I mean with each phantom braking override you are becoming more and more likely to to override it right away instead of taking second look around before doing that during braking for a reason.
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Has anyone heard of a Tesla being rear ended because of phantom braking?
- Thread starter Kablooie
- Start date
I mean with each phantom braking override you are becoming more and more likely to to override it right away instead of taking second look around before doing that during braking for a reason.
zoomer0056
Active Member
I get it, see insertion of the word "valid". It's dangerous to get complacent when using ADAS. The driver always has to be aware and capable to override ADAS. The system goal is to assist the driver. However, the state of these ADAS now are they are a burden ... making it more difficult to drive.
If insertion of that word makes it easier to understand than let it be, but to me it is a tautology. An "invalid reason" would be a "cause" but not a "reason".
zoomer0056
Active Member
I had to look that up. There is always a reason. People don't know what they're saying, for example, when they say "it applied the brake for no reason."
Well, English is my third language so I just double checked my understanding of the difference between word "reason" and "cause" and it does not look like I had misused them...
In this case the reason for phantom braking would the flaw in the AI and the cause would be whatever triggered that AI flaw.
I think the core idea here is that the driver needs to be aware. If such awareness is constant, then "assessing" PB for its validity should not be occurring. It will always be PB
Of course - the above in a sense - deems the whole concept of autopilot somewhat useless. We can only hope they'll fix it.
BTW - I did drive Tessy last night for about 50 miles ( i don't get to do this often - wife hogs her constantly) in FSD and it was absolutely fantastic. No issues except those damn wipers that have the mind if their own
Of course - the above in a sense - deems the whole concept of autopilot somewhat useless. We can only hope they'll fix it.
BTW - I did drive Tessy last night for about 50 miles ( i don't get to do this often - wife hogs her constantly) in FSD and it was absolutely fantastic. No issues except those damn wipers that have the mind if their own
The driver should already be....looking though right?
I'll give my personal experience in a few situations...
If I am looking forward and I get a PB, I almost immediately override because I am already looking forward and I can see that there isn't a critical issue in front of me....if there is an issue happening down the road ahead of me then there is still time to let back off the accelerator and start going to the brake...if it is really a critical then #1 AEB would have kicked in and me pressing on the accelerator a bit wouldn't do anything anyway, and pressing on the brake(without stomping on it) would only disable the AEB and then the braking force might not be enough... or #2 it wasn't AEB critical yet and when it gets to that point AEB will kick on.
Now if I have my head turned because I am checking blind spot to change lanes or whatever, then I generally go ahead and hit the accelerator a bit to stop any "drastic" slow down, go into more of a coast while at the same time snapping my head and eyes back front to assess the situation...again, if was or turns into a critical issue then AEB should kick in.
But everyone is different, everyone has different driving experiences and capabilities, you can't make everyone happy all of the time and someone will always complain about something. Technology advances and bugs have to get worked out, technology advances and some people hate it no matter what.
can't win.
zoomer0056
Active Member
I learned, re-learned, a lesson the other day. Traffic was congested but was moving nicely through the green light. The light turned yellow two car lengths in front of me. Meaning it turned yellow in front of the car ahead of me. I assumed (you know what happens when you Ass-U-Me) the car ahead of me would go thru the yellow so I did not slow down. The car ahead stopped and my Feb 2022 MSLR AEB was activated. It was sudden and very effective! Wow, such a good car!! My my lessons: never be in a hurry and don't assume.
You are basically making my case but drawing different conclusion since you equate "looking" with "seeing".
Let me rephrase that this way: the driver is looking but not seeing something could lead to a bad situation if he relies on that and overrides the system (properly reassessing situation will not be fast enough to override the system; also this is not a binary situation - you could do less or more thorough reassessment trading thoroughness for time).
Have you ever been looking for something only to find it in place you have already checked several times? And in that case you are much more involved in the process...
I understand your point but I feel like you are trying to cast too wide of a net on where the problem would be in the environment that the car would be reacting too. I am trying to look at more common scenario possibilities...since there is a growing number of people complaining about PB incidents. If there weren't so many incidents then yes you would have to widen out what the car may be reacting too...well it can go both ways depending on how you think about it...hard problem isn't it?
First a couple of assumptions... AEB is going to catch any critical "likely to crash if AEB isn't activated" scenarios. 2nd assumption, the * below, mental reaction time is slightly faster due to your experienced brain being primed for certain driving indicators(brake lights, turn signals, faster than everyone else movements like fast swerving of a vehicle...)
If a driver is facing forward and paying attention then presumably they should be able to instantly(well as fast as their normal reaction time*) identify whether the car is making a mistake in PB or not for a normal type of emergency scenario. Normal emergency scenario's would be the car in front of them suddenly braking, a car in adjacent lane merging into your lane...things like that. I would argue that an attentive driver should be able to call BS pretty quick on the car's Phantom Braking in those specific scenarios.
Again, lots of complaints, not a lot of crashes, some people like to analyze scenarios to try to characterize what and why the car does what it does...
I'm only pointing out the psychological effects of the too frequent phantom braking - they condition you to treat any braking where you do not see anything causing them as phantom braking instead of double checking.
Here's an example. Some time ago when the phantom braking was happening more often, during road trip on a rural highway (one lane each way) stretch I got quite a few of phantom braking events to the point of being annoyed but not enough to just forgo the convenience of FSD. So at some point I override the braking event and then car tries to swerve and I override that too... Then I'm "what the hell was that" only to realize a little later that the car was trying to follow the NOA and make a turn (a case of parallel highways with multiple options to cross and car taking a less intuitive cross-road).
The tradeoff in my case was comfort of the passengers (don't make them more nauseated than they already are) instead of danger of rear-ending.
Also this is only a problem above certain frequency threshold.
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Yes I’m sure the computer got confused for some reason.. the day I kept getting phantom braking I noticed it was very sunny out and I kept seeing the water mirage effect on the road ahead. I’m wondering if it literally thought I was driving into a lake?
That being said, I almost wish there was a way to assess the conditions (sunny/rainy) to sort of inform you of potential for this to happen. Or better yet.. ask if you are ok with it ignoring these reflections or the potential emergency braking.
I heard someone on YouTube suggesting you can turn off the emergency braking feature temporarily.. but that seems like it might be even more dangerous in some cases. Not sure if that solves anything.
Soooo.... back to the topic of this thread, anyone have any PB caused collisions to report?
OncomingStorm
Member
you are probably correct there, however given the number of people on these boards actively trying to slander Tesla in any way they can, if there were an issue with PB causing rear end collisions I'd wager we'd know about it here, no matter how slim the evidence haha. and since there is 0 that i can see, I'm guessing that is pretty reflective of reality.I would assume the percentage of Tesla owners who are actively participating in this conversation is relatively small. Dont think we will get real-time data this way
zoomer0056
Active Member
Yeah, that makes sense. So I think this thread has its answer to a good question.
Im a huge tesla fanboy, but did instruct my wife to avoid using FSD, and be very cautious about using TACC.
I tend to think it works perfect when one is in traffic, following other cars.
It does have problems with "seeing things" when there's no clear, moving obstacle in front of it.
Now - this opinion comes from me driving 3500 miles on our last road trip, and we've only owned the car since December. The few instances i experienced were plenty for me to be very cautious.
OncomingStorm
Member
you should 100% always be cautious, but in my experience PB is a non-issue, i drive 2-3000 miles per month probably 60-70% on FSDb/AP and even back when i'd get fairly hard PB it was never breaking to a stop or anything crazy, at most 10mph or so, I think a lot of the alarm just stems from the "feeling" of how the car decelerates, can give you that roller coaster sinking feeling lol.
anecdotally, i had a fairly hard PB incident happen while a cop was following pretty closely, i had just saw him in my rear view and BAM, felt like the car had smacked the brakes. afterwards the cop barely reacted and just moved around me and i looked down to notice i had only reduced speed by 10mph lol
thats obviously just my experience in my regional area but i think that kind of thing is accountable for a lot of PB issues, and these days thats so rare (again in my experience). but of course, no matter what you are driving you should always be in full control and have good situational awareness
mtbwalt
Member
I use FSD beta and I don’t think I have ever experienced “phantom braking” as people describe it here on TMC.
I do occasionally sense gentle deceleration for no discernible reason with FSD beta. It may take me up to one second to confirm there is indeed no reason, then my foot resting on the accelerator gently gooses the accelerator, and I have lost 2-3 mph before the car is back at my set speed. That’s less change than what naturally occurs for drivers who are not having their car regular their speed.
The described “car coming to a halt in high speed traffic” seems bizarre to me. How would an alert driver allow that to happen?
What I experience is almost like a rare “are you really driving” check. Gently goose the accelerator - yes, I am driving.
I’m in NC so maybe this is less of an issue as there may be fewer tailgaters here than in CA. But really if a 2 mph change is triggering other drivers then there is a problem and it’s not the Tesla.
I do occasionally sense gentle deceleration for no discernible reason with FSD beta. It may take me up to one second to confirm there is indeed no reason, then my foot resting on the accelerator gently gooses the accelerator, and I have lost 2-3 mph before the car is back at my set speed. That’s less change than what naturally occurs for drivers who are not having their car regular their speed.
The described “car coming to a halt in high speed traffic” seems bizarre to me. How would an alert driver allow that to happen?
What I experience is almost like a rare “are you really driving” check. Gently goose the accelerator - yes, I am driving.
I’m in NC so maybe this is less of an issue as there may be fewer tailgaters here than in CA. But really if a 2 mph change is triggering other drivers then there is a problem and it’s not the Tesla.
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