FSD 14.3.6: One Step Forward on Birds, Two Steps Back on Turns
Tesla pushed FSD 14.3.6 recently, and my first impression is that it's a mixed bag. Highway driving still holds up, but local roads feel like a regression from 14.3.5 in ways that are genuinely frustrating to experience behind the wheel.
The Regression Problem
Turning is the obvious issue. 14.3.6 shows increased hesitancy at turns, less accuracy in execution, and jerky steering behavior on local roads. If that sounds familiar, it's because it is. The steering jerkiness pattern resembles what people were seeing in the later v13 releases, which is not a comparison anyone wants to hear. We'd moved past that.
But the one that actually bothers me most is this: the software is now sometimes overriding manual turn signal inputs. You signal a turn, the car disagrees, and it does what it wants. That's backwards. The driver is supposed to be the authority on where they want to go, not an obstacle the car works around.
The Bird Braking Fix (Finally)
There's genuinely good news in this update. The "bird braking" problem, where FSD would slam the brakes when a bird flew past the camera, appears to be fixed. If you haven't experienced bird braking, consider yourself lucky. A bird crosses your field of view doing 40 mph and the car treats it like a stopped vehicle. It's not subtle.
Getting rid of that is a real improvement. And the fact that it took this long to fix isn't something I'm going to dwell on. It's fixed. Moving on.
Something Interesting: The Car Is Learning Your Routes
The more interesting thing in 14.3.6 is behavioral rather than bug-related. The car appears to be learning individual driver navigation preferences, including which store entrances you use and where you prefer to park. This isn't just "it remembers your home address." It's starting to model your actual habits.
This could mean a few things. One possibility is that Tesla is seeding preference learning behavior ahead of the upcoming Summer Update, which is expected to include driver preference features as a named capability. Another is that it's been running quietly in the background and 14.3.6 is simply when people started noticing it work.
Either way, it's the kind of thing that gets more useful over time, assuming it actually sticks and doesn't get wiped with the next update (a reasonable concern given how these rollouts go).
Highway vs. Local: Still Two Different Products
Highway operation in 14.3.6 remains generally reliable. This has been true for a while now. Local roads are where the edge cases multiply and where the regression shows up most clearly.
The turning hesitancy and jerkiness issues are almost entirely a local road phenomenon. If your FSD usage skews toward highway miles, this update probably won't bother you much.
Where This Leaves Things
14.3.6 feels like an update doing two things at once, and they're working against each other. The preference learning work and the bird braking fix are genuine progress. But regressing on local road behavior, especially turn accuracy and the turn signal override issue, is a real step backward.
The Summer Update is coming with preference features as a headline item. Whether 14.3.6 is intentional groundwork for that or just a rough patch in the ongoing training cycle, I can't say. What I do know is that the steering wheel shouldn't be fighting me when I signal a turn.
Source: Teslarati