Buyer Beware: AP2 Extremely Dangerous

[_jal_]

I think that a lot of the behavior in the Tesla is amplified by the surprise factor. Hard to tell, but it could amplify the perception of danger. But, it was shocking when that sign triggered the braking.

Got another quick bogus braking event today due to an overhead sign. This time I was ready though! I was going up an incline (we really don't have hills in Chicago) about 60 MPH, and I could see that I was heading straight for an overhead sign. By that I mean that the pitch of the car was pointing the car right at the sign due to the incline. Then, as I came over the crest and just as I was maybe 30 yards (??) from the sign, the alarm went off briefly, ABS, and then resumed.

Two things:
1) It's weird to me that it happens so close to the sign. In this case it would look like the sign was moving up away from the road (like a curtain rising) and revealing the cars, sky, etc. The inclination of the sign is so high (may 45 degrees?) that I don't think the radar would pick it up. Who knows.

2) I was alongside a minivan when this happened. I was overtaking him slowly, and I was maybe ahead of him by a hood's length. After the event, he was ahead of me by maybe a hood. I'm talking about measured from front bumper to front bumper. So, it felt like HOLY CRAP!! EMERGENCY!! but it really didn't translate to a lot of lost distance. Put another way, if he was tailing me, the whole thing would have closed the distance maybe 8 feet. STILL, there are maniacs who DO tail at that distance. It could get hairy. But they've got it coming then!!

I'm totally kidding.

 

[_jal_]

Whoa! Another one! It's been my lucky day. This time passing under traffic light. As soon as it turned yellow I got the alarm and brakes.

 

[JeffK]

Whoa! Another one! It's been my lucky day. This time passing under traffic light. As soon as it turned yellow I got the alarm and brakes.

It's strange to have traffic lights in the areas you're supposed to be using autopilot in...

 

[_jal_]

It's strange to have traffic lights in the areas you're supposed to be using autopilot in...

Maybe I wasn't clear. I was using cruise control on an expressway and it went off when I went through an intersection.

 

[A2Sirbill]

Maybe I wasn't clear. I was using cruise control on an expressway and it went off when I went through an intersection.

Our Car: Model S P100D, AP 2.0

I had a similar thing happen to us yesterday. Driviving with the adaptive cruise control on going about 55mph with very little traffic in front of us. We came up on a light (green our direction) with a small side road entering from our side. There were about three cars waiting at the light on the side road. When our car came up on the intersection the car jammed on the brakes for just a second. It was like the car (if it was a person) was afraid one of the cars waiting at the light on the side street was going to turn out in front of us.

It was pretty scary when you weren't ready for it. I thought I may have missed something and an accident was going to happen. I have only used the adaptive cruise control a few times. This is the second time the same thing has happened, with the car jamming the brakes on when coming up on an intersection with traffic waiting at the light on the side street.

I have not had any issues using the the adaptive cruise on a highway/freeway. It has worked really well in those situations. Like I said, I haven't used it to much but seemed to work pretty well on the highway/freeway. No issues with any signs of any type.

On a separate note, I tried auto steering on the highway and had a little bit of a problem. I only used it for about a mile or two because I didn't want the drivers in the Chicago area getting ticked off at me for holding up traffic. Well, as I said, I only used it a short distance (on well marked highways) but had some problems with the car ping ponging from side to side in the lane. It worked okay until I hit a section of the road that went back and forth between asphalt and cement. As soon as I hit that the car started going side to side. As soon as I went back to just cement it was fine again, STRANGE!!!

Good Luck & Hope Tesla Keeps The Updates Coming Regularly.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

It's strange to have traffic lights in the areas you're supposed to be using autopilot in...

Is Tesla's adaptive cruise control meant only for highways? Then it is pretty poor compared to the rest of the industry.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Contact Tesla and call it like you see it. Let them know how upset you are and that you think they lied to you. Maybe they will try to make things right somehow.

We know Tesla reads TMC. Public feedback on a general topic such as this (not one involving, say, unique issue with one car) is probably more effective.

 

[JeffK]

Is Tesla's adaptive cruise control meant only for highways? Then it is pretty poor compared to the rest of the industry.

TACC is one of the features controlled by the AP 2 hardware suite. TACC was only enabled for AP 2.0 three weeks ago.

I'm not aware of a TACC system that handles stop lights by itself unless it's following the rear end of a car, for starters. Second, it's explicitly stated on pages 67 and 68 of the owners manual that it's recommended use is it on highways and freeways.

Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is primarily intended for driving on dry, straight roads, such as highways and freeways. It should not be used on city streets.

Now considering that manual was written for AP 1 and AP 2 isn't even out of diapers yet. It's safe to assume one should be overly cautious about AP 2. This is especially true considering Elon's tweet about being cautious.

An expressway with lights is sort of a mixed bag. Very large stretches of highway and the majority of "freeways" do not have lights in the US. This provides a very sane environment for TACC to work. Nearly all TACC relies on both radar and recognition of car rear ends. Cars turning onto the lane from a side street might cause an issue.

Another thing to note is that the AP2 hardware is probably registering the light, because it's designed to. It's not "supposed to" act on it though. I'd be interested if in the current software, this happens in every situation when going at high speed and a light turns yellow, indicating that the car should stop but the car recognizes it can't at that speed.

 

[_jal_]

Fwiw, I was on a highway. Highways can have stoplights if they are expressways; freeways don't. I wasn't counting on it to stop at the light. I had just about entered the intersection when the light turned yellow. Then it put the brakes on momentarily. The point was that it left me wondering if the change in the image caused the braking.

This braking caused by overhead things (apparently stoplights and not just signs) is very unusual.

 

[JeffK]

Fwiw, I was on a highway. Highways can have stoplights if they are expressways; freeways don't. I wasn't counting on it to stop at the light. I had just about entered the intersection when the light turned yellow. Then it put the brakes on momentarily. The point was that it left me wondering if the change in the image caused the braking.

This braking caused by overhead things (apparently stoplights and not just signs) is very unusual.

My thought is that we might be seeing shadow mode bleed through.

 

[BestRadar]

Finally found a road that the steering icon was lit on and was able to test Auto Steer for around 2 minutes. My quick summary it scares the *sugar* out of me. I was in the fast lane with cement divider to my left and the car seemed to follow the divider without paying any attention to the cars on my right. I had a car on my right several times come within inches of my passenger mirror and the car refused to move left to keep more room between the 2 cars even though I had around 3 feet to the divider on the driver side.

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

I would guess that once the artificial neural network gets to a certain level (hopefully soon) of intelligence, that the autopilot will improve very rapidly. It will be fun to witness this transformation. At least up until it takes over the world and kills all of us.

 

[croman]

I have noticed TACC slow slightly when approaching lighted intersections. I think it's the FSD processing the light.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Is Tesla's adaptive cruise control meant only for highways? Then it is pretty poor compared to the rest of the industry.

I think you have to look at the reasons why it's not advisable to use the adaptive cruise control system on surface streets, and then see if those reasons are still applicable to the rest of the industry.

Purely radar based adaptive cruise control systems don't see stopped cars. The way it registers a car being there is it's moving, and that's how it separates it out from fixed things. With surface streets you're going to encounter a lot of stopped cars. Any purely radar based adaptive cruise control system is going to advice it's owners not to use it in situations like this.

A purely radar based adaptive cruise control system also can't see stop lights or stop signs let alone react to them. So you can't recommend using the system on surface streets.

The other thing about adaptive cruise control systems is by design they're supposed to be fairly simple. If you add complexity like what Tesla seems to have done with TACC on AP2 then you have threads like this one. Where you have people saying it's dangerous because it's trying to do too much.

What I like about AP1 is TACC is pretty simple. It has some known limitations, and if I understand those limitations I can use it wherever I want. Even if Tesla added things like stop light/stop sign detection I wouldn't want it to impact TACC. I don't mind if it beeps or warns me about various things, but allow me to react to it.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

I think you have to look at the reasons why it's not advisable to use the adaptive cruise control system on surface streets, and then see if those reasons are still applicable to the rest of the industry.

Purely radar based adaptive cruise control systems don't see stopped cars. The way it registers a car being there is it's moving, and that's how it separates it out from fixed things. With surface streets you're going to encounter a lot of stopped cars. Any purely radar based adaptive cruise control system is going to advice it's owners not to use it in situations like this.

A purely radar based adaptive cruise control system also can't see stop lights or stop signs let alone react to them. So you can't recommend using the system on surface streets.

The other thing about adaptive cruise control systems is by design they're supposed to be fairly simple. If you add complexity like what Tesla seems to have done with TACC on AP2 then you have threads like this one. Where you have people saying it's dangerous because it's trying to do too much.

What I like about AP1 is TACC is pretty simple. It has some known limitations, and if I understand those limitations I can use it wherever I want. Even if Tesla added things like stop light/stop sign detection I wouldn't want it to impact TACC. I don't mind if it beeps or warns me about various things, but allow me to react to it.

I understand all that (I have had adaptive cruise since 2006, first couple were single radar only), but already my 2010 Audi A8 used two radars and a camera to run its adaptive cruise-control. It was certainly suited for street usage.

I understand the limitations of Auto-Pilot (first gen and current stage of second gen) regarding auto steering - highways only. But is the TACC also meant only for highways?

 

[JeffK]

But is the TACC also meant only for highways

According the manual, yes.

That's not to say you can't use it on city streets, it's simply not recommended and more of a "use at your own risk, be vigilant, we are not responsible for anything that might happen" type of thing.

 

[NerdUno]

If TACC ends up like both of you have suggested, it would be a giant step backward from every luxury car on the market. There's no reason that TACC cannot integrate radar and camera technology into the mix to figure out what's a vehicle and what's an overhead sign or traffic light.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

According the manual, yes.

That's not to say you can't use it on city streets, it's simply not recommended and more of a "use at your own risk, be vigilant, we are not responsible for anything that might happen" type of thing.

OK.

Rather limiting, but OK.

If TACC ends up like both of you have suggested, it would be a giant step backward from every luxury car on the market. There's no reason that TACC cannot integrate radar and camera technology into the mix to figure out what's a vehicle and what's an overhead sign or traffic light.

Indeed it would, hence my surprise.

 

[JeffK]

It was certainly suited for street usage.

I forgot to mention. Just so you know Audi's TACC may not detect motorcycles, cross traffic, overhanging loads, vehicles with high ground clearance and the fine print on this 2016 A8 quick start guide (pg 6) says it's TACC does not detect stationary objects and may not react to people, animals, objects crossing the road, etc.

Basically, if you approach a stoplight with stopped cars, there's always a possibility you'll plow right into them with most modern TACC implementations (of nearly every manufacturer). Some are smarter than others especially when the give the camera the ability to override the radar or the radar to override the camera.... This can lead to false positives though, if it's too sensitive.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

I forgot to mention. Just so you know Audi's TACC may not detect motorcycles, cross traffic, overhanging loads, vehicles with high ground clearance and the fine print on this 2016 A8 quick start guide (pg 6) says it's TACC does not detect stationary objects and may not react to people, animals, objects crossing the road, etc.

Basically, if you approach a stoplight with stopped cars, there's always a possibility you'll plow right into them with most modern TACC implementations (of nearly every manufacturer). Some are smarter than others especially when the give the camera the ability to override the radar or the radar to override the camera.... This can lead to false positives though, if it's too sensitive.

Yes, I know what the Audi manuals say on limitations. The 2016, last outgoing model year, being basically the same for adaptive cruise than 2010 I believe, since it was the first current model A8 year (though it was of course facelifted since). It was not guaranteed to detect all kinds of stationary objects, though it was in reality much, much better at that than the previous generations of Audi adaptive cruise that only used single radar... I believe the 2009/2010 A8 was the first with the two radar, one camera setup for Audi.

But certainly I do not recall it being limited to highway usage. It is just a limitation of the system that it is not a full stop-and-go system for all situations. Definitely I used it without major issues everywhere as well, but not for guaranteed traffic light stopping of course.

The point I was answering was the claim that Tesla's TACC was for highways only. I was surprised by that.