Dashcam video: my Tesla smacks armored truck while on Autopilot

[S4WRXTTCS]

I haven't noticed any difference between how AP1/TACC reacts to a situation like this in the rain, or when it's not raining.

It's usually pretty late in detecting the merging vehicle. Late enough that I've taken over when it reached that uncertainty point.

The only time it's ever caused issue is the reverse situation when TACC is too slow in realizing someone is getting out of my lane so it slows me way down for no good reason.

 

[fren]

Quite a bit, since my car hit his bumper at an angle. Here's a closeup. It's around $5k of damage, I believe. The shop replaced the hood, bumper, fender, and some stuff under the bumper.

i changed my front bumper earlier 400€ + work so i guess less than 2K $

 

[Electroman]

That doesn't change the fact that Autopilot is designed to detect a car moving into your lane and react accordingly, and it performed that task admirably well hundreds of times in the year and a half I've owned the car, and now a little rain blinded the radar so that it could no longer see other cars? That's just nonsense!

Agreed. The rain excuse is just total BS. Your AP would have failed exactly the same way even on a nice sunny day for the same situation.

I have noticed the same behavior where a car changing lanes in front of you would not be detected until it is well inside your lane. Or even if the display shows the car straddling your lane (which means the systems know that it is encroaching your space), TACC would not stop.

I am guessing the reason is to avoid false positives. Imagine a curve and it is not easy to know with certainty that the car in front is encroaching in your lane or is in the next one.

 

[MidnightRider]

I noticed you hit him pretty good as the truck bounced, but he just kept going! Did he eventually pullover?

 

[redy]

I've owned my MS for a year and a half and have absolutely loved the car, but something happened a few weeks ago that really rattled my confidence in Tesla. While I was driving on the freeway in stop-and-go traffic on a gray, rainy day, an armored truck slowly moves into my lane, and my car smacks right into the back of the truck at 23 MPH while on Autopilot (AP1). It was all captured on my dashcam. Since I was behind the wheel, I take responsibility for the accident. However, Autopilot clearly failed to see the truck in a scenario that happens dozens of times per trip (vehicle moving into your lane). On a lark, I pinged some random Tesla execs with the video via Linkedin to see what they think. A few days later, I get a call from my local service manager from Tesla Costa Mesa. He told me that they had pulled the data from my car over the air, analyzed the information, and concluded that: A) my car was on Autopilot when the accident occurred; B) the software and hardware performed within specs and as designed; and C) the reason the accident occurred is because Autopilot is not reliable in rainy conditions. That last sentence absolutely blew my mind. Autopilot may fail to see a very large truck in broad daylight if it's raining?

What do you guys think?

Thank you very much for this post. Very useful to me as this could very well have happened to me. I use it as an assistance and not Level 3 but I still feel in relatively slow traffic like this I would not have been super attentive. Good learning example for me.

I would have thought AP1 or AP2 would slow down for this. Feel like its a basic function for AP here. Do you guys not agree?

 

[chillaban]

Thank you very much for this post. Very useful to me as this could very well have happened to me. I use it as an assistance and not Level 3 but I still feel in relatively slow traffic like this I would not have been super attentive. Good learning example for me.

I would have thought AP1 or AP2 would slow down for this. Feel like its a basic function for AP here. Do you guys not agree?

I don’t think so. It’s actually counterintuitive but it’s a lot easier for AP sensors to deal with following another car from 100ft away at 80mph compared to slow stop and go traffic where frequently you have to deal with the “lead car” switching or stopping.

You have to be vigilant for different reasons. At 80mph you want to be vigilant because basically any collision has a high chance of seriously injuring you. At 0-20mph you have a higher chance of getting into a cut-in or partial overlap situation where AP will potentially drive into something, but the collision will be less likely to kill you.

 

[K-MTG]

Did AEB brake or just beep?

 

[bro1999]

So AP can't reliably recognize tractor trailers, fire trucks, concrete barriers, and now huge armored trucks.
Someone get more brains for the neural net!

 

[trm2]

So people can't reliably recognize tractor trailers, fire trucks, concrete barriers, and now huge armored trucks.
Someone get more brains!

This could also be said.

 

[kiwi]

My experience has been that AP has real problems with vehicles entering/leaving your lane.

It does not recognise any other vehicle until they are almost fully in your lane, meaning it will smoothly move *into* a vehicle that is entering your lane. I pretty much always have to take over. This seems to be what happened here (I dont buy the comment from the SC - that it was rain). A really bad example is when the car ahead leaves my lane creating a gap. At some point my car accelerates to close the gap. If another car changes into my lane, into the gap, at that point - I will continue to accelerate into them.

It also keeps watching vehicles long after they leave your lane. This means that if you are following a car, and that car turns off into a side road, my car continues to brake/slow/stop till *long* after they have departed the lane and started down the side road. This completely confuses all the cars behind me. Its even worse when the car is leaving for a side road on the other side of the road (i.e. a side road to the left for americans/europeans, a side road to the right for Aus/NZ/UK). I will slow/stop while the car in front leaves my lane, traverses the other side of the road, and starts down the side road.

I'm on an AP2 MX.

 

[mongo]

It also keeps watching vehicles long after they leave your lane. This means that if you are following a car, and that car turns off into a side road, my car continues to brake/slow/stop till *long* after they have departed the lane and started down the side road. This completely confuses all the cars behind me. Its even worse when the car is leaving for a side road on the other side of the road (i.e. a side road to the left for americans/europeans, a side road to the right for Aus/NZ/UK). I will slow/stop while the car in front leaves my lane, traverses the other side of the road, and starts down the side road.

I'm on an AP2 MX.

That may be due to the radar not being able to detect sideways movement. From its point of view, the car in front slowed to basically a stop then became a weaker return until it disappears.

 

[f3honda4me]

What surprised me most was this accident didn't interrupt your conversation.

I was literally thinking - why do the people in the car act as if nothing happened lol.

Also, people need to stop acting like autopilot is a replacement for the driver. I use AP to help with driver fatigue, so I can relax my arms and hands a bit, rest my leg etc. But at no point should you be taking your eyes off the road and at all times be prepared to take over. It’s astounding to me how many people don’t understand that?

Edit: sorry I know that comes off a bit soap box ey

 

[viper2ko]

lmao what the hell, you were so calm and kept talking like nothing happened. But honestly, it seemed like you weren't paying attention. If I saw that truck coming in and was on autopilot, I immediately brake and take over. I don't trust autopilot as much as some users seem to. If I'm even next to an 18 wheeler I take over. If I get a suspicious feeling about a car in a lane next to me not maintaining their lane, I take over.

 

[Asymmetry]

Take that truck!

Surprising, I know Subaru eyesight doesn't work well in rain (visual sensor) but would of thought secondary AP sensors would of picked up that truck. Guess visual no because the truck is the same color as background(?)

 

[buttershrimp]

In my opinion,
1) great thread, way to put yourself out there like this to have a meaningful discussion
2) I was surprised Ap 1 didn’t stop because it was more in an area where the cat would start to brake (I wish I could have seen you IC), and I think AP2 might have avoided the accident on recent firmware , it’s one of those weird cases
3) imho accident is def your fault (no offense), I also like to let my car steer on approach to see if my car will brake in these situations too though, so I will let it approach the vehicle like you did but I’m ready to stomp when I see this situation if someone isn’t tailgating me
4) I think the latest firmware at least in AP2 would have caught this situation if your follow distance was different, I’ve noticed vastly different adjacent lane sensing and hesitancy on AP 2 10.4...

 

[Slymonkey]

A few thoughts and answers to your questions:

• I said it several times, I’ll say it again here. The accident was my fault. I fully admit that. I was screwing around with the screen and wasn’t paying attention to the road as I should have been. Dumb move. Lesson learned. Won’t ever happen again.

• I posted this thread for two reasons. One: for those of you who blindly trust TACC as I did, for the sake of your own driving record and the safety of others, please don’t. You can’t rely on it. Two: this is more of a philosophical debate and question: TACC is absolutely designed to slow down the car when someone moves sideways into your lane, and not just detect the car that’s in front of you at the time you turn on Autopilot. In my own experience, it sees cars moving into my lane and brakes. Just not this time. And think about it this way: it's such a basic, building block function that if Tesla can't get this right, autonomous driving not nearly close to being ready (it would be literally years and years away), and they're scamming our money asking us to pay for something that may not be available for the useful life of the car.

• So the interesting question is this: what happened here? And don’t give me that BS about what the manual says. You know as well as I do that when it says it TACC is not reliable in snow or rain, it’s talking about increased braking distance, not about the sensors being blinded by water or snow. I’m not a physics major, but I’m pretty sure radar is not affected by rain or snow. Or else you wouldn’t be able to fly airplanes in many parts of the world for most of the year.

• The audio wasn’t me talking, oblivious to my car rear ending an armored truck! It was a Bill Simmons podcast playing in the background ☺

• The AEB did beep, but I’m not sure if it would have braked because I had jammed on the brake already, just way too late.

• The truck did pull over a little down the road when it was safe to do so. Funny story: when the guard came out to inspect, I saw that he had his hand hovering over his exposed, holstered pistol. He thought I might be attempting to jack him! I apologized profusely, and he was cool after that. They turned out to be really nice people.

 

[Sawyer8888]

I would have thought AP1 or AP2 would slow down for this. Feel like its a basic function for AP here. Do you guys not agree?

I do agree it should be a basic function to see merging cars. Unfortunately, even as Tesla has pointed out in their reply to the OP, it can't always do that - paraphrasing.

I've had a few near misses in similar scenarios in stop-and-go traffic on AP2 in perfect weather conditions. I now know that I have to keep a close eye on cars trying to cut in front when at slower speeds because AP won't always stop in time, whether I am set to early or medium. Instead, AP will accelerate as though there was no car or large armored truck clearly in the way.

My experience has been that AP has real problems with vehicles entering/leaving your lane.

I agree with everything you said in your #50 post, including the bit about exiting vehicles.

The unfortunate behavior of AP that the OP experienced happens in reverse order for cars exiting the roadway. It's almost second nature for me now, in that I have to press the accelerator to maintain my speed when I am behind another car that has already made its way off the highway. AP initially takes into account that the car ahead has slowed in preparation for an exit, but AP is too slow to recover speed once that car has clearly vacated the lane in front of me. AP basically overreacts, which I imagine confuses other drivers around me if I don't make manual adjustments.

Thank you for sharing @Slymonkey. $5K for a Tesla bumper and hood repair seems about right. Fortunately in this case all the pain was only felt in your wallet. I am sure this will help others avoid a similar mishap with AP, which is still far from where it probably should be at this point.

 

[dailo]

Only reason I bought a Tesla was so I could have AP on and eat oatmeal during my morning commute. Thanks for the reminder not to do that!

 

[Slymonkey]

Only reason I bought a Tesla was so I could have AP on and eat oatmeal during my morning commute. Thanks for the reminder not to do that!

Lol. Well, glad to see that at least one person benefited from my misfortune! Actually, two people. I've spent the last month driving a rental Camry. Hate that damn car, but it's helped me become a decent driver again since I could no longer rely on a car that could almost drive itself.

 

[kiwi]

Thanks for raising this @Slymonkey. Its hearing stories like that that remind us
how stupid AP can be, and how much we need to stay on top of it.