Tesla driver blamed "Full Self-Driving" for speeding — the software is built to do it
A Colorado traffic stop exposed a real gap: Tesla's Level 2 system can drive over the speed limit, and Tesla just removed the setting that let owners stop it.
What happened: Police in Parker, Colorado, stopped a Tesla doing 64 mph in a 45 zone. The driver said they weren't at fault because "Full Self-Driving" was engaged and even asked for a supervisor. The department's answer was direct: driver-assist features, no matter what they're called, don't transfer legal responsibility away from the person behind the wheel. The driver still got the ticket.
Why it matters: Every consumer self-driving system on sale today, including Tesla's, is legally "Level 2": a human is driving, software is assisting. Tesla brands its version "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" and has spent years suggesting the cars can drive themselves, while its fine print says the opposite the moment something goes wrong. That mismatch is what showed up on the side of a Colorado road, and it will keep showing up as more drivers trust the name over the manual.
How it works, plainly: Older FSD versions let owners set a speed offset, a hard cap on how far over the limit the car would drive itself. In version 14, Tesla replaced that with fixed presets: Sloth, Chill, Standard, Hurry, and Mad Max, some of which are designed to exceed posted limits. Electrek's own reporter tested this and had his car accelerate to 28 km/h over the limit in "Standard" mode with his foot off the pedal. Tesla's head of AI has publicly rejected bringing back a user-set cap, calling it an unwanted "anti-pattern."
The rollout: There's no fix scheduled. Tesla says it would rather make FSD "smarter" over time than let drivers set firm limits themselves, even as a mode literally named Mad Max ships to customers. Sweden has told EU regulators it wants Tesla's FSD approval rejected until the speeding behavior is removed, putting the issue in front of regulators outside the US. Until something changes, drivers who trust the system's speed choices are the ones who'll keep paying the tickets.