Tesla FSD makes dangerous mistake in unfamiliar territory

Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) finally made its way to Europe through the Netherlands last month as the first stop in its long-term plan to become legal throughout the European Union. But now that the tech is out in the wild, European drivers are running into some of the same issues U.S. FSD users have been dealing with.

Tesla FSD has proven popular in the Netherlands, with Tesla owners surpassing 10 million kilometers (6.2 million miles) driven using the system less than a month after its approval. But the more miles the vehicles drive semi-autonomously, the more opportunities the system has to fail. One Dutch Tesla driver experienced a scary system failure that could have been catastrophic.

X user Maximilian Bladt shared a video of his Tesla FSD “phantom braking” at a clear green light. The vehicle was traveling in the left lane of a street with dedicated lights for both lanes. Tesla FSD may have been confused by the red light in the right, because the vehicle randomly brakes despite having the green light.

Twitter is clearly Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s home turf, so there were some users who blamed the driver for the incident. One user said, “If you were supervising, that shouldn’t have come to a stop. You should have been on the accelerator immediately.”

This brings up a great point. As a Level 2 autonomous system, Tesla FSD users must remain vigilant when using the technology. It isn’t fully autonomous, so while the system is hands-free, drivers are still required to pay attention to what’s happening on the road.

But no one could have anticipated the vehicle stopping at a green light.

Tesla Full Self-Driving operating on a European road.

Photo by picture alliance on Getty Images

Social media debates Tesla FSD safety

The original poster’s thread drew comments from across the spectrum. Tesla has plenty of online fanboys ready to defend the company’s reputation at the drop of a hat. But there were also others who shared similar concerns about the technology they’ve been using.

One fellow Dutch user was extremely critical of Tesla FSD.

“After using FSD for less than two months in NL I can categorically state that FSD is decidedly unsafe and not fit for purpose. in fact, after a purported 10B miles FSD as a product is shockingly bad! Yes, I have canceled my subscription,” user @durbz911 said.

Another Tesla driver from the UK stated, “Fantom braking every time I drive, especially on the UK motorway, when it’s super dangerous to randomly brake, check the guy behind… I mean FFS why haven’t they fixed this?”

Another Dutch user had a similar problem on the same road and called out other issues the tech has with navigating the street.

“This is the stretch between De Bilt and Utrecht,” said user @JohnJanJohnson. “Same with our Tesla. Really annoying and dangerous. Also annoying that it picks up the speed limit signs (30) from the parallel road on that stretch.”

Most of the other comments criticized the driver for not supervising the system more effectively, while some called out Fiat’s semi-autonomous driving and VW’s Travel Assist as better autonomous options in the EU.

Tesla receives Dutch approval for FSD technology

Tesla FSD (Supervised) was approved for use by Dutch regulators in April after 18 months of testing and more than 1.6 million kilometers driven on EU roads.

But the European version of FSD is not the same software U.S. drivers use. The RDW’s statement confirming its approval states that the software versions and functionalities in the U.S. and Europe “are therefore not comparable one-to-one.”

Some of those differences include stricter hands-on steering-wheel requirements in Europe, more limited driving mode profiles, and stricter eye-tracking requirements, among others, according to Teslerati.

Tesla is the most popular electric vehicle maker in the Netherlands, with about 100,000 Model 3s and Model Ys combined that would be eligible for FSD software, Reuters noted.

The approval paves the way for Tesla’s ultimate goal of having the technology become legal across Europe, as the company needed at least one European Union member state to approve it before it could be tested and approved by the entire bloc.

Related: Tesla makes necessary change fans are going to hate

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