White Box Autonomy

FSD does not yield to an ambulance before driver intervention

Date
Date unknown
Developer / operator
Tesla
System
FSD (Supervised)
Event type
Emergency-vehicle interaction
Outcome
Failure / challenging
Automation status
Driving automation engaged — confirmed
Curator-reviewed

Summary

With FSD (Supervised) engaged, the vehicle did not perform the yielding response the driver judged necessary while an ambulance was present in surrounding traffic, and the driver took over control.

Written by White Box Autonomy from the sources listed below.

What is observable from the evidence

  • An ambulance was present in the surrounding traffic environment.
  • FSD (Supervised) was engaged during the interaction.
  • Before driver intervention, the vehicle did not exhibit the yielding response the driver considered necessary.
  • The driver intervened and took control.
  • No collision occurred.

Automation status

Driving automation engaged — confirmed

Whether the driving-automation feature was engaged is a separate question from whether it caused the event.

System / software version

Not identified in the available sources.

Causal attribution

Undetermined

The available evidence does not establish a cause. Involvement of a driving-automation system is not the same as its being a cause.

What remains unknown

  • Whether the system detected and correctly classified the ambulance.
  • Whether emergency lights or a siren were active and clearly detectable from the evidence.
  • Whether the system recognised a requirement to yield.
  • What trajectory or behavioural prediction the system generated for the ambulance.
  • Whether the system would eventually have yielded without intervention.

Interpretation

Curator interpretation — this goes beyond what the evidence directly shows

The event is consistent with an inadequate response to an emergency vehicle while driving automation was engaged. The available evidence establishes the externally observable behaviour and the driver intervention, but does not determine whether the limitation arose from perception, classification, behavioural prediction, right-of-way reasoning or motion planning.

Sources & evidence

The sources below are the evidence. The summary and any interpretation on this page are written by White Box Autonomy and are not themselves evidence.

  1. YouTube video · White Box Autonomy

    First-person clip recorded by White Box Autonomy showing an ambulance interaction in which the driver takes over.

About this record

Review status: Curator-reviewed. What the review statuses mean.

Record last reviewed or updated: 30 August 2026.

To report an error or raise a concern about this record, contact zuduo.zheng@uq.edu.au.