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Tesla Autopilot Data Annotators Said They Were Told to Ignore Some Road Signs

Seven current or former Tesla annotators told Business Insider they were sometimes instructed to disregard “No Turn on Red” and “No U-Turn” signs while labeling footage. The report describes an alleged training-data practice, not proof that deployed cars ignore those signs.
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Business Insider reported on September 3, 2024, that seven current or former Tesla data annotators said they were sometimes told to disregard “No Turn on Red” and “No U-Turn” signs while labeling driving footage. One former worker said the rationale was a “driver-first mentality”: training the system to drive like a human rather than like “a robot that’s just following the rules.” The account is worker testimony about an alleged labeling practice—not proof of a written, company-wide policy or that Tesla vehicles were shown to ignore those signs on public roads.

What the Tesla workers said

Grace Kay of Business Insider said she spoke with 17 current and former members of Tesla’s data-annotation teams. The report described work in Buffalo, New York; Palo Alto, California; and Draper, Utah, on short video clips, still-image tracing and satellite overlays. Annotators reviewed footage from vehicle owners and Tesla test drivers for projects associated with Autopilot and Full Self-Driving development.

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Seven of the workers told Business Insider that annotators were at times instructed to disregard “No Turn on Red” or “No U-Turn” signs. In practical terms, those signs would not be used as labels teaching the system to follow those particular restrictions in the examples being processed.

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A former worker summarized the reported reasoning this way: “It’s a driver-first mentality. I think the idea is we want to train it to drive like a human would, not a robot that’s just following the rules.”

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What “drive like a human” meant in the account

The report says teams encountered footage from different regions, where traffic rules can vary. The quoted rationale suggests that some annotators were asked to model what an ordinary driver might do instead of treating every sign as an unconditional instruction for the training label. That interpretation comes from the workers’ descriptions; Business Insider did not present it as a published Tesla policy.

Futurism’s September 10, 2024 account, which relayed an anonymous current worker’s essay to Business Insider, quoted the worker saying: “There were some times we were told to ignore ‘No Turn on Red’ or ‘No U-Turn’ signs.” The same worker said the response was generally along the lines of “Mind your business and your pay grade.” Those are attributed remarks from an unnamed employee, not independently verified findings.

What the reporting does—and does not—establish

Question What is supported What is not established
Were signs mentioned? Seven workers told Business Insider they were sometimes told to disregard “No Turn on Red” and “No U-Turn” signs during annotation. That every annotator received the instruction, or that it applied to every project or region.
Was there a formal policy? The report documents attributed worker testimony. A written, company-wide Tesla policy directing annotators to ignore traffic signs.
Did cars violate the signs? The allegation concerns how training examples were labeled. Proof that a deployed Autopilot or Full Self-Driving system ignored either sign in a controlled test or a specific crash.
What did Tesla say? Business Insider said it contacted Tesla, Elon Musk and Musk’s legal team before publication. A confirmation, denial or later company response; the report says no response arrived before it ran.

Why labeling matters, but is not the same as driving

Data annotators identify objects, road features and events in images or video so machine-learning systems can learn from them. Reuters reported that Tesla moved this work in-house after dissatisfaction with third-party labeling. In a 2021 presentation, then-Tesla AI senior director Andrej Karpathy said the company had grown to “more than a 1,000-person data labeling (organization)” working closely with engineers. That figure describes the organization at that time, not Tesla’s current staffing.

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A label can influence what a model learns from an example, but the existence of an alleged labeling instruction does not by itself reveal how a later production system will interpret signs. Software versions, other training data, mapping information, policy rules and safety checks can all affect vehicle behavior. The available reporting does not trace the alleged labels through to a particular on-road decision.

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Tesla’s driver-facing instructions still require attention

Tesla’s 2024+ Model 3 owner’s manual says Autosteer requires continuous driver supervision: “Your hands must be on the steering wheel at all times while Autosteer is engaged, and you must monitor your surroundings, the road, and other road users.” The manual also warns drivers not to rely on Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to determine an appropriate speed and recommends staying within posted limits.

Those instructions are market- and configuration-specific and do not confirm or refute the workers’ account. They do establish the responsibility Tesla places on the driver when Autosteer is engaged.

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Separate historical safety context

The sign-labeling allegation should not be merged with broader crash statistics. The Associated Press reported in 2023 that, since 2016, NHTSA had sent investigators to at least 35 crashes in which Teslas suspected of operating with a partially automated system struck parked emergency vehicles, motorcycles or crossing tractor-trailers, with 17 deaths in that described group. Those figures are AP’s account of NHTSA’s investigation and are time-bounded; they do not prove anything about the specific annotation instructions.

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A 2023 preprint by Sina Nordhoff and Joost De Winter, based on semi-structured interviews with 103 Tesla Autopilot and FSD Beta users, identified anticipated failure, unwanted behavior such as erratic steering or running red lights, and unsuitable environments as reasons users disengaged. That study concerns user experience, not verification of the road-sign allegation or a performance measurement of Tesla’s systems.

What Tesla drivers should take from the report

  • Treat every posted restriction as applicable to your drive, regardless of what an automated feature appears to do.
  • Remain attentive and ready to steer or brake while Autosteer or another driver-assistance feature is active.
  • Do not interpret a worker allegation about training data as evidence that a particular vehicle will ignore, or safely handle, a sign.
  • Check the owner’s manual and the feature’s regional availability and limitations for your specific Tesla.

The strongest conclusion supported by the reporting is narrow: some Tesla annotators said they were sometimes told to omit the force of two named turn restrictions from training examples, reportedly to encourage more human-like behavior. Whether that practice was authorized broadly, changed later, or affected deployed vehicles remains unresolved in the cited accounts.

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