Auto-park bashed our neighbour's car - should Tesla pay both repair bills?

[GlmnAlyAirCar]

It certainly looks like a normal autopark speed profile. For some reason it thought the parked car was someplace other than where it was. Interestingly it appears if it had completed the parking job it would have ended up far from the curb. So, it does appear that autopark did not handle this properly.

That being said, judging from the front camera view, there was PLENTY of time to recognize the car was cutting in too soon and to abort the autopark.

 

[Envchem]

Difficult to judge the speed but I would dare to say that when my car autoparks it goes on at least half a speed. I call it turtle mode.

 

[MrBadger]

I've not seen the video nor have I used our auto park yet (lost any trust when it offered to park on our front steps) but from the sounds of it I would certainly report it as an issue but not go asking for them to accept blame or for compensation/repair for the reasons that othered have mentioned.

Then at least if there is a genuine issue, Tesla have then been made aware of it, much like reporting any serious software issue.

 

[pgkevet]

That doesn't look anything like autopark behaviour on my S. I'd drive mine straight until the P symbol popped up - which is usually quite a way past the gap - and then it'd reverse to the position it wants to start turning. In this vid it appears to be angled before the start of the manoeuver unless we're being denied the whole of the autopark process.
In any event all this software is beta and driver responsibility - and frankly most of the autopilot features are dodgy and require more concentration that just manual driving.

 

[bangtidy]

I'd trade her in and get a new one....

 

[jjrandorin]

The driver behind the wheel is always responsible, at least until there is some level of automation much higher than we have now. So the very (very) simple answer to the original question posted by the OP of "who pays" is " You (or your insurance) does, full stop.

There is no situation where the OP (or their representative insurance) doesnt pay for their vehicle and the damage to the other vehicle.

 

[m-i-l]

The driver behind the wheel is always responsible, at least until there is some level of automation much higher than we have now. So the very (very) simple answer to the original question posted by the OP of "who pays" is " You (or your insurance) does, full stop.

There is no situation where the OP (or their representative insurance) doesnt pay for their vehicle and the damage to the other vehicle.

Thanks. So to the original questions:
- It sounds like we (or our insurance) will have to pay for the damage to both cars, even if we can prove it was caused by Tesla's "Full Self Driving" with no time to manually override.
- Still not clear on whether there is a process for reporting bugs in "Full Self Driving", to try to help prevent future such accidents.
- It doesn't sound like we're likely to get any money back for the "Full Self Driving" which we've lost confidence in.

 

[jjrandorin]

Thanks. So to the original questions:
- It sounds like we (or our insurance) will have to pay for the damage to both cars, even if we can prove it was caused by Tesla's "Full Self Driving" with no time to manually override.
- Still not clear on whether there is a process for reporting bugs in "Full Self Driving", to try to help prevent future such accidents.
- It doesn't sound like we're likely to get any money back for the "Full Self Driving" which we've lost confidence in.

1. Right. The driver is always in charge of the vehicle, period. If you were in another vehicle and in cruise control (for example) and had an accident, it would be the drivers fault.

2. There isnt, really.

3. Very unlikely

Also, while none of us where there, this thread sounds a lot like the "unintended acceleration" threads where people say "I didnt do it, but the end result usually is there was some interaction with the vehicle that wasnt reported, either because it wasnt noticed, or simply just wasnt disclosed.

 

[wooter]

- It sounds like we (or our insurance) will have to pay for the damage to both cars, even if we can prove it was caused by Tesla's "Full Self Driving" with no time to manually override.

Tesla can prove the driver didn't follow the manual.

Competing products will have a similar disclaimer in their manuals. To activate "Full Self Driving" you have to click through multiple screens indicating the driver stays responsible. At this moment, there's nobody really believing that Advanced Driver Assistance Systems are flawless.

Bug reporting is simple: when you book an appointment at Tesla to repair the damage, you can indicate how it happened. If it wasn't too long ago, there are possible logs not overwritten yet so the Service Center can read through the logs to see what actually happened. If you want to act sooner, you can call Tesla on the number of your Service Center and ask them if they can safeguard logs.

Buying FSD falls under the local laws surrounding buying services and products. Some countries allow grace periods up to 14 days under some circumstances. After that, sales are final.

You can try to get compensation of some sort through legal means, but basically "lawyers talk to lawyers" so if you lawyer up, Tesla will obviously too to insure their rights are protected.

 

[init6]

That looks like a fairly constant speed. I've not used Tesla Autopark, so can't say if that is the normal speed or not. Seems strange that it turned at that point though.

 

[Radish11]

Tesla’s autopilot is so bad. Honestly they should discontinue it and purchase the software

 

[Mrklaw]

even the small chance of unintended acceleration is why I use creep mode (hard press to get hold mode at the lights). If I have ot make a sudden stop and my muscle memory isn't 100% aware my foot is on the accelerator, that could be a nightmare. automatics creeping with the foot over the brake is IMO a safe way to perform low speed manouevres

 

[btc1k]

I went through a speed camera on the test drive. I'm going to get Tesla to take the points and fine. These M3P's are just too fast. Their fault.

 

[Durzel]

I've seen on a couple of Autopark crashes on YouTube where subsequent conversations with Tesla have revealed that they acknowledge that there are blind spots. Autopark doesn't use the cameras, it uses the ultrasonics & radar, as far as I know.

From looking at the videos you didn't do anything wrong.. that is the correct use case for Autopark (between two cars).

You could try speaking to Tesla about it, they ought to be able to confirm there was an impact during Autopark, but whether or not they'd be willing to do anything about it is another matter. I suspect their T&Cs will make the customer entirely responsible.

Not entirely sure why you're getting sneering replies.. this is how Autopark is supposed to work and from looking at the video you certainly had a very small window to react.

 

[Stingray.Don]

In the video, the car isn’t going as fast as I would have thought based on the description. So I will revise my previous statement and acknowledge the possibility that this was an autopark issue. However, I still think it is likely that some driver input was the root cause. Hard to tell and need to discuss with Tesla. Regardless, the driver is always responsible.

 

[Durzel]

I've never actually tried accelerating while Autopark is in motion, so I don't know if it actually does anything or not. I've only used Autopark once, though, for fear of trashing my alloys.

 

[Tam]

...speed damaging...

The video shows a very slow speed so there's no sudden acceleration here.

...why it would have misjudged so badly...

Tesla automation system (Autopilot/Enhanced Autopilot/FSD/AutoPark/Summon...) in Tesla's letter to the California Department of Motor Vehicles is defined as Level 2 which requires a competent driver to drive the car at all times including when the system is active.

It's called L2 because it is not competent enough to safely work on its own: It needs a human driver to intervene in such as this scenario.

As others stated, Tesla Auto Park relies on Sonars. Sonars work great as long as the environments fit its criteria. If you count your sonars, there are blind spots because there are missing ones on the side of your car. Your car's bumper alone has 3 sonars each facing rear or back. Your side of your car which is much longer than your bumper has only 2. One all the way to the front side of your bumper and one all the way toward the rear side of your bumper. There are no sonars near the side doors.

Tesla can fix this but it will cost more money and it will no longer be L2 that requires human supervision, and it'll be a higher level like 3 and above.

- Who will pay for the repair to the damage to the other car, us or Tesla?

Yours is not the first. I've never heard of a case that Tesla would pay for damages due to its L2 automation from the slow speed to high speed. That's the definition of L2: The system is not good to be L3 and above. Any car below L3 is the responsibility of the human driver to drive.

...How do we report to Tesla

You can go to the Tesla Contact page. The last time I checked, there is a phone number for EU customers but US customers can only chat by text on that page.

...because this sounds like some sort of bug that they should fix?

Yes. That is why it is an L2 system: An imperfect system that requires humans to fix their misbehavior in real-time.

It's cheaper to use car owner's labor to fix the bug in real-time with manual steering/braking/accelerating and keep it as an L2.

It is costlier for engineering's brain to fix the system so that it won't be L2 anymore but L3 and above.

...Given the only thing we use "Full Self Driving" for is the auto-park, and we've lost confidence in auto-park now, is there any way to get the "Full Self Driving" package cost refunded?...

I have not heard of any case that Tesla would refund the cost of its automation feature due to its being inferior to L3 capability and despite damages.

I don't think most courts in the world would be sympathetic to Tesla owners who didn't know what they bought because what they bought was described on the page with the price of the feature (Autopilot/Enhanced Autopilot/FSD) which says "require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous".

However, the German court might be sympathetic because it banned the name "Autopilot" for misleading.

...Does anyone on this forum have any experience with this scenario?...

I would say there have been numerous accidents with Auto Park and Summon.

Owners should prepare their mind that "it will hit the car this time" and get the brake ready each time because if they don't, it might be too late to realize that it will hit this time actually.

I would say for those who have a good reaction time to correct the misbehaviors of an L2 car, it's a very good feature and well worth the money. However, for those who don't realize that L2 means it can still crash at any time including at a very slow speed of Auto Park, then maybe L2 is not for you.

 

[Loqutisss]

It didn't let me attach mp4 files, so I put them inside zip files - sorry for the extra level of indirection.

Timings are:
00:03 - autopark starts moving the car
00:06 - impact

To re-iterate the points above, the issue is that autopark turned the front of our car too soon hitting the back of the car in front. Of those 3 seconds the autopark is active, it is hard to tell from the video at what point it would be clear that it was turning too soon, but I'd guess you'd have had well under 1 second to react. And the issue is the turning too soon rather than the accelerator being hit or anything like that. Tesla's telematics should confirm it was autopark driving and that the user didn't touch any controls. I also have TeslaMate running - is there any data I can pull out of there?

Ok this is my humble opinion and not worth the the tree it was cut from and the paper it was into. After watching both videos I got to say I don't believe it was even in Autopark, as a long time Tesla user and auto park user (as we all know when the darn thing shows us the "P") that is not even how the car moves when it locks in auto park. And Teslas are so deliberate and exact in their auto park movements that watching those videos I immediately thought that was a person parking and not the car, and just saying it was auto park, like they were a teenager hoping not to get in trouble or a person just not wanting to admit fault; as in ALL PREVIOUS ACCUSATIONS OF THE TESLA DID IT NOT ME, acceleration instances. So yup that was a person, not the car. Feel free to throw this thought process out with the bath water, I'm good either way

 

[Wol747]

It occurs to me that you were parking on the right hand side of the road?
In the UK it's not unusual to park the "wrong" way, but in most countries it attracts penalties and almost never happens.
Perhaps the program thought you were looking at a space on the left hand side of the road and was starting a turn towards that, not the one you thought it was after? Being a US program I suspect it isn't set up for right hand of the road parking.

 

[Alic01]

Thanks. So to the original questions:
- It sounds like we (or our insurance) will have to pay for the damage to both cars, even if we can prove it was caused by Tesla's "Full Self Driving" with no time to manually override.
- Still not clear on whether there is a process for reporting bugs in "Full Self Driving", to try to help prevent future such accidents.
- It doesn't sound like we're likely to get any money back for the "Full Self Driving" which we've lost confidence in.

It seems to me that there is a heightened assumption from Full Self Driving that doesnt match the reality.

In essence i could perform the functions of Autopark in my 2012 Merc C Class, i just had to accelerate, in my 2018 GLC63 i could do Autopark exactly as per the Tesla with no input from myself. The difference is Merc dont use language that implies intelligence, it is just described as an assistance feature, identical functionality, very different expectation.

Similarly with the Merc Driver Assistance Package you have a level of autonomy probably around Enhanced Autopilot and in an E class its closer to FSD but again the terminology is always ‘Assistance’. It’s just marketing ultimately and it sometimes creates a feeling of responsibility on the manufacturer that in the UK at least just doesnt exist