AutoPilot Bug

[siraj]

My car has a serious issue with Autopilot. I reported the issue to Tesla over a month ago and till date they haven't given me an explanation on why the car crashed on autopilot. The director of autopilot called few weeks ago and said it is only the 2nd instance of this issue. I was hesitant to post the video online but now I feel that Tesla is not taking this seriously and hence I am sharing it over here. Here's what happened.
I was stuck in traffic and I decided to do a video on autopilot to share with my friends to let them know what a blessing it is to have autopilot and within 10 seconds of filming, the car crashes into a pickup truck. See the instrument cluster, the car lost focus of the pickup truck in front even though the parking sensor detects obstruction. Suddenly it sped and crashed into the pickup truck. I was lucky since it was a stop and go traffic and there wasn't any damage or scratches to the car because of xpel protection.
Then I dropped off my car to the local service center to have them review the autopilot issue along with couple of minor issues on 09/27. I get a call from the service center a week later to inform me that they were trying to offload one of the cars from the towing truck and it accidentally ran into my car and scratched the bumper. As of now, they have send the car to a body shop for replacing the bumper and it has been sitting there for a week. This is so frustrating. I haven't driven my brand new 110k car in 3 weeks. Nothing against people at the service center. They are really nice. But Tesla needs to do better than this.
Tesla, if you are listening. Please have someone look into the autopilot issue.

 

[tezzla]

My car has done this a few times in the last couple of weeks (once on v7.1 & once on v8). I don't show the dash but here is my dashcam.

Edit: you should skip to around 35 seconds to skip the boring part.

 

[Az_Rael]

Wow. That sucks. And that is a situation that would be hard to prevent since you don't normally hover your foot over the brakes when using AP and you only got a second to react before the car accelerated into the truck.

 

[green1]

It would be interesting to see what Tesla says was going on, but it really doesn't matter. You were driving, you hit a truck. Take responsibility, don't blame a system that is purely driver assist and wasn't driving the car. filming your car with a handheld device, and not paying attention to your driving is extremely dangerous, stupid, and illegal in most jurisdictions.

 

[cgiGuy]

Yep.. the car never stopped creeping towards the truck. No way I would have let it get that close without hitting the brake myself.

 

[Btrflyl8e]

You're sure you weren't accidentally applying pressure to the accelerator? That would not have disengaged AP, but it looks to me like the "disappearing" truck in front was due to the front sensors switching to the proximity heatmap (I don't know what Tesla calls it, that what I think of it as). I have pressed the accelerator while using TACC, as it sometimes leaves too big of a gap and someone behind me needs to squeeze by, etc

 

[calisnow]

Also OP - if I were you I would go to the body shop and inspect my car right now - the "scratch" to the bumper from a car running into yours might be worse than you think.

 

[Chopr147]

I guess you will get some "take responsibility" comments here. Part of the forum fun
Sure, maybe you hit the accelerator but that would not explain the truck disappearing. Weird. Certainly appears to be an AP fault.
I do not want to see more of this. Hovering over the brake pedal at all times defeats the purpose of AP in these situations. I LOVE the way AP takes care of the stop/go in traffic. Thanks for the posting. I will be keeping a better eye on AP for the near future.

 

[Btrflyl8e]

I guess you will get some "take responsibility" comments here. Part of the forum fun
Sure, maybe you hit the accelerator but that would not explain the truck disappearing. Weird. Certainly appears to be an AP fault.
I do not want to see more of this. Hovering over the brake pedal at all times defeats the purpose of AP in these situations. I LOVE the way AP takes care of the stop/go in traffic. Thanks for the posting. I will be keeping a better eye on AP for the near future.

Just a possible alternative scenario...I think even with AP if you "overrode" it by pressing the accelerator it would lose that lock on the vehicle ahead as it switched to the proximity indicator. I'll have to validate it later, although doesn't mean that is what happened here.

I certainly hope it was that, or some other identifiable problem with just this car that can be fixed for the OP. I absolutely would think it ridiculous to expect someone to hover their foot over either pedal. When I'm using TACC, my feet are in a comfortable spot and I would not have been able to react fast enough in this scenario, even if I wasn't taking a video.

Not every scenario is immediately the fault of the driver using AP, there could actually be system failure that can't be avoided. I agree that to jump to lecturing is not adding value.

 

[mspohr]

My car has a serious issue with Autopilot. I reported the issue to Tesla over a month ago and till date they haven't given me an explanation on why the car crashed on autopilot. The director of autopilot called few weeks ago and said it is only the 2nd instance of this issue. I was hesitant to post the video online but now I feel that Tesla is not taking this seriously and hence I am sharing it over here. Here's what happened.
I was stuck in traffic and I decided to do a video on autopilot to share with my friends to let them know what a blessing it is to have autopilot and within 10 seconds of filming, the car crashes into a pickup truck. See the instrument cluster, the car lost focus of the pickup truck in front even though the parking sensor detects obstruction. Suddenly it sped and crashed into the pickup truck. I was lucky since it was a stop and go traffic and there wasn't any damage or scratches to the car because of xpel protection.
Then I dropped off my car to the local service center to have them review the autopilot issue along with couple of minor issues on 09/27. I get a call from the service center a week later to inform me that they were trying to offload one of the cars from the towing truck and it accidentally ran into my car and scratched the bumper. As of now, they have send the car to a body shop for replacing the bumper and it has been sitting there for a week. This is so frustrating. I haven't driven my brand new 110k car in 3 weeks. Nothing against people at the service center. They are really nice. But Tesla needs to do better than this.
Tesla, if you are listening. Please have someone look into the autopilot issue.

I think it must have been the "music" that caused the car to get confused.
Since the director of autopilot called you it does appear that they are taking it very seriously.

 

[siraj]

Also OP - if I were you I would go to the body shop and inspect my car right now - the "scratch" to the bumper from a car running into yours might be worse than you think.

Thanks.. Good point. I will go take a look at it on Monday.

 

[theslimshadyist]

I'm curious as to why you would be using AP in slow traffic bumper-to-bumper traffic? Personally, I wouldn't trust it but then again I don't yet have my MS so I don't have any baseline or history to compare. Not a flame, I was just curious with your own personal level of confidence.

 

[jmsurpri]

AP is great for bumper to bumper traffic. Let it handle all the starts and stops so you can relax.

 

[oneday]

At the start of your video, the tracked car directly in front of you changes lanes. I believe this created the situation that resulted in autopilots failure

Edit: Combined with the fact that as the car crept towards the newly tracked truck, perhaps it got so close that the bumper was too high for the ultrasonics?[speculstion]

 

[theslimshadyist]

AP is great for bumper to bumper traffic. Let it handle all the starts and stops so you can relax.

Man, I'd be scared $hi!less. lol

 

[theslimshadyist]

At the start of your video, the tracked car directly in front of you changes lanes. I believe this created the situation that resulted in autopilots failure

Edit: Combined with the fact that as the car crept towards the newly tracked truck, perhaps it got so close that the bumper was too high for the ultrasonics?[speculstion]

I just viewed the vid again after you posted this. Great observation but shouldn't have AP picked up the truck directly in front of him after the "locked" car changed lanes?

 

[Electroman]

wow.. initially I was thinking that you may have inadvertently pressed the pedal, but then your dash shows the truck disappeared. Now sure looks like an TACC issue..

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I haven't experienced this issue, but so far there seems to be a lot of evidence that suggest that the AP in the Model S/X struggles with always maintaining separation between the car, and a stopped vehicle in front. There are these two videos plus another thread where a Model S tried to accelerate into a bus directly in front of the vehicle. There are probably also videos I haven't seen.

I'm a little concerned that what happened in this case is the radar never had a lock on the truck. The reason the radar didn't have a lock is because it was tracking the other car up to that point. As soon as that car moved out of the way the radar didn't see anything because the system to react to a stopped object with radar isn't active yet (it won't be until the white listing is done/tested).

The camera did see the truck, but the camera is a single sensor system that relies on a DNN for detection what's in front of it. If you've ever used a DNN before you'll know that it doesn't always have 100% performance. Like I recently tested a DNN that would identify common objects like a screw driver, coffee cup, etc and the thing got it right a lot of time but then sometimes it would lose track for no particular reason at all.

Once the camera lost track of the truck is all comes down to software programming. I can't explain why the car would sudden accelerate when it lost something. The way ACC systems are designed is so track a moving object, but nothing moved. So no data would have suggested anything moving.

When moving the TACC is completely reliant on radar to maintain following distances (the camera doesn't give this find grain detail). The only time it really messes up is on curves where sometimes it brakes because the car one lane over gets detected.

I don't think it uses the front ultrasonic sensors for any of this. Those are just for low speed things like summons. There is just too much variability in the height of the vehicle that might be in front of you.

I'll continue to use a fairly reserved following distance to give me time to react in case the car has a brain fart. I'm also extremely careful in situations where the car in front of me moves over and suddenly there is a stopped car in front of me. This is a situation where the it might or might not get picked up on radar.

 

[calisnow]

I'm curious as to why you would be using AP in slow traffic bumper-to-bumper traffic? Personally, I wouldn't trust it but then again I don't yet have my MS...

When you have your Model S you will understand. Bumper to bumper traffic is where AP provides the most stress relief. On the other hand your profile says you live in Tennessee - from the fact that you even needed to ask the question I surmise you don't have much of a traffic problem to live with - unlike those of us in Tesla's backyard, California. Autopilot is what has given me back my willingness to drive long distances through Southern California to go to a new restaurant, see a movie, hang with friends, etc. - because it instantly destroys all traffic stress.

Man, I'd be scared $hi!less. lol

No you won't - you'll get your Tesla and you'll see. Just wait.

...the system to react to a stopped object with radar isn't active yet (it won't be until the white listing is done/tested).

It isn't? I must have missed this - has Tesla told us that this specific function is not active yet? Is it being saved for 8.1? I thought that 8.0's new radar software was in fact able to see stopped objects reliably.

 

[thegruf]

Could it be that the radar picked up on the truck late as the other vehicle changed out of lane and tacc got closer to the pickup truck than it normally would. Then with the radar being so close it ceases to see the rear fender as it is mounted low, and sees under the pickup somewhat, confuses itself think the vehicle has gone as it doesn't see the fender so accelerates.

I recall another thread where an owner clipped the car in front with his corner during an auto park as the ultrasound sensor in this case appeared to look under the fender.

Perhaps be extra careful when close to vehicles with high road clearance?

Tesla could also make additional refinements when a solid detection disappears ... Where did it go, is it really clear before accelerating, trade-off being possible additional hesitancy