Cognitive overload, or, Finally got burned by the HomeLink menu UI

[tinm]

The mistakes.
• Mistake #1: never be in a hurry.
• Mistake #2: always keep the burlap grocery bags in the car.
• Mistake #3: don't interact with the 17" screen while backing out of the garage.
• Mistake #4: don't be distracted by something in the side of the garage (not near the car) while committing mistake #3
• Mistake #5: don't drive into a closed garage door.

The play-by-play.
I was running out to the grocery store. I went out to garage, opened garage door, went to car, got in. Realized the burlap bag I use for groceries was inside in a kitchen cupboard, so ran back in to get it. Then ran back out to car. Was thinking about TuneIn and whether I should try it again or just stick with talk AM radio on the drive. Looked out rearview mirror (bright daylight, all is clear in driveway), side mirrors (all's clear), put car in reverse. Still thinking about radio vs TuneIn. Looking out driver's side mirror as I reach for the musical note app icon on 17" screen. Didn't actually look at screen while I reached and tapped screen. Redirected gaze to right left mirror (two car garage, car has to be parked real close to right edge of garage door frame on ingress and egress), continuing to back out, at around 1-2mph. It occurs to me the garage has gotten awful dark. It hasn't yet, in the ensuing milliseconds, occurred to me what that means.

Milliseconds fly by. Suddenly KERRRRRRRRUNNNNNNNCCCCCHHHH. I stop. Instantly. Now it occurs to me why it suddenly got awful dark. The garage door was CLOSING! What the? How the? I backed into it.I couldn't understand why. The rear of my Model S just hit one of the aluminum support bars that are spaced every 16 inches or so in the garage door. I immediately roll forward. Garage door reverses itself (it had not fully closed) and goes back into the up position. Full daylight fills the garage once again.

I get out, cursing, and check the damage. Very minor dent right under the rear spoiler area, to the right of and near the T logo. Plus, on closer inspection, to left of dent, about 4 inches of a horizontal hairline's worth of paint removed. Crap.

The conclusion.
The only thing I can think of is I inadvertently tapped the garage door open menu item in the Homelink menu, which by default drops down when I'm home, thanks to geolocation. My Homelink menu has two menu items, one for the garage, and one for the gate at end of driveway. So it eats up a little bit of screen real estate on top of 17" screen when deployed. My intent was to tap the music/multimedia icon, but I tapped the garage. Since my windows were closed, I didn't hear the garage door kick in. When I put it into reverse, I didn't know the garage door had begun its journey towards closing. If I had been going more than the routine 1-2 mph, I might have punched right through the custom wood-lined door.

Today's been a bummer of a day.

 

[L-P-G]

I reverse my S into the garage (2 car garage as well) this allows her car to drive straight in so we par as close to each other as possible which gives us loads of room to open doors. In doing so I noticed that if Summon didn't pull in far enough into the garage it could close the door on the frunk, so I moved the garage beam sensors from the bottom up to 20". this means that if any part of the car (not just the wheels) get in the way of the beam the garage won't close, of course if you have kids this may be bad if not it may be worth doing.

 

[bmah]

Ouch! Very sorry that happened to you, but thanks for posting that lesson to the rest of us.

Bruce.

 

[Boatguy]

I had a similar sort of problem. We have a two car garage, one car wide (old house). The MS was new and the auto close was set to ON. I was leaving and so was my wife. The MS was closest to the door. I backed out onto the street and was about to leave, when my wife backed the BMW i3 into the closing garage door. Not her fault at all, the MS had started the door closing and it's pretty hard to see from inside the car when you're backing out.

$200 to fix the garage door, some scratches on the antenna post of the i3 (mounted atop the car well aft), and husband with slightly bruised ego resulting from boasts about the advanced technology of the MS.

Homelink is now strictly manual!

 

[tinm]

I absolute refuse to go near auto close/auto open, because they're "dumb" features in that the driveway gate and garage door systems do not have the ability in their communications protocol to send "state" information, as in, "Hi there, I am open" or "Hi there, I am closed." All the protocol does is allow Tesla or your remote control to send a "uh, wake up and do IT" message where "IT" depends on the state of the door/gate at the time (open if closed, close if open), but the car has no idea what that state is. So I might drive home, my wife might have left gate open for me, and car goes la de da oooh we're here and sends out "auto open" signal and the gate is already open so it closes and I drive into gate. Same w/ garage door.

Unless I'm 100% wrong about the "stateful" aspect of the technology, but I don't think I am.

 

[Boatguy]

Unless I'm 100% wrong about the "stateful" aspect of the technology, but I don't think I am.

I think that's exactly the issue.

 

[tinm]

By the way here is the damage. I'm gonna take it to the only body shop in New Mexico authorized to do Tesla work. I'm worried that the tiny little line of paint damage may require repainting the entire trunk door.

 

[Discoducky]

I backed out with the trunk open and struck the top of the door. I wish there was a much bigger warning for this.

Also, with the parking sensors, it will be much harder to back into anything if Tesla implements safety controls and actuates the brakes when you are about to back into anything. This would be on my roadmap! HA!

Are you listening Body Controls and Autopilot team?

 

[tinm]

Rats, now see what you've gone and done? You just reminded me about the fact that my "classic" S doesn't have parking sensors. They would have been chirping like canaries, alerting me that the garage door had come down. But no, silly me, I had to be such an early adopter, parking sensors weren't available yet... sigh

 

[tinm]

Giving this thread a bump as I'm curious if any S owner has ever had a similar minor dent in rear trunk area of car, and if so, what the estimates/costs were for a body shop to fix it. I'm going to take the car in for an estimate soon, but was hoping to hear a few other numbers too.

 

[kort677]

in other word focus on the task at hand and you'll probably never back into your garage door