Autopilot 2.0 is dangerous

[alfagiulia]

You're right that the car is fun to drive. But there are many situations that are not fun. Like the 50 mile drive from San Antonio to Austin when the interstate has very heavy traffic and the speed is varying between 25 and 75mph the entire way.

AP doesn't solve that problem. For now you still have to pay attention, which is exhausting. High volume traffic is annoying even if you are the passenger. It will always be annoying, even with a fully autonomous vehicle. A better solution than wasting $billions on a robot car is to put on an audio book and switch your brain to autopilot!

 

[OBX John]

Any tool not used properly is dangerous.

I use AP where I know it works, and I always remember that I'm still driving the car.

Sure it could be a lot better, and I think we're all expecting that it will get better, but I'm not sure that posts full of hyperbole are the best way to give feedback. An unreliable narrator risks being dismissed, where constructive, logical criticism might aid development.

I've found it to be great in stop and go traffic, great on straight or slightly curved empty or low traffic roads, and needing further development to be useful for me in other situations. I'm neutral with the overall development so far, but I'm still looking forward to using it on a five hour drive tomorrow - a drive that I'd be dreading without AP assistance. I'm sure others disagree, but I find it relaxing to sit back, let it do it's thing where the situation warrants, while using my attention to be aware of situations that might require me to take over.

 

[McRat]

Where do you get that? 'Very Happy' or 'Happy' in NO way says there isn't room for improvement.

All I can say is if AEB did not work on my AEB car, I doubt I would be "Very Happy" about it. In fact, we as a family decided on no more car purchases without it and are going to update the cars that are missing it, even if they are Forward Collision Alert equipped and still virtually new. It's that good.

In light of how good AEB is to have, there is probably nothing that could turn a significant number of the >1/3 of "Very Happy With AP2 Today" to a lessor opinion. Only those involved in accidents will probably change their minds.

I don't agree with the Class Action, but I certainly would not be dancing in the streets about the nerfed or missing functions.

 

[boaterva]

All I can say is if AEB did not work on my AEB car, I doubt I would be "Very Happy" about it. In fact, we as a family decided on no more car purchases without it and are going to update the cars that are missing it, even if they are Forward Collision Alert equipped and still virtually new. It's that good.

In light of how good AEB is to have, there is probably nothing that could turn a significant number of the >1/3 of "Very Happy With AP2 Today" to a lessor opinion. Only those involved in accidents will probably change their minds.

I don't agree with the Class Action, but I certainly would not be dancing in the streets about the nerfed or missing functions.

And I voted that way because in the time I used it (150 miles of an overnight demo) it worked 99% perfectly. But of course it could be improved, since features are still missing. TACC and Autosteer, the major current features, worked perfectly. YMMV.

I have no idea why people are having 'varying' experiences. Hardware? Geography? But I voted based on *my* experiences.

 

[animorph]

Hi everyone,

So I understand that AP 2.0 is still "beta" which is kind of frustrating to begin with because I purchased my AP 2.0 Model S in December and its almost May and I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel when a fully rolled out version will become available. Anyway now that I have gotten that out of the way I want to state that AP 2.0 with its TACC is downright dangerous in a ton of day-to-day situations. And here's how:

1) When I turn on AP 2.0 while driving on a highway the car swerves like a bloody drunk person sometimes veering so close to the vehicles in adjacent lanes that I have no option but to take over. Its just friggin dangerous?

2) At other instances the car chooses to slam on the brakes while going on curves at highway speeds. Like without any rhyme or reason it'll literally brake so hard for a second that it's enough to make an un-belted passenger fly out of the windscreen.

3) At certain occasions I have experienced that going under bridges and overpasses it momentarily again slams the brakes. Like what the heck Tesla? What the heck!?

4) Lane changing is another horror to tackle altogether. While driving in AP 2.0 with autosteer when I turn on the indicator to change lanes and when it has executed the lane change and I switch of the indicator, the bloody car just keeps on going till I have to take over, otherwise it would fly into the shoulder.

All of these dangerous situations considered I feel its a miracle my car hasn't slammed into another vehicle or that someone else hasn't rear-ended me terribly by now. I am so disappointed with this useless and irresponsible roll out of AP 2.0. If Tesla cannot ensure its technology to work safely then why roll it out at all? Why don't just test it at your own facilities and roll it out only when you're quadruply sure. Until then just give us regular old non-TA Cruise Control. But to roll out half baked "features" like this that can cause accidents is downright awful.

My question to everyone on the forum are the following

1) Have you experienced such scares with AP 2.0?
2) Is there a way to engage cruise control without any of the radar and ultrasonic bs and just activate regular plain-Jane cruise control? Asking because I am sick and tired of this extra "Intelligent" car that keeps scaring the crap out of me and my family at highway speeds.
3) Any idea as to when AP 2.0 will be rolled out non-beta without any glitches?

Thanks in advance for your responses

We just completed a 5k mile road trip, AP2 17.11.3 Model X.

Autosteer was a bit "drunk" for us, so we didn't use it much, maybe 150 miles total. I didn't have a problem with it swerving on turn on, though one time when I activated it and was fairly far left in the lane it did move us to the center. I also preferred to be farther left in my lane when passing semis.

Autosteer lane changes were similarly adequate. I did maybe 25 lane changes. Nearly all of them moved fairly quickly to straddle the lane marking, paused, and then moved fairly quickly to the center of the next lane. Not smooth at all, but I had no other issues with it. I did not try changing lanes in the middle of a corner or any other more challenging situations.

We used TACC for nearly 100% of our highway driving, well over 4k miles with no no repeated segments. I would usually turn it off when it was time to exit. We had plenty of times when it would briefly hesitate for shadows on the road. No stronger than regen braking, not anything like slamming on the brakes, and didn't lose more than 1 to 2 MPH. A handful of times the braking would last longer, but again just like regen braking. In those cases we just hit the accelerator to keep the speed up. The longer braking might have been a problem if someone was really tailgating us and we weren't quick to accelerate. I drove a very curvy highway for a total of about 4 hours at 65-75 MPH with no problems. My wife drove with TACC as much as I did and really liked the way it behaved when cars moved in and out of our lane in front of us. It ignored cars trying to merge, but that's more of a FSD behavior.

No one knows how long it will take to get better, but I expect smoother Autosteer operation over the next 3-6 months.

 

[Electroman]

I don't understand the fascination with autopilot. I would love to hear why people are so excited about it. I think it is gimmicky and not particularly useful.

You don't because you have not driven an AP1 car - not just test drives, but for alteast some time till you get quite comfortable with it.

Hands down, best thing in automotive advancement since automatic transmission. I simply refuse to drive any other car than my Tesla primarily for the AP1. Having now gotten used to driving with AP1 so much, I am so relaxed and let my guard down that it simply too tiring and dangerous for me to drive one without it.

 

[Electroman]

or a second that it's enough to make an un-belted passenger fly out of the windscreen

How come you missed the standard phrase, "it tried to kill me !!" ?

Hyperbole will attract attention from the usual trolls in this forum like flies to sugar.

 

[brkaus]

AP doesn't solve that problem. For now you still have to pay attention, which is exhausting. High volume traffic is annoying even if you are the passenger. It will always be annoying, even with a fully autonomous vehicle. A better solution than wasting $billions on a robot car is to put on an audio book and switch your brain to autopilot!

Brains set on autopilot make mistakes. At least mine does. Easy to drift in the lane or daydream and miss the cars slowing ahead. Goes with getting old I guess.

 

[Tribaltech]

I feel there is a lot of hyperbole in your post. I don't think the brakes alone can generate enough force to fling an unbelted passenger through the windscreen. I also don't believe it applies brakes when passing under signs/bridges, merely stops accelerating (and then begins a momentary regen).

You not having experienced any of the problems I noted does not mean that the problems do not exist or that the person writing a post is lying. If you don't have anything to contribute why bother responding in the first place? The sudden BRAKING that I have experienced under bridges and overpasses has been exactly that, BRAKING. I know what regen feels like vs. someone tapping the brakes in my Model S pretty hard. With a car that costs upward of $90,000, I am kinda getting sick of being a beta tester experiencing dangerous situations at highway speeds. If you don't feel that way good for you.

 

[Tribaltech]

When driving along the german Autobahn I get the occasional swerve. We have a November 2016 Tesla Model S 75. Yesterday it aimed straight for the side of a truck whilst driving at 130km/h. On a straight stretch of road! The problem was possibly bad lane markings, which are very common in Germany.

Since I'm aware of the dangers of the current system I was able to recover the faulty driving yesterday again.

I'm wondering if those instances should be recorded manually by me or us, and sent to Tesla.

On the other hand, Tesla ought to be able to track each instance when a user has to take control away from AP2,
and the video should be sent to Tesla headquarters automatically, for analyzing the problems...

Or would such an "automatic trouble reporting system" too advanced?

I agree with your comments and hope that Tesla is analyzing all the driving on AP 2.0 to make corrections or take note where abrupt interventions were made. I never engage AP 2.0 on roads that have bad markings. Its just a lot of headache and stress using AP 2.0 on less-than-optimum road conditions.

And that is why I don't understand why car manufacturers cannot just give people the option of activating a simple old school cruise control. In my previous car it had TACC but if you long pressed the CC button for a few seconds it activated the basic CC. And in certain situations that is all you needed.

 

[Tribaltech]

im pretty sure AP1 also had really dodgy behaviour at the start and it took ~1 month until the software learned to routes properly?? if i recall correctly?

Yes but unfortunately the rollout of AP 2.0 has taken way more than 1 month.

 

[Tribaltech]

These "scares" are simply unfamiliarity with the vehicle. You're supposed to keep your hands on the wheel at all times, so when i think the car is going to get too close to a car in the adjacent lane, i keep my hand locked on the wheel and prevent it from itching further. If AS wants to keep going one way, it'll eventually disengage...but it never does. Maybe it gets too close for your comfort, but i feel like even on distance setting 1, i'm still too far away from the car in front of me where im constantly getting cut off.

For the naysayers that are saying Autopilot is a gimmick, i drive over 100+ miles a day on autopilot without issues. I'm less fatigued and i feel great and enjoy driving again. The multiple Tesla youtube personalities can attest to that as well. If you don't like autopilot, then don't pay the $5000 unlock fee and just drive a regular car. Maybe Autopilot is not as useful in Germany, but it's definitely useful for a lot of Americans who have long commutes and/or roadtrips. Maybe the autopilot data is better adjusted for American roads as well who knows. Elon Musk's vision is for autonomous vehicles, that's why the Model 3 doesn't have a driver dash console. That's his vision for the future, because human beings can't be trusted to drive without getting into accidents.

And to people saying AP could cause an accident, well still to date no self-driving vehicle has ever gotten into a car accident due to the fault of the system, it's always been another human-driven vehicle causing the accident. Google has had their self driving cars drive millions of miles with no incidents, and their self-driving technology is older and a lot clunkier. AP is a drivers assistance feature, not a let me turn it on and not pay attention feature.

And to the OP, no there is no way to disable traffic aware cruise control and have regular cruise control. personally i find regular cruise control useless but that's just me i guess. "unbelted passenger out of the windscreen" is a bit much, i've had the random occasional ghost brake incidents and nothing has ever gone flying in my car (i leave a lot of junk on the passenger seat).

To all the people accusing me of "hyperbole", I don't wish to waste my breath. I have no way of proving myself nor have a dashcam video recorded to convince doubting Thomases on this forum. What I experienced multiple times with ghost braking was dangerous. In one instance a pick up truck almost rear ended me and swerved. Believe it or not it does not matter to me, but what I wrote above are the facts. Keep accusing me and feel better about yourselves or open your mind a little bit to realize that not everybody's experience is the same. Its a very basic concept to wrap one's head around.

 

[Tribaltech]

Brains set on autopilot make mistakes. At least mine does. Easy to drift in the lane or daydream and miss the cars slowing ahead. Goes with getting old I guess.

Trust me with this sort of dangerous autopilot the last thing my brain is doing is daydreaming. My hands are always on the wheel and I actually feel somewhat more stressed when AP 2.0 is engaged rather than when I am driving the car myself.

 

[Tribaltech]

How come you missed the standard phrase, "it tried to kill me !!" ?

Hyperbole will attract attention from the usual trolls in this forum like flies to sugar.

Its ironic you are calling me a troll whereas without contributing anything meaningful to this discussion you are falling right into the dictionary definition of an internet troll. How wonderful!

 

[AnxietyRanger]

To all the people accusing me of "hyperbole", I don't wish to waste my breath. I have no way of proving myself nor have a dashcam video recorded to convince doubting Thomases on this forum. What I experienced multiple times with ghost braking was dangerous. In one instance a pick up truck almost rear ended me and swerved. Believe it or not it does not matter to me, but what I wrote above are the facts. Keep accusing me and feel better about yourselves or open your mind a little bit to realize that not everybody's experience is the same. Its a very basic concept to wrap one's head around.

Don't worry, many people are reading you with an open and sympathetic mind too.

 

[McRat]

To all the people accusing me of "hyperbole", I don't wish to waste my breath. I have no way of proving myself nor have a dashcam video recorded to convince doubting Thomases on this forum. What I experienced multiple times with ghost braking was dangerous. In one instance a pick up truck almost rear ended me and swerved. Believe it or not it does not matter to me, but what I wrote above are the facts. Keep accusing me and feel better about yourselves or open your mind a little bit to realize that not everybody's experience is the same. Its a very basic concept to wrap one's head around.

A poll on this board indicates that more than 1/3 of AP2 owners are Very Happy no matter what the AP2 system does or does not do. If it sprayed tear gas in your face while you are driving, it might drop slightly, or might even go up in ratings. Nobody knows yet.

I've been reading car forums since ~1997. I've never seen anything like it before. I've seen folk defend a flaw in a car, it's pretty common. But I've never seen huge numbers APPROVE of flaws before. They appear to be desirable from a marketing viewpoint. "It's a Tesla Thing, without it, it would not be a Tesla!"

It's hard to get over 1/3 of people to approve of a paint color as Very Good. Incredible.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

A poll on this board indicates that more than 1/3 of AP2 owners are Very Happy no matter what the AP2 system does or does not do. If it sprayed tear gas in your face while you are driving, it might drop slightly, or might even go up in ratings. Nobody knows yet.

I've been reading car forums since ~1997. I've never seen anything like it before. I've seen folk defend a flaw in a car, it's pretty common. But I've never seen huge numbers APPROVE of flaws before. They appear to be desirable from a marketing viewpoint. "It's a Tesla Thing, without it, it would not be a Tesla!"

It's hard to get over 1/3 of people to approve of a paint color as Very Good. Incredible.

While I hear you @McRat - and TMC has certainly seen its fair share of fandom (and investor sentiment) gone overboard over the years - I am not so sure this poll is so simple.

I for one think AP2 absolutely is a piece of garbage and probably also a bit dangerous.

Yet I would have a hard time answering this poll objectively, so I haven't. I can not in all honesty judge something like AP2 on current capability alone, my sentiment is forever (forever being perhaps the next 12-18 months to quote a tweet from Elon) tainted by the potential of those seven majestic cameras that mostly do nothing.

For the most part Tesla's really are like any other car, they don't get much better after you drive them out of the store (in fact, things like power limitations and 6.2 to 7/8 software jump suggest Tesla's may actually actively get worse), but one thing has been an exception: the driving aids that are released partially, have a history (even if a little checkered one) of getting significantly better through updates.

I bet most people factor in the potential of AP2 in their customer satisfaction, knowingly or not. That is understandable, its greatest promise is... well, its promise.

Nothing else on the market at this time gives you that future potential.

 

[PluggedINLife]

Let's think this one out a bit. You are letting a car drive in what can already be a dangerous situation (highway) and it is in Beta.

Yes, that would be dangerous, but that's why they placed it on Beta and ask that you keep your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. With the current update I did see a huge difference, but there are still moments where it feels like it might be going into another lane. I am not expecting too much from it until the next update myself, but I think it's working well for now. And I take LA traffic, which I think is one of the worst scenarios to run on Beta.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

A poll on this board indicates that more than 1/3 of AP2 owners are Very Happy no matter what the AP2 system does or does not do. If it sprayed tear gas in your face while you are driving, it might drop slightly, or might even go up in ratings. Nobody knows yet.

I've been reading car forums since ~1997. I've never seen anything like it before. I've seen folk defend a flaw in a car, it's pretty common. But I've never seen huge numbers APPROVE of flaws before. They appear to be desirable from a marketing viewpoint. "It's a Tesla Thing, without it, it would not be a Tesla!"

It's hard to get over 1/3 of people to approve of a paint color as Very Good. Incredible.

As others have noted, not everybody is experiencing the issues mentioned, and many of those who are, don't experience them as often or severely.

Personally, the only issue mentioned that I've seen is the ghost braking going under bridges, and even that only a few times since I bought the car in December, and never in a way that felt particularly dangerous.

What I *have* experienced is several long trips(ranging from ~2 up to 10 hours each way) that would usually range from irritating to outright hell that have become a breeze because of autosteering and TACC. So ya, I'm pretty happy with the system right now. There are definitely shortcomings that I want to see solved, and I'd be much less happy if it was, well, any other car, and didnt have the guarantee of future software updates. But overall, I can't say I'm upset.

 

[Tribaltech]

A poll on this board indicates that more than 1/3 of AP2 owners are Very Happy no matter what the AP2 system does or does not do. If it sprayed tear gas in your face while you are driving, it might drop slightly, or might even go up in ratings. Nobody knows yet.

I've been reading car forums since ~1997. I've never seen anything like it before. I've seen folk defend a flaw in a car, it's pretty common. But I've never seen huge numbers APPROVE of flaws before. They appear to be desirable from a marketing viewpoint. "It's a Tesla Thing, without it, it would not be a Tesla!"

It's hard to get over 1/3 of people to approve of a paint color as Very Good. Incredible.

Exactly!!! I find the fandom a bit out of control. I get it that a ton of people including myself have shelled out a ton of money for this dream vehicle. And I get the whole halo around Tesla about sustainability and how cool Elon is. But to show such blind faith toward a product is a bit disturbing and unbalanced. I am not saying that people need to go out of their way to hate Tesla, not at all. I LOVE Tesla. But hey we need to call things out the way they are and in the current state the AP 2.0 is borderline dangerous and to see people be "VERY HAPPY" with it is a bit suspect.