I grazed a deer yesterday--no alert from car

[croman]

If Tesla can't differentiate between a leaf and a deer, we have some serious issues. Also, EAP is stereoscopic and they can use parallax to determine both size and distance of objections without radar (which is, actually, the primary sensor for both AP1 and AP2).

If my car brakes for overhead bridges and signs that pose no danger, it could at least also brake for deer. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Max*]

If Tesla can't differentiate between a leaf and a deer, we have some serious issues. Also, EAP is stereoscopic and they can use parallax to determine both size and distance of objections without radar (which is, actually, the primary sensor for both AP1 and AP2).

If my car brakes for overhead bridges and signs that pose no danger, it could at least also brake for deer. That's all I'm saying.

In stereoscopic cameras to get good depth recognition both focal length and camera separation are key.

If you look at other high end cars, the cameras are much further apart than they are in the Tesla. Also, while there are 3 forward looking cameras, I thought all 3 have different focal lengths. And from what I remember (my computer vision is rusty, so I might be remembering wrong) this adds some error to the depth calculation for stereoscopy.


Again, not saying Tesla can't do something with it. Just saying that even though the hardware is there, they probably aren't even close to getting the software up and running (I thought only 1 or 2 cameras are active now?)

 

[SomeJoe7777]

should I not have ex
pected any alert from my Model S? I was not using auto-pilot at the time (I have AP 1 if that matters). However, I was under the belief--perhaps incorrectly, that it was designed to warn you or even brake if a "pedestrian" were to come into your immediate path. Is this not correct?

Where did you come to this conclusion that this car was supposed to avoid or warn for pedestrian or animal collisions?

• Was this written on the Tesla web site?
• Is it stated in the owner's manual?
• Did a Tesla employee / salesman / representative tell you that this functionality was present?

I'll give you a hint: No, no, and no.

You invented this expectation in your head, and it's incorrect.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people think that a Tesla can and should be able to execute every fantastic task they can think of, then they're incensed when they learn it doesn't. Spend a little less time dreaming about the future and a little more time reading the owner's manual.

I apologize for this being a harsh reality but these assumptions about the car's capabilities and endless arguments over what it's "supposed" to do are just getting out of hand. Tomorrow, someone's going to post that their car didn't fly over an obstacle and now they're suing Tesla because they thought it would.

And oktane, I don't want to hear that your 1956 Ford Fairlane avoided pedestrians way better than your Tesla. Sell your Tesla and dust off your Fairlane if you like it better.

For the record, I'm with Max: My AP1 85D consistently and accurately issues FCW alerts all the time when I'm approaching slow or stopped traffic too fast. It's saved my butt on several occasions, one of which is right here:

 

[croman]

Actually in Europe and Australia they have a safety feature called "Active Hood" that is intended to avoid head collisions with pedestrians and animals (successful dashcam footage of it not killing a joey in a collision in 2016 (the car did break the poor creature's leg)).

AP1 is intended to avoid all manner of collisions including with pedestrians and cyclists. Elon himself has tweeted about it. When a CEO says something specific, its as if the company itself is saying it (at least legally). He's said Teslas should be avoiding these types of collisions and I think he is in the best position to know.

So I'll give you a hint - yes, yes, and, lets see, yes.

 

[Max*]

Actually in Europe and Australia they have a safety feature called "Active Hood" that is intended to avoid head collisions with pedestrians and animals (successful dashcam footage of it not killing a joey in a collision in 2016 (the car did break the poor creature's leg)).

AP1 is intended to avoid all manner of collisions including with pedestrians and cyclists. Elon himself has tweeted about it. When a CEO says something specific, its as if the company itself is saying it (at least legally). He's said Teslas should be avoiding these types of collisions and I think he is in the best position to know.

So I'll give you a hint - yes, yes, and, lets see, yes.

I think I'm in the wrong thread. Is this the thread where the OP hit a pedestrian or cyclist? No, no and no.

It was a fawn. And as such, I refer you back to post 5.


Unless you can show me a tweet by Elon claiming that the Model S can avoid animals too?

 

[SomeJoe7777]

AP1 is intended to avoid all manner of collisions including with pedestrians and cyclists. Elon himself has tweeted about it. When a CEO says something specific, its as if the company itself is saying it (at least legally). He's said Teslas should be avoiding these types of collisions and I think he is in the best position to know.

1. I remember no such tweet from Elon regarding pedestrian avoidance.
2. If one exists, did he claim A) the Tesla actually does this (i.e. implemented), B) the Tesla will eventually do this (i.e. hardware capable, software coming later), or C) one day he'd like a future Tesla to do this (i.e. will install new hardware with this capability at a future time).

Details matter. Furthermore, on the totem pole of authority on the car's capabilities, up near the top are the owner's manual and website statements, in the middle are sales agents and forum posts, further down are most journalism articles, and at the bottom are Elon's tweets and Seeking Alpha. If we're going to state that the car actually possesses fully implemented pedestrian avoidance capabilities, let's see a source better than Elon's tweets, yes?

 

[croman]

I think I'm in the wrong thread. Is this the thread where the OP hit a pedestrian or cyclist? No, no and no.

It was a fawn. And as such, I refer you back to post 5.


Unless you can show me a tweet by Elon claiming that the Model S can avoid animals too?

You think technology can distinguish enough to distinguish between one type of animal (human) vs. others? Where is the line in the sand? Radar can't differentiate humans vs. other animals all that well (if at all -- were all bones and water).

 

[MorrisonHiker]

1. I remember no such tweet from Elon regarding pedestrian avoidance.
2. If one exists, did he claim A) the Tesla actually does this (i.e. implemented), B) the Tesla will eventually do this (i.e. hardware capable, software coming later), or C) one day he'd like a future Tesla to do this (i.e. will install new hardware with this capability at a future time).

Details matter. Furthermore, on the totem pole of authority on the car's capabilities, up near the top are the owner's manual and website statements, in the middle are sales agents and forum posts, further down are most journalism articles, and at the bottom are Elon's tweets and Seeking Alpha. If we're going to state that the car actually possesses fully implemented pedestrian avoidance capabilities, let's see a source better than Elon's tweets, yes?

There have been videos showing pedestrians being detected on AP1 cars: Tesla Autopilot significantly improved pedestrian detection in v8 update tests show, now renders humans

 

[croman]

Legally speaking a CEO's comments are more important than the actual sales materials themselves. Just look at Trump's tweets and the travel ban. Its not really up for debate.

 

[chillaban]

FWIW, a collision avoidance system, regardless of whether you feel it was marketed to detect deer collisions, is not a 100% bulletproof bubble for your car. They recognize some situations but not others. Same goes for any car.

If it makes you feel any "better", I recently helped someone go through an insurance claim process for the first time. Long story short he was driving a '17 Audi A4 with ACC and LDW, which is a camera + quad radar system rated as IIHS TSP "Advanced+" AEB. He rear ended a Mazda at around 20mph. The car did not provide any warning or AEB. Flat out centered bumper on bumper contact. Could not be a more textbook example of a situation that AEB/FCW should detect.

Of course it's his fault, but if anyone has a sob story about being let down by AEB/FCW, it's him. I suggested that he file a NHTSA complaint about this one because it was such an egregious case of a FCW miss that it leaves you wondering if the system works at all against things that aren't silver car blow-up dolls.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

There have been videos showing pedestrians being detected on AP1 cars: Tesla Autopilot significantly improved pedestrian detection in v8 update tests show, now renders humans

If the car is doing something regarding pedestrian detection, that's great. But the point is, what is the guarantee that Tesla is claiming, and therefore what should we expect? This is where Tesla has done a poor job, and where Elon's mouth/typing gets him and the company into trouble.

Legally speaking a CEO's comments are more important than the actual sales materials themselves.

Legally speaking, perhaps. In terms of accuracy, no. And thus the controversy. Mr. Trump isn't the only public figure who needs to have their phone taken away from them.

 

[electracity]

You think technology can distinguish enough to distinguish between one type of animal (human) vs. others? Where is the line in the sand? Radar can't differentiate humans vs. other animals all that well (if at all -- were all bones and water).

Waymo car reads human body language: The direction a human is looking. If the human is waving. If a bicyclist is preparing to move.

I expect Waymo and others explicitly handle running creatures too. No reason to need to know it is a deer or a dog. Just the velocity and distance. "Don't hit stuff" is the autonomous car prime directive.

 

[Max*]

You think technology can distinguish enough to distinguish between one type of animal (human) vs. others? Where is the line in the sand? Radar can't differentiate humans vs. other animals all that well (if at all -- were all bones and water).

I KNOW technology can differentiate between an animal vs. a human. I'm not talking about radar, I'm talking about the camera.

The radar is useless for this stuff. If you relied soley on radar, you'd be stopping for every aluminium can in the road. There's a reason the radar is coupled with the camera.

If we relied on radar only for AEB, you would be correct that if the car didn't stop for a deer it wouldn't stop for a person. Problem with that is, it would stop for every road sign, for all high RCS road debris, etc.

That's not how the technology works.

 

[Max*]

Waymo car reads human body language: The direction a human is looking. If the human is waving. If a bicyclist is preparing to move.

I expect Waymo and others explicitly handle running creatures too. No reason to need to know it is a deer or a dog. Just the velocity and distance. "Don't hit stuff" is the autonomous car prime directive.

Ah, and here in lies the rub that most of us have been saying indirectly in this thread.

The Tesla is not Autonomous. It's L2. Even the lowest level of autonomy starts at L3, and until you're really in L4 territory it's hard to call it autonomous.


So no, the Tesla can't do it now. Yes it will be able to. Who knows how they programmed it. You can't expect an animal to behave the same way a human does, so it's not just a simple distance/acceleration/etc. calculation.

"Don't hit stuff" needs to figure out what it can and cannot hit.

Would you rather hit a whicker chair at 80mph, or slam the brakes with AEB and cause a rear-end collission?

I bet your answer would be different if I told you there's a child standing in the middle of the highway.

I bet your answer would again be different if I told you it was a buffalo.

And again would be different if I told you the buffalo is actually a dog.

etc.


Yes, autonomous cars need to figure all this out. Yes they'll get there. No, we're not there today with the Tesla.

 

[Max*]

Also, from Tesla's user manual page 86 [emphasis mine]

The forward looking camera and the radar sensor are designed to determine the distance from any object (vehicle, motorcycle, bicycle, or pedestrian) traveling in front of Model S. When a frontal collision is considered unavoidable, Automatic Emergency Braking is designed to apply the brakes to reduce the severity of the impact, even if you are already applying the brakes.

Let's close this out, @croman was correct on this one thing -- the manual does claim to be able to stop for a pedestrian.

Now regarding the fawn -- The wording is confusing, because they also use the term "any object", which would imply a fawn, a horse or a donkey -- if that's the case, then the Tesla failed for the OP. But then they list only 4 items, with no "etc.". I could see this going either way.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

Also, from Tesla's user manual page 86 [emphasis mine]

Let's close this out, @croman was correct on this one thing -- the manual does claim to be able to stop for a pedestrian.

Ah, interesting. Now, the key here is two items:

1. This is only under the AEB section, not the FCW section. You would have to be imminently close to hitting something for AEB to activate, thus why we haven't seen the AEB display for the pedestrian but once in the post with the link cited earlier in the thread.
2. The manual does not say anything about animals, only pedestrians, which indicates to me that there is pattern matching going on that is looking for a human form. It's highly likely that any animal wouldn't be detected by this pattern matching since very few animals look like an upright human.

Unfortunately, the words "any object" are present there, which confuses things. Nevertheless I wouldn't take that statement as being definitive that the vehicle should use AEB to stop for animals.

I will now sincerely apologize for my harshness in my above post as it does appear officially that at least some pedestrian safety mechanisms are present in the Tesla and by extension, one could possibly infer that it might also try to stop for animals, although it apparently does not and we apparently cannot rely on that.

It appears my plate of crow is growing bigger.

 

[Max*]

@SomeJoe7777 I came to the same conclusions.

It's as clear as mud if it "should" stop for a fawn or not (i.e. "any object"). The car didn't stop, so maybe the OP should email Tesla and tell them what the manual says and see what they respond with.

 

[oktane]

Legally speaking a CEO's comments are more important than the actual sales materials themselves. Just look at Trump's tweets and the travel ban. Its not really up for debate.

Is that why Elon's recent tweets have been devoid of all content and mostly nonsensical lately?

 

[MS16]

Whether is is a fawn, a human, a polar bear or a concrete barrier--it is an object in its immediate path. I would like to have though that if I had enough time to see and react and all but avoid any impact, that the computer system would have had enough time to alert--at least after the first deer crossed directly in front.

Since 2014 Volvo has had a system to detect and brake for deer, moose, etc.

Volvo is having problems detecting kangaroos though.

Volvo works on detection system to dodge kangaroo collisions

New Animal-Detection Systems Help Drivers Avoid Accidents | Edmunds

 

[Darren Donovan]

Deers in the middle of a city? I'm curious, what city? I'm reading on my phone and this forum doesn't display info about location for posters. I remember seeing location info when reading TMC on a desktop computer.