As the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) safety recall reported, Tesla had to remove the “rolling stops” ability of the FSD Beta program. While over 53,000 Tesla vehicles had to be recalled, the solution was possible with over-the-air updates. It was deemed by regulators that the function may result in the collision of the vehicles. Though there haven’t been any issues or situations as aggressive because of the rolling stops option, Tesla had to remove it with the safety of its users as the first prioroity.
- The recall comes as part of Tesla’s FSD Beta update. It was released in the upcoming 10.10 update. As release notes were released it was interesting how Tesla need not call over its customers to recall their vehicles. Below are the release notes for the 10.10 update.
- Smoother fork maneuvers and turn-lane selection using high fidelity trajectory primitives.
- Disabled rolling-stop functionality in all FSD Profiles. This behavior was used to allow the vehicle to roll through all-way-stop intersections, but only when several conditions were met, including vehicle speed less than 5.6 mph, no relevant objects/pedestrians/bicyclists detected, sufficient visibility and all entering roads at the intersection have speed limits below 30 mph.
- Improved generalized static object network by 4% using improved ground truth trajectories.
- Improved smoothness when stopping for crossing objects at intersections by modeling soft and hard constraints to better represent the urgency of the slowdown.
- Enabled lane changing into an oncoming lane to maneuver around static obstacles, when safe to do so.
The rolling stop feature
Earlier when the feature was made available, it was only enabled when certain conditions were met. It can be known through Tesla safety records. According to NHTSA’s report, there were no damages caused because of the feature for any vehicle. So it is relatively safer than it might seem. As Tesla cars are prone to be implied to have faulty/dangerous driver assist feature each time there is a Tesla car crash. It was eventually essential that Tesla take the required measures as instructed.
The NHTSA recall report read, “Tesla will disable the ‘rolling stop’ functionality on affected vehicles, starting with firmware release 2021.44.30.15. Firmware release 2021.44.30.15 is expected to begin deployment OTA to affected vehicles in early February 2022. The disablement will carry forward in firmware release 2021.44.30.15 and later releases. No further action is necessary from owners who install firmware release 2021.44.30.15 or a later release on their vehicles.”
Customers need not specifically be concerned about the recall as it is only a minor change and not as dangerous or faulty. Also, this does not affect the other features used by users currently from the FSD Beta program.
