Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Incorrect emergency braking and emergency lane departure actions. Collision detection not built for UK country roads?

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
I've been driving my '21 M3LR for a couple of months now, just as I have driven any other vehicle before (obviously way more exciting than your average car!).

Nearly every single time I drive now I get beeps and warnings and in some cases interventions made incorrectly by the car itself.

There are a few roads around where I live (Biggin Hill, Kent, UK) where there are country roads that I know for certain can fit two regular-sized cars side-by-side which a fair amount of space between the shrubbery / fences on the left and the oncoming vehicle on your right (just for any left hand-drive, right-side of the road folk reading this, we drive right-hand drive on the left-side of the road). Just for clarity on the size of the roads here, if it was Model X vs Model X you would have to slow down and pass graciously. That being said I like to consider myself a confident driver and drivers alike will drive at 40 or 60mph down these roads which is the legal speed limit (although sometimes I do question someone forgot to limit the speed in some places).

There are times where I very slightly edge to the left of the road when an oncoming vehicle approaches just to offer more space for myself and them, this is the problem - I'd say 10% of the time my car will take over and move to the center of the lane moments before passing the oncoming vehicle because of the emergency lane departure system which in turn will then immediately prompt the "red car coming at you fast, you are gonna crash and die sound/warning", which I then have to counter the cars incorrect move to the center of the lane by driving back to the left as quickly as I can. When I say "very slightly edge to the left" I mean not to the point I'm going to hit anything there is still "plenty" of space for a seasoned British country road driver. Just as I side note to this, I really dislike that the mirrors unfold when you go above 30mph, which is what you need for these roads, does anyone know how to turn this off?

Also, this may be unrelated I was in slow moving traffic on a 30mph road, I must have sped up to around 7-8mph to just move up to the car in front, I started pressing the brake pedal gently to come to a stop behind the vehicle in front of me. This has only happened once, but the car put on the emergency brakes without any warning or sound! I felt the brake pedal depress further underneath my foot and the car jolted to a halt. Fortunately there was no incident but I know for certain that I wasn't going to hit anything. For the rest of the journey it said "Automatic vehicle brake hold is disabled" which I had to clear by turning it off and on again.

Anyone else experience these problems, particularly the country road dilemma I am having?

All the best everyone! Interested to hear what you have to say. O.
 
Not a UK problem, it just make mistakes. Last week in Boston the collision detection went off when I passed a parked car on a city street. I don't know what the car thought it saw but I wasn't close to the parked car. It also doesn't like to be near the right lane markers. On two lane roads I like to be near the right to give the on coming cars as much room as possible, the shoulder is paved so it's no where near the edge of the road but the car will give me warnings and even disengage the safety features (not disengage FSD, it disengages the safety features which is insane).
 
I've been driving my '21 M3LR for a couple of months now, just as I have driven any other vehicle before (obviously way more exciting than your average car!).

Nearly every single time I drive now I get beeps and warnings and in some cases interventions made incorrectly by the car itself.

There are a few roads around where I live (Biggin Hill, Kent, UK) where there are country roads that I know for certain can fit two regular-sized cars side-by-side which a fair amount of space between the shrubbery / fences on the left and the oncoming vehicle on your right (just for any left hand-drive, right-side of the road folk reading this, we drive right-hand drive on the left-side of the road). Just for clarity on the size of the roads here, if it was Model X vs Model X you would have to slow down and pass graciously. That being said I like to consider myself a confident driver and drivers alike will drive at 40 or 60mph down these roads which is the legal speed limit (although sometimes I do question someone forgot to limit the speed in some places).

There are times where I very slightly edge to the left of the road when an oncoming vehicle approaches just to offer more space for myself and them, this is the problem - I'd say 10% of the time my car will take over and move to the center of the lane moments before passing the oncoming vehicle because of the emergency lane departure system which in turn will then immediately prompt the "red car coming at you fast, you are gonna crash and die sound/warning", which I then have to counter the cars incorrect move to the center of the lane by driving back to the left as quickly as I can. When I say "very slightly edge to the left" I mean not to the point I'm going to hit anything there is still "plenty" of space for a seasoned British country road driver. Just as I side note to this, I really dislike that the mirrors unfold when you go above 30mph, which is what you need for these roads, does anyone know how to turn this off?

Also, this may be unrelated I was in slow moving traffic on a 30mph road, I must have sped up to around 7-8mph to just move up to the car in front, I started pressing the brake pedal gently to come to a stop behind the vehicle in front of me. This has only happened once, but the car put on the emergency brakes without any warning or sound! I felt the brake pedal depress further underneath my foot and the car jolted to a halt. Fortunately there was no incident but I know for certain that I wasn't going to hit anything. For the rest of the journey it said "Automatic vehicle brake hold is disabled" which I had to clear by turning it off and on again.

Anyone else experience these problems, particularly the country road dilemma I am having?

All the best everyone! Interested to hear what you have to say. O.

If your roads are such that they are "plenty of space for a seasoned British country road driver" by definition that means that if you are NOT a " seasoned british country road driver" it would be seen as not enough space for many.

In that case, you should disable those features when driving on those roads. Expecting technology to handle situations where you by your own definition need to be a "seasoned british country road driver" and you edge to the side to allow space for the person on the other side to pass, is going to be an exercise in frustration. Just turn them off when you drive on those roads.




Lane Departure Avoidance
Lane Departure Avoidance lets a driver elect to have corrective steering applied in order to keep them in their intended lane. When the feature is in use and a driver is departing a lane without their turn signal on, the car will also check to see whether a driver’s hands are on the wheel. If a driver’s hands are not detected on the wheel, the driver will receive a series of hands-on reminders and alerts, similar to the ones that our cars provide to customers who use Autopilot. If a driver's hands are repeatedly not detected on the wheel when Traffic Aware Cruise Control is in use, their car will gradually slow down to 15 miles below the speed limit or below the car’s set speed and turn its hazard lights on.

This feature can be turned on or off, and works at speeds between 25 and 90 mph. It is an extension of Lane Departure Warning, which already warns drivers through a steering wheel vibration if they begin to drift out of their lane without their turn signal engaged.

lane-control-steering.jpg

Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance
Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance is designed to steer a Tesla vehicle back into the driving lane if our system detects that it is departing its lane and there could be a collision, or if the car is close to the edge of the road. This feature will automatically be enabled at the beginning of every drive, but can be turned off for a single drive by going to the Autopilot Controls menu.
 
I think no car's active safety systems are yet as good as a focused, alert driver, driving their own familiar car, and paying full attention to their driving. If that describes you when you're driving quickly on these narrow country roads, you probably are better off disabling these systems.

Are these settings tied to driver profile? If so you could make an extra profile to quickly flip between active safety on or off. I'll probably try that later today. :)

It's quite possible some cars/systems do a better job of deciding when to intervene than Tesla, but I've seen other cars exhibit unnecessary active safety intervention in review videos when the driving gets tricky. I don't think any of them are perfect. I think if you're doing this sort of driving & on your A-game it's best to just disable this stuff. Just remember to turn it back on later, so it's there to help when you're tired, not paying as close attention, etc.
 
I've been driving my '21 M3LR for a couple of months now, just as I have driven any other vehicle before (obviously way more exciting than your average car!).

Nearly every single time I drive now I get beeps and warnings and in some cases interventions made incorrectly by the car itself.

There are a few roads around where I live (Biggin Hill, Kent, UK) where there are country roads that I know for certain can fit two regular-sized cars side-by-side which a fair amount of space between the shrubbery / fences on the left and the oncoming vehicle on your right (just for any left hand-drive, right-side of the road folk reading this, we drive right-hand drive on the left-side of the road). Just for clarity on the size of the roads here, if it was Model X vs Model X you would have to slow down and pass graciously. That being said I like to consider myself a confident driver and drivers alike will drive at 40 or 60mph down these roads which is the legal speed limit (although sometimes I do question someone forgot to limit the speed in some places).

There are times where I very slightly edge to the left of the road when an oncoming vehicle approaches just to offer more space for myself and them, this is the problem - I'd say 10% of the time my car will take over and move to the center of the lane moments before passing the oncoming vehicle because of the emergency lane departure system which in turn will then immediately prompt the "red car coming at you fast, you are gonna crash and die sound/warning", which I then have to counter the cars incorrect move to the center of the lane by driving back to the left as quickly as I can. When I say "very slightly edge to the left" I mean not to the point I'm going to hit anything there is still "plenty" of space for a seasoned British country road driver. Just as I side note to this, I really dislike that the mirrors unfold when you go above 30mph, which is what you need for these roads, does anyone know how to turn this off?

Also, this may be unrelated I was in slow moving traffic on a 30mph road, I must have sped up to around 7-8mph to just move up to the car in front, I started pressing the brake pedal gently to come to a stop behind the vehicle in front of me. This has only happened once, but the car put on the emergency brakes without any warning or sound! I felt the brake pedal depress further underneath my foot and the car jolted to a halt. Fortunately there was no incident but I know for certain that I wasn't going to hit anything. For the rest of the journey it said "Automatic vehicle brake hold is disabled" which I had to clear by turning it off and on again.

Anyone else experience these problems, particularly the country road dilemma I am having?

All the best everyone! Interested to hear what you have to say. O.
Turn down the Lane Departure Warnings to just warn and not assist?
 
Thanks for all your feedback, @jjrandorin you are quite right about my definition of driver being amongst a minority, I would like to disable the emergency lane departure avoidance permanently which doesn’t seem possible at the moment. Every morning and afternoon I’ll quickly jump in the car to drop-off / pick up the kids from school, opening the safety settings and disabling this every time is not something I’d like to do (or even remember each time) especially as I would be doing this once for leaving the house, then once for leaving school.

@tm1v2 i hadn’t thought about tailoring these settings to a specific driver profile, it won’t help with the emergency lane departure but this will definitely assist with some of the warning messages you can disable, thanks.

I’d just like to drive the car without feeling like I’m not in control, from what I’ve read around the internet I feel as though I’m the only one experiencing these “corrective” steering actions on a daily basis that honestly, I don’t feel like I am exaggerating here, are making me more likely to have a head-on collision with oncoming traffic.

Since writing this I had messaged Tesla support to see what they say along with some dash cam footage. I’ll feedback when I have a reply.
 
I’d just like to drive the car without feeling like I’m not in control, from what I’ve read around the internet I feel as though I’m the only one experiencing these “corrective” steering actions on a daily basis that honestly, I don’t feel like I am exaggerating here, are making me more likely to have a head-on collision with oncoming traffic.
Ahh for the good ol' days. My last ICE car was my first with traction control or stability control. (No active safety systems beyond those.) It always defaulted to nannies-on, however someone made a little circuit board controller you could wire into the nannies-off button, and a few other control buttons, to automatically set things how you like at startup (either fixed setting, or remember your last setting).

That sort of thing is a bit more complicated to tack on now when button presses are logical control messages triggered from a touchscreen...
 
yeah the uk is a bummer. the worst thing is that this SUV plague is now also affecting the british people and the road network isnt designed to cope with it.

Anyway, i get this occasionally too on rural australian highways due to poor lane markings.
If the computer gets gets "teased" too much by the lane it will eventually disable lane departure warning and throw and error code until you put the car into P.