Autopilot Choosing Wrong Target Car(s)

[mtndrew1]

I’m having a consistent issue in a consistent part of my commute where my car will suddenly pick more than one “target” vehicle to follow.

When this happens sometimes the lead vehicle is behind me or beside me and the car suddenly freaks out and hit the brakes, leaving an enormous gap with the actual car it should be following ahead of me in the same lane. Of course this pisses off traffic behind me and makes the system temporarily unusable.

You can see on the inlcuded photo that this morning my car had three target vehicles, one of them to my left, and I had to manually manipulate the accelerator to keep the car from slamming on the brakes to clear the car next to me on my left.

This happens every morning on the 110 freeway north, downtown, at the same time and in the same lane every day.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

 

[derotam]

I have the same issue at a certain part of my commute on 295N in D.C.

 

[Treasure]

I have this issue when the lanes are small and we are going fairly slow (<20 MPH), which I can see is the occurrence above. It's been going on since 2018.46 I believe.

 

[mtndrew1]

Well it sounds like some sort of firmware bug as opposed to a problem with my particular car then.

If this is happening to a significant number of people I’m surprised it hasn’t received more attention. Maybe drivers aren’t correlating the graphic with the braking and just lumping the phenomenon in with general phabtom braking.

 

[MP3Mike]

Are you sure that those are "target" cars? I thought that "target" cars were colored white, and only when lane lines couldn't be determined.

 

[mtndrew1]

They’re white when it’s dark out and the screen dims and the inverse when it’s sunny and the screen switches modes.

The autopilot responds directly to these highlighted cars consistently, so I’d say they’re the targets. I’ve just only ever had one before, and it was the car directly ahead of me in my own lane. This behavior is new and unsettling.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

What I don't like is that they change things without telling us about them.

So it's hard for me to tell what is a bug, and what is has been purposely added for who knows what reason.

Like another example of a possible bug, or a possible "feature" is when you cancel autosteer with the steering wheel it sets the TACC speed to the speed you're going when you take over. Why? I have no idea.

It could be a bug or could be a feature.

Just like with this post.

Bug? or Feature?

Or maybe it's a bug and a feature.

 

[OPRCE]

It's probably the symptom of a (developing) feature to prevent the car, with ample space in its own lane, from disconcertingly racing to set max speed between rows of stopped or slow vehicles in a traffic jam.

The algorithm merely requires more interns thrown at it!

 

[mtndrew1]

So I tried the same stretch of freeway today but just on TACC and not autopilot.

The car identified multiple targets on the screen but only reacted to the car ahead of me in my own lane. This is the behavior I’m accustomed to and I think this identifies the issue as an autopilot-specific bug introduced alongside NoA.

My hypothesis is that the car is always trying to be prepared for potential lane changes (even though I didn’t have the NoA button pressed). I see a similar situation when I’m near freeway interchanges and even though NoA isn’t selected and I’m not changing freeways or lanes, the car decides to slow and leave big gaps.

 

[Needsdecaf]

NOA makes the car behave worse in just driving situations, in my experience in the last two weeks.

I also experience behavior when just using AP of the car not seemingly keeping speed. It will fail to detect that a blocking car has moved and it is now clear to accelerate, leaving me much slower than target and with a huge gap to the car in front (sometimes like 10 car lengths).

Other times, it will freak out if it seems to think a car is approaching and it will pile on the anchors in the middle of traffic.

Lane changes are hit and miss too.

Sometimes it has good days, sometimes bad. I never really get a sense of it so far. It's best in slower speed traffic, almost never has an issue, or at full speeds with light traffic. But full highway speed when there are many cars, it definitely gets confused. I usually revert to TACC only or just manual in these situations, unfortunately.

 

[Andi]

I experienced this as well since Navigate on Autopilot was available. In my case it is always happening on the HOV lane and always at the same locations (HOV entrances). Therefore I am convinced the car is behaving as intended, but the issue is how those locations are categorized.
On any entrance of an Highway or merging lane the car supposed to look at the merging cars and give them space. This now also seem to happen for me on my daily commute at those locations. Of course this is super annoying, since the lanes are not merging and the cars in the next lane most of the cases do not enter my lane. I always have to press the acceleration pedal to not slow down and block the HOV lane.
Interesting is, that there is one entrance where this never happens, that is why I think this can be solved by recategorizing those to be none merging entrances and treat them same as normal multi lanes where you only act, if the car is entering your lane.

I sent this information to Tesla, hope they find a way to solve this soon.

 

[TT97]

What I don't like is that they change things without telling us about them.

So it's hard for me to tell what is a bug, and what is has been purposely added for who knows what reason.

Like another example of a possible bug, or a possible "feature" is when you cancel autosteer with the steering wheel it sets the TACC speed to the speed you're going when you take over. Why? I have no idea.

It could be a bug or could be a feature.

Just like with this post.

Bug? or Feature?

Or maybe it's a bug and a feature.

My car had the same "feature." I just recently noticed it. Are you on 2018.50? I have .50 and never noticed my car doing that before the last update.

 

[Az_Rael]

Wonder if this explains my phantom braking events I have seen a couple of times near merging traffic. A car will be on the entrance to merge, but still in its lane, and I will easily pass before the merge even starts. Then my car brakes from 65/70 down to very slow so the merging car is now ahead. Can be exciting for me and the car behind me. I am not using NoA, but this sounded like an NoA behavior leaking into regular AP.

I have not managed to look at the screen during these events, but the lead car “lock” makes a lot of sense from what happened.

I fear Teslas will soon get the reputation as the worse drivers on the roads, with the cars slamming on brakes, jerking suddenly when lanes split, etc. I already have a coworker who asked me why the Teslas he sees on his commute seem to behave so oddly. I told him to just never tailgate one.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I experienced this as well since Navigate on Autopilot was available. In my case it is always happening on the HOV lane and always at the same locations (HOV entrances). Therefore I am convinced the car is behaving as intended, but the issue is how those locations are categorized.
On any entrance of an Highway or merging lane the car supposed to look at the merging cars and give them space. This now also seem to happen for me on my daily commute at those locations. Of course this is super annoying, since the lanes are not merging and the cars in the next lane most of the cases do not enter my lane. I always have to press the acceleration pedal to not slow down and block the HOV lane.
Interesting is, that there is one entrance where this never happens, that is why I think this can be solved by recategorizing those to be none merging entrances and treat them same as normal multi lanes where you only act, if the car is entering your lane.
View attachment 367943

I sent this information to Tesla, hope they find a way to solve this soon.

I stopped using NoA largely because it was adding to false braking events for numerous reasons.

Sometimes it wanted me to get over, and it would even start to slow down to give me room to get over even though I never acknowledged the lane change request. This would always happen when the maps was incorrect, and didn't know the actual lane I needed to be in.

Other times it would slow down to let someone merge, but it would excessively slow down as if a Boeing 747 was going to lane in front of it. How much room does merging traffic need? Hasn't Tesla ever heard of scissor merging?

There are just too many areas in the maps that are wrong, and too much stupidity in how NoA handles various situations.

Using NoA is just asking to be punished.

 

[mtndrew1]

Wonder if this explains my phantom braking events I have seen a couple of times near merging traffic. A car will be on the entrance to merge, but still in its lane, and I will easily pass before the merge even starts. Then my car brakes from 65/70 down to very slow so the merging car is now ahead. Can be exciting for me and the car behind me. I am not using NoA, but this sounded like an NoA behavior leaking into regular AP.

I have not managed to look at the screen during these events, but the lead car “lock” makes a lot of sense from what happened.

I fear Teslas will soon get the reputation as the worse drivers on the roads, with the cars slamming on brakes, jerking suddenly when lanes split, etc. I already have a coworker who asked me why the Teslas he sees on his commute seem to behave so oddly. I told him to just never tailgate one.

Now that I’ve noticed this phenomenon it represents 100% of my phantom braking events.

 

[Rex Kramer]

Have seen this occur several times, currently running 48.12.1. Happens when lanes are narrow, and most often when the car is being tracked by the forward-facing B pillar cameras (which still display cars as sliding in and out of the lane). Autopilot picks the vehicle up as entering my lane when it isn't, and you get immediate braking by autopilot.

I can't help but wonder if the B pillar camera distance inaccuracy is a significant part of the issue.

 

[M+K.Reeser]

What I don't like is that they change things without telling us about them.

So it's hard for me to tell what is a bug, and what is has been purposely added for who knows what reason.

Like another example of a possible bug, or a possible "feature" is when you cancel autosteer with the steering wheel it sets the TACC speed to the speed you're going when you take over. Why? I have no idea.

It could be a bug or could be a feature.

Just like with this post.

Bug? or Feature?

Or maybe it's a bug and a feature.

Welcome to the wild world of beta testing! You remember that word, you saw it when you clicked through to activate the feature. Report it to Tesla.

 

[KenF]

I see this as well. Upcoming lane merges account for nearly all of my phantom breaking events. I’ve found I can avoid most of these events by staying out of lanes with merging traffic.

 

[dave999z]

OP’s observation is interesting. Going to start paying attention to this target car(s) issue to see if it explains the absolutely annoying behavior where in stop and go traffic, once thr car in front of me goes, the Tesla waits about 10 seconds and 4 car lengths to start moving. People think I’m an asshole or incompetent. I basically can’t use EAP in stop and go traffic for this reason. The only reason I got EAP was to drive me over the 14th Street bridge (I395) from Virginia to DC every morning at a snail’s pace (which makes me want to kill myself), but it can’t, at least not yet.

 

[derotam]

OP’s observation is interesting. Going to start paying attention to this target car(s) issue to see if it explains the absolutely annoying behavior where in stop and go traffic, once thr car in front of me goes, the Tesla waits about 10 seconds and 4 car lengths to start moving. People think I’m an asshole or incompetent. I basically can’t use EAP in stop and go traffic for this reason. The only reason I got EAP was to drive me over the 14th Street bridge (I395) from Virginia to DC every morning at a snail’s pace (which makes me want to kill myself), but it can’t, at least not yet.

The target car issue doesn't have anything to do with the pause for your car to start moving again. It's more of an issue of the car braking unnecessarily.

As for your issue don't wait for the car to start moving on it's own. Press on the accelerator to get moving and then gently let the car take over again.