Emergency System Alert Sound - Yikes!

[Dogtone]

Driving down a city street today my car started blasting that noise the radio broadcasts during an emergency alert. Looking at the info display in my car I saw a red flashing icon of some sort in the lower left corner. After tapping the icon it stopped. The icon looked something like 2 wheels on a fat axle.

I did my errands and drove home with out event.

Any ideas what this might be?

 

[qdeathstar]

Well, I’m not proud to admit this... but a few weeks ago i was texting in my Tesla “DUN DUN DUN” while driving and was startled to hear the sounds you were hearing. The same ones.


Eyes eyed, confused... bewildered even, I glanced up to see that while my foot was firmly planted on the gas cars in front of me were breaking! How dare they! Right?

Turns out it was the collision avoidance system. Whew.


I’m not sure if that’s what you heard, but it sounded similar.

 

[animorph]

Three quick buzzes is a collision warning. I wouldn't look at the dash first thing. But frequently the car is just getting too excited about passing a parked car or something. But there are those times when I'm trying to check mirrors and miss a slowing car in front of me.

 

[boaterva]

It would be nice if there were a friggin’ pop up for these things with a label. Collision? Sideswiped? Rear End? So at least you could train yourself as to what they are. Maybe an option for newbie mode. I’m not joking as there’s no guidance when you get one of these you have zero idea what the cause is since they are so infrequent. Not even an ‘where did it come from’ on the display.

We drive down a street near home and there’s one curve where a parked car ‘sticks its butt’ out a bit. Our 3 loves to sound the collision alarm because the radar thinks it’s that too close. Had to tell the GF it’s a good test of the radar. But there’s no indication on the screen or anything, just the car screaming.

 

[PURE NRG]

You sure it wasn’t the emergency broadcast alert from your phone? It transmits it on the car. I had several flash flood alerts yesterday while driving.

 

[Dogtone]

You sure it wasn’t the emergency broadcast alert from your phone? It transmits it on the car. I had several flash flood alerts yesterday while driving.

Great observation! That would explain the flashing red icon that could have been the phone. Didn’t know about that.

It would be nice if there were a friggin’ pop up for these things with a label. Collision? Sideswiped? Rear End? So at least you could train yourself as to what they are. Maybe an option for newbie mode. I’m not joking as there’s no guidance when you get one of these you have zero idea what the cause is since they are so infrequent. Not even an ‘where did it come from’ on the display.

Totally Agree!

 

[alexGS]

I used to have a car that about once a month would sound three chimes and display a large red icon for half a second, usually as I was approaching a roundabout etc. and least able to be staring at the LCD.

One day after a year or two, I caught it out - Coolant Temperature Sensor Failure - in other words, a total red herring. No obvious cause but probably poor grounding etc. The annoyance was that for all that time, I had no way of telling what it was. No fault code logged.

Tesla and others probably should take a leaf from the Airbus rulebook, and make a ‘flight log’ that you can review at the end of the trip; noting any displays and warnings against a timestamp... and perhaps with auto-hyperlinks to the owners manual for explanation, or even links to saved camera videos etc.

-Alex

 

[Puma2020]

You sure it wasn’t the emergency broadcast alert from your phone? It transmits it on the car. I had several flash flood alerts yesterday while driving.

While driving yesterday, I heard this, for the first time... in 2 years!
Yikes is correct. Startled me quite a bit.
No indication of anything wrong. Nothing! Screen was normal, nothing inside or outside seemed amiss.
Just the loud beeping. I thought it sounded like the emergency alert tones.
I had the radio muted, so I turned up the volume but nothing unusual was happening on that station.
Then about 30 seconds or a minute later, the tones came back. They played briefed and went away.
When I got home, I noticed the phone had a weather related emergency alert notice.

Would have been nice if the screen had said something like "Emergency Alert on your phone".
Perhaps even reading the text message out loud.
Sadly, all I got was nothing but the loud tones!