The way it currently behaves, FSD is a system that can’t be trusted to make the right decisions. It makes the most basic mistakes and it makes many of them.

Without FSD, you pay attention to the road and everything else is within your control. With FSD, you still need to pay attention but now there’s the additional cognitive load to monitor an unpredictable system over which you don’t have direct control. Forget about just being focused, you need to be hyper-focused, and you need to pay $99 per month or a one time fee of $12,000 for the privilege. With the limited functionality of autopilot, you hit the sweet spot: adaptive cruise control and lane centering work reliably, and you don’t need to worry about any other mischief.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to drive to Lake Tahoe by typing in the address, sit back, take a nap, or play on my phone. Until then, it’s just a fancy technology demo with little practical value.

The second traffic light has a don’t-turn-on-red sign. The light was red, the Tesla came to a full stop, and then pressed on the gas to move on while the light was still red. (According to my colleague, police often lay in wait at this location to catch violators.)