The car saw the dog before I did

I’ve got 19,743 miles on this car now and about 98% of them on FSD. Day one I sat there with my hands hovering over the wheel and my foot hovering over the brake, watching every single thing it did. That wears off faster than you’d think. Now it’s just how I commute. I get in, I tell it where I’m going, and I supervise.

I expected the surprises to be mistakes. Mostly they aren’t.

I was cruising down a narrow two-lane road when the car suddenly washed off speed. Not a hard stop. But enough to throw me forward in the seat. My first thought was, what is this thing doing now.

Then I saw it. A dog, stepping over the white line onto the asphalt.

My instinct kicked in and I hit the brake and took it over myself. Which is fine, that’s what I’m sitting there for. But we sat a second after and it landed on me. The car had already seen the dog. It looked at it, worked out where it was headed, and started scrubbing off speed while my brain was still on autopilot. I didn’t beat it to anything. I got there second and grabbed the wheel.

That’s the part I keep chewing on. I’ve got thousands of miles in this seat and I’d have told you my reflexes were fine. They probably are. The car’s were better.

None of that means I get to stop watching. It’s still Level 2, I’m still the driver, and there’s plenty on this site about what it gets wrong. Parking, for one. But every so often it does something like that, and you have to sit with the fact that for about half a second the machine had better eyes than you did. It’s a strange thing to be a little grateful for and a little bugged by at the same time.