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Watch Tesla FSD Try to Navigate Lombard St in San Francisco, Emphasis on "Try"

The whole Tesla FSD Beta discussion isn't going anywhere any time soon, is it? Well, with people continuing to upload videos of their quasi-self-driving shenanigans, it doesn't look like it.
Tesla Model 3 on FSD Beta attempts to navigate the Lombard Street in San Francisco 7 photos
Photo: YouTube screenshot
Tesla Model 3 on FSD Beta tries to navigate Lombard Street in San FranciscoTesla Model 3 on FSD Beta tries to navigate Lombard Street in San FranciscoTesla Model 3 on FSD Beta tries to navigate Lombard Street in San FranciscoTesla Model 3 on FSD Beta tries to navigate Lombard Street in San FranciscoTesla Model 3 on FSD Beta tries to navigate Lombard Street in San FranciscoTesla Model 3 on FSD Beta tries to navigate Lombard Street in San Francisco
We've talked about the system and, more importantly, the way it's being rolled out to be tested on public roads by amateur drivers, so there's no point in going over any of that again. And despite the consensus that it's a major improvement over the previous Autopilot, all the videos we've seen seem to suggest only one thing: it's still far from living up to its FSD (Full Self-Driving) name.

At this point, the people using it are nothing more than test labs, and that's OK. Nobody's forcing them, which means they're volunteering for the job. Hell, Tesla only selected a few owners, but we're willing to bet there are thousands left outside of the program who would even be willing to pay to get in. These would be the early adopters, the people who must be among the first to have the latest gadgets, or they feel left out.

But driving a car - or, more to the point, watching it drive itself - isn't the same as testing the all-new iPhone or the latest 8K gaming set. Mess anything up with those two, and nobody else has to suffer. Do that in a car out on the street and you might smack a parked vehicle, crash head-on into a moving one, or hit a wayward (or not) pedestrian.

The testing gang, however, continues to do its thing, and one of the most active (and visible, thanks to his YouTube channel) passive drivers has been Raj, the guy running the Tesla Raj YT channel. Since the online video streaming industry is a pretty competitive one, Raj decided to take things up a notch and follow one of the suggestions he had received: take the FSD Beta on the world's most famous twisty street, aka San Francisco's Lombard Street.

How do you think the system did? Well, in short, it failed miserably. Despite being able to spot the limits of the street - as proven by the image on the display - it somehow couldn't keep the vehicle on a correct trajectory, requiring multiple driver interventions.

However, once the street had been cleared, Raj and Arash - his partner for the day - had a different opinion about what had just happened. "It was pretty close," they said. Well, no, it wasn't. The video shows how Raj had to take control of the steering wheel starting with the first turn, so how exactly was that close?

Besides, "pretty close" can be OK in a controlled environment, but it's less than acceptable on public roads. The difference between "pretty close" and "good" might not be great in terms of inches, but in some situations, it can be in terms of someone's life. "Pretty close" is exactly the problem.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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