The Belgian road safety group Johanna has put Tesla’s self-driving system, FSD, to the test and found that it continuously breaks the speed limit. Worse: it lies to the driver about the ruling speed limit even though it reads it correctly.
A Tesla running Full Self-Driving broke the speed limit in 55% of the 30 kph stretches it drove around Brussels this summer. The car averaged 44 kph where the law says 30.
Offset speeding
In nearly nine in ten of those zones, the system read the sign correctly, then displayed 50 to the driver watching over it.
Another painpoint proved the bicycle streets, where Belgian law forbids cars to overtake cyclists. FSD tried anyway, repeatedly, four times in a single street in Winksele. None of the six cycle-street segments tested showed the correct 30 limit; two were driven too fast.
Johanna president Geert van Waeg navigated the route, which covered roughly 400 kilometers around Wemmel, Winksele and Zaventem, with the car set to obey every limit and one instruction: never overtake. The driver can designate these settings in the system.
Though the test is small-scale, it aligns with previous findings in Scandinavian countries, which oppose the technology’s ability to speed through the ‘offset’ setting, which lets the car run up to 40% above the legal limit in smooth traffic. They consider this an unlawful FSD feature.
Map and camera
There are a few possible explanations for the unadjusted behavior from the system. For reading the speed limit it uses both navigation map data and the camera vision. There’s a possiblity that the latter did see the sign, whilst the shown limit was based on the map. In that case, it could be a bug not necessarily present in other cars.
As for the cyclists overtaking, FSD entered Europe through The Netherlands, where this manoeuvre is allowed. Although the software should be able to adapt to national traffic rules, it is unclear whether it has adapted to this rule.
Tesla Belgium declined to engage with the specific findings, restating that FSD is approved as a level 2 system and that the driver remains responsible at all times. That sentence does a lot of work. It also means the speeding fines generated by a system Tesla charges 99 euros a month for land on the driver’s doormat.`
“Doesn’t pass driving test”
Johanna has asked Minister of Mobility Annick De Ridder, who approved the system after a short 5.000 kilometer test, to suspend the authorisation. Her cabinet says it won’t happen.
Brussels mobility minister Elke Van den Brandt is blunter: in its haste, Flanders bet on the wrong horse, and Tesla “doesn’t pass its driving test”.
To be fair to the technology, Johanna’s report praised how FSD dealt with pedestrians and cyclists courteously, yielding appropriately and behaving respectfully in interactions.
The report comes as Europe prepares to vote on whether to allow FSD driving across its member states. The decision was scheduled for the 6th of October but has been delayed to no earlier than December. The Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles will continue discussions first.
