HANDSThe policy, in full, in public
Hands on the wheel. Every mile. No exceptions.
This page exists because the shortcut version of our business — a driver who lets the car do the work and stops paying attention — is both illegal in spirit and the way somebody eventually gets hurt.
Full Self-Driving is a Level 2 driver-assistance system. The person in the driver's seat is the driver, in law and in fact, at every moment, regardless of what the car is doing. Nothing on this website, in our training, or in anything we say to a passenger is allowed to blur that.
Operator rules
The nine rules our operators will get
Word for word out of the handbook we have written. If we published a friendlier version here, that would tell you something.
01 — Both hands on the wheel whenever the system is engaged
Not one hand resting. Not a knee. Both hands, in a position from which you can steer immediately. Rideshare platforms generally require a driver to stay in control of the vehicle when any driver-assistance system is on, and this is the specific thing that separates us from anyone quietly doing it already.
02 — Announce it at the start of every trip
One sentence, out loud, before moving: "I'm running Full Self-Driving — I'm still driving, I just have help." A passenger who works it out halfway through the journey has been misled, even if nobody lied.
03 — If the passenger asks you to turn it off, turn it off
Immediately, without discussion, at the same fare. You may answer questions about it afterwards if they ask. You may not talk them round.
04 — Take over for every emergency vehicle
Regardless of what the car is doing or how well it's handling it. This is policy, not a judgement about capability, and every takeover it causes gets published like any other.
05 — Report every intervention, including the ones that make you look nervous
We expect a meaningful share of takeovers to be operators acting before the car did anything wrong. Those get logged and published identically to the rest. An operator who hides one to keep their numbers clean has broken the only thing this company is built on, and it is the one thing we will end someone's employment over on a first offence.
06 — Six-hour shift cap, hard
Supervising is more tiring than driving, and vigilance falls off a cliff before people notice it happening. Six hours, with a mandatory 20-minute break at the halfway point. No overtime, no doubling up, no exceptions for a busy night.
07 — Hand-drive the last hundred feet
Pickups and drop-offs are done manually. Kerbs, car parks, people opening doors, a passenger flagging you down — this is where the software is weakest and where the consequences are at walking pace but at head height.
08 — Weather limits are not judgement calls
Heavy rain, standing water, snow covering markings, or ice: the system comes off and stays off. If conditions are bad enough that you're wondering, that is the answer. Nobody is ever questioned for driving a shift manually.
09 — Clean the cameras before every shift, and sign for it
A salted or filmed-over camera degrades the software's confidence before the car tells you anything is wrong. This looks like housekeeping and it is a safety procedure. It has its own line on the sheet with a signature next to it.
When something goes wrong
What we do, in order, and how fast.
Written down before we needed it, which is the only time it's worth writing down.
- Untested. None of the steps below has been used in service, because we have not carried anyone. This is a written procedure, not a track record.
- Immediately. Operator takes manual control and keeps it for the remainder of the trip. No re-engaging "to see if it's fine now".
- Within the hour. Reported by the operator, with the dashcam clip attached and a plain description of what happened.
- Same day. The car comes off the road if anything involved contact, a hard brake over 0.4g, or anything the operator can't confidently explain.
- Within 48 hours. Reviewed with the operator, written up, and added to the published log with its cause.
- Within a week. If it reveals a pattern, the operator handbook gets a new note about that location or condition, and every operator is told.
- Any contact with anything, at any speed
- Running a red light or a stop sign
- Any wrong-way movement
- Lane departure into oncoming traffic
- Failure to yield to an emergency vehicle
- Any camera fault or degraded-vision warning
- An intervention the operator cannot explain afterwards
The list exists so that the decision is already made before the night one of them happens, rather than being taken by whoever is on the phone at the time. Writing it now, with no cars on the road and nothing at stake, is the only moment it can be written honestly.
For passengers
Your part is small, and it's real
Belt on, the whole way
Including the back. The car can brake harder and sooner than you'd expect, because it isn't second-guessing itself. That's a feature and it is startling the first time.
Don't distract the operator
They're doing a job that looks like sitting still and isn't. Conversation is fine on a quiet road; questions about the car are welcome at a red light. Read the room.
Film it if you want
Genuinely, please do. Rear screen, the sign, the whole thing. The only rule is don't film the operator's face without asking them first.
Straight answers to the uncomfortable questions
The ones we'd rather you asked us than assumed
Are you doing this because it's cheaper for you?
No, and the arithmetic goes the wrong way. Running FSD costs a subscription per car and saves nothing, because the operator still has to be in the seat, still has to be paid, and still does a six-hour shift. On paper it is a straightforwardly worse business than normal rideshare. It's a bet that being early and being trusted is worth more later.
Is the operator paying less attention because the car is driving?
This is the sharpest question about the whole industry and the honest answer is: it's the exact risk, it's well documented, and it's why the rules cap shifts at six hours, put failure drills in training, and count the takeovers where the operator jumped early rather than hiding them. We're setting out to manage a known problem, not claiming it doesn't exist.
What if the car does something dangerous and the operator freezes?
Then a human should have been driving. That's the whole reason for the drills: training deliberately triggers disengagements and hand-backs with no warning, repeatedly, until taking over stops being a decision and becomes a reflex. Half of the forty training hours are set aside for exactly this.
Would you put your own family in one?
Yes, and they will be, from the first week. That's not evidence of anything — plenty of people are confident about things they shouldn't be — but you asked, and refusing to answer would say more.
What happens to this policy when the cars go driverless?
It gets rewritten from scratch, in public, before a single empty car carries a passenger, and the old version stays online next to it. A safety policy that quietly changes to match what a company already decided to do is worthless.