self-driving software.”
