You’re right. Under ‘auto driving’ prior to the Tesla, the natural thing was to cover the brake pedal. I too, find myself covering the throttle now.
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Car behaviour on Minor Roads
- Thread starter Glan gluaisne
- Start date
Its a pain, but these roads were never made with modern traffic in mind. Loads of them are little more than horse-and-cart tracks that have been tarmacadamed.
I drove over Kirkstone Pass a bit ago and engaged Autosteer for a laugh. The car nearly went through a stone wall as it utterly crapped it's pants. I guess that there aren't too many 1-in-6 grade, dry-stone walled, one-laned roads in Fremont!
True, our house sits on a bit of land that used to house a cart shed and a stable. There's no problem driving most cars around here, as long as they aren't too wide (the main reason I waited for the Model 3 to come out, the S and X are too wide). Other makes often have an option to turn off the alarms when driving on lanes like ours, though. This was pointed out to us today when looking as Renault Zoe, its alarms can be easily deactivated, so you only need to have them on when driving on roads where it makes sense for them to be on. I think the only exception to this is the forward-facing collision detection sensing, that has to be always on, but that isn't what seems to cause most of the Tesla issues, they seem to be related to the sides of the road.
Be a really good idea if some of the people writing the software for Tesla saw it. Much of my driving is on lanes like that, and it's pretty clear that the car regularly gets completely spooked by them.
Moderator comment - post and replies moved from closed thread "Was going to order, now in 2 minds"
FWIW, my car applies the brakes and swerves, whilst sounding the "klaxons of doom" when neither AP or TACC are engaged, so it's very definitely not just an AP or TACC issue. I can even predict a few places where it will do it consistently. My wife stopped driving the car a few months ago now, because she found the false alarms, sudden application of brakes and the false application of corrective steering input too scary. To be fair, we drive on narrow lanes much of the time, and it seems that the car just cannot cope with roads like this without lots of false alarms. Either way, the sudden application os the brakes (as in a full on emergency stop) is not solely a "feature" of AP or TACC, the car can and will do this when being driven without either of those engaged.
Headlight adjustment is something that has been thrown way out of whack by software updates on my car a few times. I've tried the auto-adjustment feature, but this sets the lights too high, and I get flashed a lot, so I keep taking it to the local garage to get the lights aligned properly. So far I've now had the lights re-aligned three times in the space of a year, but it's only a ten minute job, costs me a tenner each time, but would be free at a Tesla SC I'm sure.
Auto wipers seem reasonably OK in daylight, or perhaps with good street lighting, but frankly they often just fail when it's very dark. Unlike every other car with autowipers, Tesla try to use the cameras for rain detection, and this seems not to work well at all when it's very dark. With no manual wiper stalk control, this means using the touch screen in the dark, perhaps in heavy rain, to try and set the wipers to the correct rate. I find that it's safer to pull over and stop to do this at night. Those that rarely drive down very dark and windy lanes may well not feel that the autowiper issue is significant, for me it's got to the stage that I cannot put up with it any longer.
FWIW, my car applies the brakes and swerves, whilst sounding the "klaxons of doom" when neither AP or TACC are engaged, so it's very definitely not just an AP or TACC issue. I can even predict a few places where it will do it consistently. My wife stopped driving the car a few months ago now, because she found the false alarms, sudden application of brakes and the false application of corrective steering input too scary. To be fair, we drive on narrow lanes much of the time, and it seems that the car just cannot cope with roads like this without lots of false alarms. Either way, the sudden application os the brakes (as in a full on emergency stop) is not solely a "feature" of AP or TACC, the car can and will do this when being driven without either of those engaged.
Headlight adjustment is something that has been thrown way out of whack by software updates on my car a few times. I've tried the auto-adjustment feature, but this sets the lights too high, and I get flashed a lot, so I keep taking it to the local garage to get the lights aligned properly. So far I've now had the lights re-aligned three times in the space of a year, but it's only a ten minute job, costs me a tenner each time, but would be free at a Tesla SC I'm sure.
Auto wipers seem reasonably OK in daylight, or perhaps with good street lighting, but frankly they often just fail when it's very dark. Unlike every other car with autowipers, Tesla try to use the cameras for rain detection, and this seems not to work well at all when it's very dark. With no manual wiper stalk control, this means using the touch screen in the dark, perhaps in heavy rain, to try and set the wipers to the correct rate. I find that it's safer to pull over and stop to do this at night. Those that rarely drive down very dark and windy lanes may well not feel that the autowiper issue is significant, for me it's got to the stage that I cannot put up with it any longer.
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Rustybkts
Member
I notice that you have mentioned this uncontrolled steering before. My car will beep at me the odd time I get close to the verge and the message about giving steering assistance will come on but the steering is never taken from me.
Probably like teaching my granny to suck eggs but have you tried disabling steering assistance in the menu?
I have everything that can be turned off, turned off, to try and minimise the impact of the false alarms. The car will very forcefully try to steer to the right (always to the right) whenever I pass one particular junction, and will do the same at other times, like last week, when I accelerated out of a left hand bend and the car decided that it wanted to drive into hedge.
It is perhaps worth stating the obvious ... that this is particular to your car in your location. I routinely drive in along not dissimilar roads/tracks and have to say that though I do have had warning alerts I have never ever experienced the car actively trying to steer dangerously. From the range of experiences we read about on the forum I think it's fair to say that though your issues are extremely significant in your own situation they are by no means representative of the average owner experience!
You're right, and I try to caveat every single observation with the fact that this happens on narrow and winding roads in the main, and that the auto wipers issue is primarily when it's very dark. Doesn't make it acceptable from my point of view, though. I've never owned a car before that got upset when it was driven on "the wrong type of road".
There do seem to be some significant differences between cars, not sure whether it's some sort of variability in the sensors or perhaps just the specific type of road people use (my theory is that it's probably the latter). The last severe event (last Wednesday morning) I documented in this post (there are photos of the road where it happened later in that thread), and did seem to be a specific set of circumstances: [UK] 2021.4.x
Several people have had the lights need re-adjusting after updates, too, so again, it's definitely not just me being picky, or trying to find fault with the car. This is the latest thread, but there's at least one other from earlier last year: Headlights adjusted unexpectedly?
Same goes for auto wipers, it's not me deliberately trying to find fault, others feel much the same way: Auto Wipers are awful
Maybe I've been spoiled by driving Toyotas for many years, where things like the auto wipers and safety assistance features just work so seamlessly you never notice anything unusual.
Mine seems to vary from a barely perceptible nudge, to, as happened last week, a pretty vigorous turn to the right. It's always a turn to the right, never the left, something that's puzzled me with one road junction where this happens regularly. The junction looks like this (very rough sketch!):
The lane on the left is single track, but slightly wider right at the junction. If there is a car waiting to pull out (the blue arrow) then my car (the red arrow) will always, without fail, sound the alarm, brake hard and try to steer to the right, often quite vigorously, but equally often sometimes a barely perceptible nudge. It does always brake hard, pretty much a full on emergency stop if I didn't hit the accelerator quickly to cancel it. It's done it several times at this exact spot, but only ever when there's a vehicle waiting to pull out from the left. If that side junction is empty there's no indication on the screen in the car that anything unusual has been detected.
My theory is that the car initially mistakes the side road for the road I'm driving on, then detects the car in that road as a threat (which it would be if I was to barrel into it at ~40mph). It would be interesting to see the underlying FSD "picture", as the videos I've seen of that do suggest that there is a fair bit of jitter, as the system refines its interpretation of what the cameras and radar are detecting.
Not found a way to stop the "klaxons of doom" and the hard braking/steering intervention yet. I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with any form of lane keeping assistance, as it does it when neither AP or TACC are being used, and with everything that can be turned off, turned off. I strongly suspect it's collision avoidance that's kicking in, and as I understand it, that's active by default, not just on Tesla's, but on pretty much every other new car that has it.
A dealer told us last weekend that it was mandatory to have this enabled, and even on cars where it can be turned off, it will reset to be on the next time the car starts. This was from a dealer, though, so it's anyone's guess if it's correct!
darkNstormy
Member
Should get a few Model 3 owners to go down to your bend of doom and try to replicate the problem!
In better times, we could have had an owners club meet.
...but the the thought of lots of M3’s diving randomly into the bushes...
I quite often get the klaxon (I have it set to early warning), but never had collision avoidance actually take over steering or brakes. I also drive on lots of narrow winding country roads / singletrack. I have lane assist etc turned off, warnings only settings.
rincewind
Member
@Glan gluaisne your drawing matches a scenario of mine. It’s actually on a normal B road going though a small town called North Weald. The road bends to the right, but there is a cut in on the left where cars are always parked, so the car is seeing those parked cars as possible collision. I get the warning noises every time, but I don’t get corrective action by the car.
I think people just accept it and conveniently over look such minor shortcomings, because the rest of the fan experience is ' so wonderful'.
Mine has steered dangerously to avoid phantom obstacles, issued the klaxons of death (brilliant name for it) warnings on too many occasions to measure, given me multiple phantom braking experiences, has the worst autowipers I have experienced in the last two decades and is just generally an irritating pile of crap. Fast in a straight line though, so there is that.
Since you are quoting my post I can only assume that you must believe I just made it up since your own experience is different! Please respect that what I say is relevant to my experience. Alternatively please don't quote me individually when making a generalised criticism.
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