Tesla’s Full Self Driving Has Now Dramatically Reduced the Number of Reasons to Intervene or Complain

7 years ago, I paid Tesla $6000 for a permanent subscription to “Full Self Driving” for my new Model 3. At the time, FSD would navigate and drive automatically on limited access highways (mostly Interstates), but that was about it.

I’m currently driving a 2026 base Model Y with FSD V14. Now, I can get into my car in my garage or a big parking lot or a Supercharger, and without touching anything, say “Hey Grok,” then verbally say “Navigate me to [nearly any business, my home, or any address].” Then, FSD will drive me automatically out of my garage or the parking lot or the Supercharger to the location requested and park my car in a parking lot or on the street (but not yet in my garage). I sit back and “supervise,” but I seldom must intervene or complain about its actions as it drives.

What are recent improvements with FSD that I have observed? FSD now reacts properly to more and more edge cases.

• A biggie: it will now handle the beginning and end of your trip most of the time.
• “Automatic Collision Evasion: It will automatically activate Full Self-Driving (FSD) to avoid imminent collisions, even if the driver has not engaged the FSD system. This feature aims to enhance safety by allowing the vehicle to take evasive actions during critical situations.” Note: the driver must have paid the $99/month fee to get FSD, and have it activated (turned on in the menu), but need not have it engaged for the trip.
• It now recognizes flashing school zone lights and slows down to 20 mph.
• It not only slows down reliably for speed bumps, but even for extreme dips (the above-street sewers) that we have in Utah. (Your car will bottom out if you don’t slow down for either.)
• I haven’t observed phantom braking for a long time. (This would be slowing down suddenly for no apparent reason.)
• It will find its way perfectly through any narrow path through a set of construction barrels that close one lane or take you across to the opposite lane.
• You can summon your car reliably to pick you up from a big parking lot if it is raining, or if you don’t walk so well.
• It pulls out, well ahead of time, passes a car, and almost always returns to the right-hand lane on a 4-lane freeway.
• If it sees someone about to cross at a crosswalk, it stops to let them cross.
• It jams on the brakes when it observes a deer beside the road that could be about to cross in front of you.
• My car recently made a radical evasive swerve to avoid a vehicle pulling out in front of me.
• It swerves to avoid debris in the road.

What’s left to do?

• Ending a trip well. It’s very good at the start of a trip, but you often have to intervene at the end of your trip (see explanations below).
• Drives into your garage.
• Let you specify an exact spot where you want to park at the end of your trip. Examples: Your paid parking spot in your condo garage; your favorite handicapped spot at Walmart.
• Pick the empty parking spot closest to your preferred door at a big box store.
• Let you input the handicapped status of your car and find a handicapped parking place at a big box store.
• Avoid handicapped parking places if you don’t have handicapped plates.
• Always find its way out of a big, complex parking situation.
• Stay in the HOV lane on a highway and only exit it when you choose to.
• Always return to the right-hand lane after passing on a 4-lane highway.
• Eliminate the 1.5 second pause after a full stop at a stop sign. Note: when pulling onto a major road from a side street with no stop sign, there is no pause. This tells me that the 1.5 second stop sign pause is an unnecessary safety choice from the programmers.
• Always find the correct lane at a stoplight (FSD will occasionally get in a turn lane when your navigation route takes you straight through the intersection). This would require that the map the navigation uses have the correct lanes marked for every traffic light in the country.
• FSD won’t back up with bikes on the back. I don’t know if this can be corrected, since the rear camera is obstructed by the bikes. The height of the rear camera is higher on my Model Y than on my former Model 3, but would need to be even higher.

My main gripe:

There is no question in my mind from personal experience: FSD is a critical safety feature that will save and has saved the lives of Tesla drivers and their passengers who have it activated (as well as other vehicles, pedestrians, bikes, etc.). However, Tesla is letting its own customers die if they haven’t paid the $99/month to activate FSD. This is Tesla choosing an income stream over the safety of its customers.

Mitigating factors:

• The new “Automatic Collision Evasion” feature means that FSD needs to be activated, but it will work even if FSD is not engaged. Activation is a menu choice. Engagement needs to be done at the start of each drive.
• “As of Q3 2026, 75% of new Tesla buyers are opting for Full Self-Driving (FSD).” This indicates a significant increase in the uptake rate for Tesla customers. Previously, the uptake rate was only 12%.

However: That still leaves at least 15% of Tesla customers that can and will be injured or killed because they don’t have a safety feature that Tesla has withheld from them. Note: even though the uptake rate for FSD is supposed to be 75%, lately, this is only for new customers. If a customer decides they no longer want or can’t afford the $99/month fee, they won’t have it any longer. It seems to me that Tesla could make the “Automatic Collision Evasion” feature available to all of their customers. I think this is a software option that could be implemented for customers without having to give them automatic driving functionality. Also, Tesla could make “FSD Engaged” the default and require the driver to turn it off if desired, rather than the other way around, which we have now.

Warning! In my opinion, Tesla customers that don’t opt in for the $99/month FSD subscription are missing a very important safety feature of their Tesla.

It appears to me that Tesla’s FSD no longer needs to be supervised on highways. Can’t Tesla get this limited Level 5 automation approved? Being able to sleep, read, text, etc. while driving on long trips would be one of the most important advantages of L5 automation.

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