Emergency Auto Brake Scare!

[firewire]

Couple of days ago I was driving in Central London with my partner and as you know the traffic is insane so you can't really go that fast any way. We were at a stop light and I saw a child and a woman behind him crossing the road. Now the woman was wearing a black burqa (Muslim veil) and by the time the lights turned green, she was well out of my Tesla's path.

We moved forward and suddenly without any reason the Tesla decided to do a full on brake that just took me and my partner in complete shock because it was so dramatic and abrupt, as if the car had hit a solid wall.
Now you can understand how the cars behind me reacted by honking and drivers waving hands like wtf?

I really think this AEB is in it's current state dangerous as it can easily cause an accident rather than prevent one. I am now seriously thinking about disabling it. What do you guys think? Have you had this sort of experience? I was on 2019.36.2.2 when this happened. I don't know if the long black veil the woman was wearing that freaked the car out as it was flowing behind her.

A month ago after the V10 update I experienced phantom braking on the motorway which really weakened my confidence in the whole Tesla AP concept. And now I am thinking why would anyone pay so much money for FSD when at least in the UK it's a complete waste of money? My whole confidence in the Tesla advanced software or AI is far from what it used to be when I bought into Elon's promise of the Tesla when I got one late last year. I still have almost three years to go before handing it on as I have PCP. I guess the good thing is that at that time there will be plenty of EVs from other manufacturers to choose from but now I doubt I will go for another Tesla again.

 

[Yev000]

I really think this AEB is in it's current state dangerous

Sure, I heard the same stories about Mercs. At least in a Tesla you can turn it off.

I experienced phantom braking on the motorway

This is well documented, you're going to tell me you didn't know that when buying?

I guess the good thing is that at that time there will be plenty of EVs from other manufacturers to choose from but now I doubt I will go for another Tesla again.

So you don't want to buy another Tesla in, what, 3 years because of phantom braking on AP and AEB. Ok, got it... Tried turning those features off? And you really think other manufacturers will crack AP and AEB better than Tesla? Have fun taking them to dealers for software updates - maybe Ford will keep their promise and you can buy that Mustang. Also wave goodbye to the supercharger network.

I mean Tesla has its flaws, but I don't see anyone doing it better. I don't see 3rd party charging being to supercharger standards in 3 years. Maybe Merc has the answer? But you will get phantom braking and AEB issues with them also - you get that on their regular cars now.

Also, in 3 years Tesla will have way better software.

Just to be clear I also think FSD is a pipe dream, at least in UK.

 

[gangzoom]

And at the same time we have another AP crashing into stationary traffic story on the web.

The difficulty is getting a system to react correctly 100% of the time is really hard, even harder when its having to 'guess' how humans react around it.

Human drivers make wrong judgement calls every day and crash/kill/injury, but its an acceptable risk. The AI system are been judged at a much much higher bar, unfairly perhaps, but thats us humans for you.

The system has to constantly weigh up the annoying false positive actions - phatom braking, with the one potential deadly false negative- The fatal Uber crash.

The reason Uber had disabled the car's safety features in the fatal crash event was because the number of false positive events (phantom braking) was deemed to high, the result though was even though the car 'saw' the pedestrian way before the human driver the car wasn't 'allowed' to brake and avoid the crash, instead it relied on the human operator who was not paying attention and killed someone - which as shocking as it sounds isnt, we as a society are very comfortable with the concept of a human killing another human with a car because its seen as 'routine' party of modern life. But a car been involved in a fatal crash whilst controlled by code is judged very differently.....

How FSD evolves is really fascinating, personally I love seeing all the 'testing' Tesla is doing with our cars. Google/Uber its all behind closed doors, but with Tesla, we actually get to try the software changes.

Maybe its just me, but having access to such cutting edge tech/code is fantastic, you do have accept all the flaws that go with it all though.

 

[Yev000]

And at the same time we have another AP crashing into stationary traffic story on the web.

Oh, the one where the driver was checking on his dog on the back seat while on AP.... I mean you can't even do that without AP (well you can if the road is really straight and you have balls of steel paired with half a brain cell). He crashed into a cop car. Probably somewhere where they don't have lay-bys to pull people over and he just blocked a lane. And the guy was probably doing a fair old bit of speed.

I mean unless there was some kind of bend if the guy was looking straight ahead he would see the cop car for a good ~10 seconds. He had his head looking at his dog for 10+ seconds while driving at speed. You do not do that unless the car is fully autonomous certified and there is no steering wheel.

I deal with software every day and I'm horrified how much trust people put in it with Tesla... The car tells you to hold the wheel for a reason. It's just software analyzing pictures from a camera........

You ever played a game where you had to fight? And a bit of graphics lag made you die? It's like this here, except you die for real and there is no respawning.... Look at the bloody road and be prepared to take over!

 

[gangzoom]

You ever played a game where you had to fight? And a bit of graphics lag made you die? It's like this here, except you die for real and there is no respawning.... Look at the bloody road and be prepared to take over!

Hehe you didn't play that many games than, in UT I got to a point where you anticipate the 100ms lag on a dial up, you can literally make a kill in the future before it happens by about 100ms

 

[Tony Hoyle]

AEB is going to be mandatory real soon, so switching from tesla won't help if you don't like it.

In this case without dashcam footage we can't know what the car saw. The two possibilities are it saw something you missed and saved you from an accident, or mistook something benign. It probably wasn't just someone walking away from the car.. whereas that might cause something like TACC to slow AEB is the 'you're about to crash' emergency stop with a much higher bar to triggering.

 

[Yev000]

Hehe you didn't play that many games than, in UT I got to a point where you anticipate the 100ms lag on a dial up, you can literally make a kill in the future before it happens by about 100ms

Well, sure. I stopped playing multiplayer a while ago. Not enough time for that and having a family...

I meant specifically graphics lag. The car has to process the frame and make a decision, if there was some kind of resource spike it reacts late, or not at all. In the case above, if the car was still processing the pedestrian when the go pedal was pressed, it could trigger the AEB - pure speculation of course, but if I was coding a system like that I'd be on the safe side with pedestrians.

 

[Cowpring]

Also lets not forget Autopilot is still in Beta. So although you can still use it we are all Beta testing it for Tesla.

I think we seem to notice and report every mistake the Tesla makes, but sometimes don't even notice when it does the job right, and actually avoids risk and damage.

Same with the whole "bUt eV cArS cAtCh oN fiRe aLl tHe tiMe" nonsense that people keep talking about. Taking milage into account (per billion miles), Teslas have a drastically smaller amount of fires than ICE cars (it's 5 Tesla fires per billion miles, and 55 ICE fires per billion miles), but yet every Tesla fire is reported in the media as if its some kind of major issue with them.