Emergency Lane Departure - False Positives

[curry684]

It's a persistent safety feature, why would you want to turn it off permanently if it is working correctly? Do you also rip out the airbags and seatbelts? Disable ABS and traction control and other passive systems designed to keep you safe?

I'll be first to admit ELDA was a failure on initial launch but saying that complete removal is the only acceptable solution and fixing the actual issues it had (or even to some extent may still be having) is not seems rather shortsighted off the other end of the scale.

 

[Paddy3101]

It's a persistent safety feature, why would you want to turn it off permanently if it is working correctly? Do you also rip out the airbags and seatbelts? Disable ABS and traction control and other passive systems designed to keep you safe?

Hmm.

Think Takata Airbags - Yes rip them out please.
Think 737 Max - Yes, stop using them altogether.

Both caused by safety features.

 

[SammichLover]

It's a persistent safety feature, why would you want to turn it off permanently if it is working correctly?

Airbags isn't the correct analogy.

Because "correctly" is still an issue, as it is screwing with my control of the vehicle at the least opportune time. If they actually were fully able to be correct to/beyond my ability they'd have Level 5 autonomy anytime, anywhere. If they could understand the road to my ability I'd have AP turned on.

I have AP on most of the time (<edit> beyond Tesla's official line of when it is good for, even ), if I do I'm confident in their ability to operate the vehicle at that time (<edit> under watchful eye). If I have AP off it is because I (or the system itself) lacks confidence in their understanding of the environment and they should not be overriding me, damn it.

<edit> This does imply I'd be a lot more comfortable with an ELDA that only warned. Coupled with a lot less false positives that might bring some value, although I could see some difficulty is in learning it so as to be able to act on it then. With very few false positives that implies very few triggers, too. Building understanding of what the ELDA triggering means requires a lot less opaqueness from Tesla. Without that you're just sending my brain down the rabbit hole of "what's going on?" Not sure how helpful that is.

 

[Msjulie]

There's no reason they could not make it optional as long as it is still not working well, and then make it mandatory, regardless of previous selections (just like AEB which must be turned off for every drive), once it is working with a high degree of reliability and with an appropriate amount of correction.

Tesla would be making a material change to an existing (purchased) product against the will of the rightful owner.

It's about choice; I don't want ANY software on my car that can take control w/o my permission and it's annoying that I would have to 'reconfigure' my car at every drive to (only temporarily) disable a feature I do not want. Had I known Tesla would provide firmware upgrades in this way, I would have thought hard about buying the car <- something that really burns me as the car is otherwise pretty great to drive but the principle of the thing matters to me a lot...

You don't have to agree with my reasoning or feelings about my car, no one does. If you want the feature on the car when it meets your specs, more power to you.. Me, I've disabled WiFi and my car now nags me about that because it want's to give me an update... nope, not until control-taking features are properly configurable.

 

[Msjulie]

It's a persistent safety feature, why would you want to turn it off permanently if it is working correctly? Do you also rip out the airbags and seatbelts? Disable ABS and traction control and other passive systems designed to keep you safe?

Airbags don't grab the wheel and steer your car... ABS doesn't activate the brakes unless your foot is on the pedal

Active systems are a bit different, honestly the more I think of it the more I know I would not have bought this car had I known Tesla would deliver features that take control and force me to re-configure my car each drive to turn them off. Sigh, repeating myself I know but it is about choice here...

 

[curry684]

Airbags deploy automatically based on arbitrary sensor input somewhere else in your car. There have been many cases where their deployment was controversial or premature, and it is common knowledge that they can cause level 2 burn wounds to the face.

ABS actively interferes in driver control by artificially limiting brake power being applied despite the driver fully depressing the brake pedal. It does so based on algorithms and estimates hoping to shorten brake distance by actively correcting driver input for the laws of physics.

I honestly don't see the difference here. Something in your car is doing something on its own to keep you safer than you would have been on your own. My BMW was loaded with similar active safety features. The Tesla can do the same stuff BMW will be doing in a few years right now, like obstacle aware acceleration and blind spot lane change detection.

What I see here is an understandable and primal response to a feature that wasn't refined enough to be released. No argument about that fact nor the gut response itself. I just don't see the case for disabling it any more than the vehement protesting in the 80's to mandatory seat belts. Those also ended up saving a lot of human lives.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

It's about choice; I don't want ANY software on my car that can take control w/o my permission and it's annoying that I would have to 'reconfigure' my car at every drive to (only temporarily) disable a feature I do not want. Had I known Tesla would provide firmware upgrades in this way, I would have thought hard about buying the car <- something that really burns me as the car is otherwise pretty great to drive but the principle of the thing matters to me a lot...

I understand your position, but I really think the biggest issue here is the apparent triggering of ELDA (not LDA) on a routine basis. It should REALLY only trigger in very rare circumstances where you are actually going to leave the road - and it probably should be tuned such that sometimes it does allow road departure and a crash (perhaps mitigated by a turn prior to collision). Not ideal, but if the ability to discriminate is not there, then it has to be dialed back.

It could be similar to AEB (but quite a bit trickier due to steering input required!) which allows crashes, but mitigates the kinetic energy dissipated by the impact significantly.

As I said, until it's working well enough such that people only notice it when they actually are going off the road, it should definitely be optional and be able to be turned off by default.

Beyond that, we can certainly debate whether Tesla should add a safety feature that functions perfectly to a car that was not there when you purchased it, and whether that should be mandatory or not. I'm sort of indifferent on that point, I suppose; I can see why some people would not want that with the steering correction. But if it works perfectly 100% of the time, and never false triggers, I also don't see much of an issue with it.

 

[Msjulie]

Airbags deploy automatically based on arbitrary sensor input somewhere else in your car. There have been many cases where their deployment was controversial or premature, and it is common knowledge that they can cause level 2 burn wounds to the face.

Or worse, Takata. But airbags are a law and not much I nor Tesla can do if I want any modern car..

ABS actively interferes in driver control by artificially limiting brake power being applied despite the driver fully depressing the brake pedal.

Not unless my foot is on the pedal, it does nothing.

I honestly don't see the difference here.

That's fine, you don't have to nor do you need to share my opinion. I'm just demanding the right to have my own... and that Tesla should respect that opinion.

 

[insaneoctane]

While I'm still not on 16.X (until I pick my car up from the SC later today), I understand the eventual automatic enabling of ELDA. It is a safety feature, that when calibrated properly and working properly, wouldn't make sense to not enable by default. The problem is that ELDA is still new (beta?) and it should have been introduced as an optional feature. See below for my suggested roll-out:

1. Introduce ELDA. DISABLED by default. STICKY settings for enable/disable
2. Gather lots of data to enhance NN
3. Change ELDA settings. ENABLED by default. STICKY settings for enable/disable
4. Gather GOBS of data to enhance NN further and collect all the edge cases
5. Change ELDA settings. ENABLED by default. NON-sticky setting for enable/disable (current state today)

Step 1 is to let the early adopters choose to enable it and get the NN trained up real good with people who want to. Once the NN is performing awesome (as calculated by interventions to ELDA behavior), even if that takes months, you then go to step 3. Then, with even MORE data now, you eventually take it to where it is now (step 5): Automatically enabled and resets that way each time. They just got the cart before the horse here. We should be on step 2 today.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Airbags deploy automatically based on arbitrary sensor input somewhere else in your car. There have been many cases where their deployment was controversial or premature, and it is common knowledge that they can cause level 2 burn wounds to the face.

ABS actively interferes in driver control by artificially limiting brake power being applied despite the driver fully depressing the brake pedal. It does so based on algorithms and estimates hoping to shorten brake distance by actively correcting driver input for the laws of physics.

I honestly don't see the difference here. Something in your car is doing something on its own to keep you safer than you would have been on your own. My BMW was loaded with similar active safety features. The Tesla can do the same stuff BMW will be doing in a few years right now, like obstacle aware acceleration and blind spot lane change detection.

What I see here is an understandable and primal response to a feature that wasn't refined enough to be released. No argument about that fact nor the gut response itself. I just don't see the case for disabling it any more than the vehement protesting in the 80's to mandatory seat belts. Those also ended up saving a lot of human lives.

The funny thing is you can unplug the airbags and the car will work fine. Similarly you can unplug a wheel speed sensor and ABS and stability control will be disabled.
Obviously doing those things would be dumb.
Frankly I'd like to see some solid statistical data that shows how well ELDA works before deploying it to every single Model 3. If Tesla presented evidence of a significant safety improvement that would probably make a lot of people feel better, including myself.

 

[Msjulie]

I understand your position, but I really think the biggest issue here is the apparent triggering of ELDA (not LDA) on a routine basis. It should REALLY only trigger in very rare circumstances where you are actually going to leave the road - and it probably should be tuned such that sometimes it does allow road departure and a crash (perhaps mitigated by a turn prior to collision). Not ideal, but if the ability to discriminate is not there, then it has to be dialed back.

Agree that mandating a badly-behaved feature is a compound problem

Beyond that, we can certainly debate whether Tesla should add a safety feature that functions perfectly to a car that was not there when you purchased it, and whether that should be mandatory or not.

Yes this is the heart of my issue with it - even AP, or FSD - if they worked perfect are still something I have to turn on and that's the way I want it..

 

[Darscot]

This is a feature I want to be able to disable and I do not like it constantly turning back on. Its completely common and safe to cross the lines when driving. Having a car alert and resist a nice driving line through a corner is not appreciated.

 

[ddm3]

Something in your car is doing something on its own to keep you safer than you would have been on your own.

There have been many examples in this thread showing how ELDA wasn't doing something that was safer and in fact was doing the exact opposite. Once someone experiences that, it's hard to trust that system again. I've had false positives and I'm now slightly more anxious when driving, wondering what will trigger another false positive. Even if I've turned it off, I sometimes have to double check because I can't remember if I did it for the current drive.

Also, there have been many examples of other Model 3 systems not working safely: phantom braking almost causing a following truck to jack knife, video showing a high-bed truck moving out of the lane and AP hitting the side of it before it's completely moved out of the lane, autopark hitting other vehicles, NOA auto-lane change moving into a lane with a fast-approaching vehicle, collision warnings sounding when passing by parked cars. All of these systems require the driver to explicitly enable them so they're arguably aware of their limitations. There currently is no choice with ELDA and we do not know its limitations.

For the examples you cite, the alternative is less safe. ABS brakes more optimally than a human can and keep the car steerable. Seat belts result in less serious injury than being ejected from the car. ELDA is not so cut and dried. There is context to consider in the case of steering. If I'm driving down a street and a child suddenly runs into the edge of my lane, I swerve out of the lane because there's no time to stop and avoid the child. ELDA, based on its name, would prefer I stay in my lane which results in the child getting hit. Since the argument is that ELDA is safer, is staying in the lane the safer choice?

(I know some may argue it's not supposed to work that way, but currently it will fight you and try to steer the car. No one can say for sure if that's a bug or a feature.)

 

[alourenco]

What I see here is an understandable and primal response to a feature that wasn't refined enough to be released. No argument about that fact nor the gut response itself.

I think you hit the nail on the head here, and I think it's going to cause a lot of headaches for adoption of ELDA after this. I actually have no doubt the feature will make my driving safer eventually, but given its performance it will be a very long time before I trust it again on local roads (I highly doubt my wife will ever trust it again). No matter what, I'll have that little doubt floating in the back of my mind that it will get spooked by a trash can and swerve me into oncoming traffic.

It was an especially delicate release to goof up because this is the first time the car is blurring the lines in a very visible way between the person driving and the machine driving. Most of the people I know who are dubious about self-driving cars fear this exact scenario. Autopilot allows for clear, obvious signalling over who is responsible for (and who is capable of) steering the vehicle ant any given moment: if you're going to blur those lines, you need to make very sure that you thread the needle, and unfortunately they didn't.

The people commenting that this should have been an opt-in feature at first are spot on, in my opinion: I at least will be turning it off every time I drive for at least the next half-dozen version updates.

 

[ogdrake]

LOL

The good news is that ELDA appears to be fairly rare as long as you don't drive on rustic, rural and/or twisty roads and stuff. I've not been able to set off ELDA on straigh-ish, well marked roads. Only LDA, which indeed is sated by signal lights (and maybe even strongish driver wheel input?). Objects close proximity to the road also might be a factor, which mostly gets you back to rural areas. There does appear to be a speed floor, as far as I've been able to tell, as well, so bike courier dudette zipping past you while you're crawling in traffic shouldn't fire it off, either?

I don't know about a bike courier in slow traffic, but a guy swooping past me on a motorcycle set it off today, at high speeds, on the Bay Bridge.

 

[ogdrake]

It was an especially delicate release to goof up because this is the first time the car is blurring the lines in a very visible way between the person driving and the machine driving. Most of the people I know who are dubious about self-driving cars fear this exact scenario. Autopilot allows for clear, obvious signalling over who is responsible for (and who is capable of) steering the vehicle ant any given moment: if you're going to blur those lines, you need to make very sure that you thread the needle, and unfortunately they didn't.

Seriously. Did they not hear about the MAX 8? Or did they hear about it, and go, "Well, we're a lot smarter than those jokers over at Boeing. They just make jet planes. We make cars that are smarter than the dolts who purchase and drive them. Full steam ahead!"

 

[Daniel in SD]

I set it off crossing the dashed bike lane to turn right at this intersection on my first drive using it. I guess I should make sure LDA isn't on. This does not bode well...View attachment 415090
I guess I can see that it looks like a soft shoulder since there is no sidewalk...

Happened again today. This is good because I'll get very comfortable with the alert noise and the amount of force necessary to override the system

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Happened again today. This is good because I'll get very comfortable with the alert noise and the amount of force necessary to override the system

You should try signalling when you turn.

 

[Paddy3101]

Happened again today. This is good because I'll get very comfortable with the alert noise and the amount of force necessary to override the system

Happened to my wife on Sunday.

She took it to the Service Center Monday morning and told them to keep the car until it's fixed. Not one to be messed with...

 

[jyalpert]

Was taking an exit ramp wide on corner entry and the system went off. Pretty startling. My wife shrieked. This system sucks.