Tesla enabled a 30-day trial for me on my Model 3, of the car’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) ability.
FSD (Supervised) means the car can drive itself to almost any address with lane changes, fork selections, navigate around other vehicles and objects, and make left and right turns at traffic lights and four-way stops. The driver is still responsible for all driving and need to be able to intervene at all times, though.
Driving with FSD turned on is very impressive— and a little hair-raising at times. FSD is instantly disengaged if the driver taps the brakes or hold the steering wheel to override what the car does.
I have my hand on the steering wheel, but the car is driving itself at 23 mph towards an address on Roosevelt Way in U-District, sticking to the 25 mph speed limit and reading all the road signs and steering clear of obstacles and other cars. The car’s cameras picked up the pedestrian on the sidewalk up ahead in the shadows (shown as a speck on the left on the screen). If there were pedestrians in the cross-walk or about to enter the crosswalk, it would have stopped in good time. As I passed the white car parked up ahead on the right, a careless driver flung open his door into the street to get out of his car. My car gave him a wide berth, going into the open lane as there was no oncoming traffic. (It would have stopped or completely slowed down if there were oncoming traffic).
There are three general settings for the FSD function: Chill, Average or Assertive.
Average is probably were one wants to be. Chill might frustrate drivers behind you, or at intersections (the car will react with more caution, and wider margins of safety).
I am not sure how aggressive ‘Assertive’ is (shorter following distances, sharper braking), and I don’t particularly want to find out by driving the car with an assertive FSD attitude! 😱