"Obstacle detected" - blocking acceleration - very dangerous!

[Skotty]

Is Collision Avoidance Warning the same thing that will try to automatically brake to reduce the impact of a collision? I hear people talk about that periodically.

I agree it shouldn't be allowed to override your inputs and should only take automatic action if you are not pressing on either of the pedals. Though I'm sure armies of self-driving is safer advocates will disagree.

 

[cclaygo]

For me, it was a covered car carrier that had a lift ramp. So the ramp was flat to the ground. You drive up on it close to the truck, then it lifts the car up and they drive it in. As they were driving the car on the ramp, all was fine, but as it neared the truck it stopped and started beeping collision avoidance. Each time he tried to go forward nothing would work. So I got in the car and turned off the collision avoidance and then it pulled forward fine.

I can't explain the tech! Just reporting what happened and how I fixed it!

 

[Electroman]

Coming to think of it, if collision avoidance actually does disable the accelerator, it is a great safety feature - provided it is done only when a collision is imminent.

The problem is false positives even if it is say only 1 in 100 would very dangerous. It is one of those features where false positives should be really really low.

I have never experienced OPs behavior but the collision warning chime indeed helped me a few times. But I have also seen false posiitve alerts (chimes) with parked cars, but those don't bother me as long as it saves me even one collision in the cars life time.

 

[Larry]

I spoke with the service center who has looked at the logs. They are going to look again based on additional information I have given them but all they can say so far was that the car was detecting an impending collision (he couldn't say which sensors were deciding this) and decided to limit torque / acceleration. The only thing I can think of is that the first car which passed by in the lane I was merging into would have just gone by very closely when I hit the accelerator to merge in behind him. I can say with some certainty that I didn't not accelerate until that vehicle was past me but perhaps there is a window of time after the event where you are not allowed to accelerate? It certainly took what seemed like a second or two before I could accelerate again even though nothing was nearby. This is what made the whole thing very dangerous. The car was basically dead out in the lane. Had the car not moved at all I would have been OK (it wouldn't have pulled out). Had the car allowed me to accelerate shortly thereafter I would have been OK too.

Did you have your turn signal on? If not maybe that would have made a difference. Just wondering.

 

[Colby Boles]

Did you have your turn signal on? If not maybe that would have made a difference. Just wondering.

I'm pretty sure I did not since there is virtually no merging distance here. You pull out and you are already in the lane. There is no space to share the lane and merge using your turn signal like a typical freeway on ramp.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Interesting. From the manual, accelerator input should never be overridden (just pressing on it harder should have taken precedent).

From the description however, like others, I wonder if this "feature" is a reaction to recent incidents of wrong pedal application. Basically people criticized Tesla for allowing such accidents to happen even though the sensors were definitely able to detect an obstruction. However, this situation shows there is obviously a huge negative to this also.

 

[Mjalkhoury]

I've seen the car slow down suddenly on TACC for imaginary objects ahead, which isn't all that good, but refusing to accelerate under manual control sounds seriously dangerous.

That sounds more like the radar saw something than the ultrasonic sensors. I've had it warn me of an imminent collision when there was a car a safe distance ahead on a rise after a dip I was going down into. Since I was already on the brakes, I'm not sure if it would have accelerated if I'd tried.

Please keep us informed.

Also check your camera if it is seeing a ghost car that may be because of error due to dirt or spots on the shield or simply malfunction error .. Check with Tesla and see if they have error message receiving from your camera.

 

[aesculus]

I'm pretty sure I did not since there is virtually no merging distance here. You pull out and you are already in the lane. There is no space to share the lane and merge using your turn signal like a typical freeway on ramp.

That place is the worst. I cringe every time I go by there and see someone trying to get on. I take the Fremont exit but always drive in the center lane until well past that point just because I don't want to exacerbate anything going on with that ramp.

 

[Colby Boles]

I had another strange little event happen last night while driving on the Panoramic Highway near Mt. Tamalpais back to San Francisco. While driving along a ridge with the road curving to the left with no obstructions in front of us and a visible drop-off to a valley on the right the car suddenly had two red "ghost" vehicles appear right in front of my car's avatar and sounded a warning. These disappeared a fraction of a second latter - I'm not even sure it put up the yellow warning symbol it happened so fast. Right after that I heard a little bit of RFI demodulation sounds through the speakers like you often get before your phone is about to ring. Might be a coincidence, I don't know. Has anyone noticed that the radar might be sensitive to RFI? I will call this event into Tesla support and see what they say.

One big difference here is that I was traveling at constant velocity and it didn't appear to do anything to interfere with my driving of the car other than sounding and displaying the ghost vehicles. I should also add that when I had my original merge problem, I never saw ghost vehicles like this (although I may not have looked down quickly enough), so I'm not sure these issues are related.

 

[Colby Boles]

An update after taking to support at the service center several times who is in turn communicating with other tech support within Tesla who have looked over the logs multiple times:

• There is not enough detail in my logs without any accompanying video (I haven't installed my BlackVue camera yet) to know exactly why the sensors detected what they did, but they seem to think the systems were operating "normally".
• The logs do not say which sensors are activated, just that an impending collision was detected at a system level.
• It is likely that the sensors detected the first car that drove past me and since neither the ultrasonic or radar sensors are Doppler based, they only know that an object is close at some point, not it's trajectory.
• Since I stepped on the accelerator shortly after this car went by, the car likely decided that it would cause a collision if it accelerated quickly based on its limited sensor information that may have latency and does not account for movement of said object.
• It was confirmed that once this "driver assistance" feature triggers on an acceleration based impending collision, it disables acceleration inputs for some seconds afterwards.
• This feature is not related to the "Collision Avoidance Warning" and cannot be turned off.
• Perhaps this "feature" will be refined, improved, or be optionally disabled in future releases, but no-one knows at this point.

Overall, my support person has tried to be as helpful as possible, but the overall message is that this is normal, intended behavior and there is nothing I can do about it at this point. Needless to say I'm pretty concerned. I have only put a few hundred miles on this vehicle and I have already had something happen that hasn't happened to me in 30 years of driving. Thankfully I have never stalled a vehicle at such a critical moment until now. I have also only used this on-ramp twice with the MX and have a 50% failure rate. I did what I considered to be a not very aggressive maneuver with the vehicle (I did not try to accelerate in a way that I could have possibly hit the first vehicle, even with a car twice as quick - I waited for it to pass at ~60mph), and the vehicle left me stranded in a dangerous situation. I can imagine similar scenarios in San Francisco right on my block where one could pull out into a fast-moving one-way street right after a car passes and others are coming, either from a parking spot, driveway, or cross-street where the trigger conditions would be similar and you would be at risk if you can't get the vehicle moving quickly.

I do find it interesting that no-one else has reported this problem though. Maybe it is truly a very rare occurrence, but I'm a bit skeptical considering how few driving miles I have put in so far. I'd like to go back and reproduce the problem some more (minus the second vehicle behind me needing to make an evasive maneuver), but it is a huge PITA at this location because one must traverse the bridge span, downtown areas, and Treasure Island on and off-ramps each time you wish to repeat the scenario.

I'd love to hear from anyone else who is able to reproduce this sort of thing, but at the same time be very careful doing so as the car is disabled for much longer than makes any rational sense.

 

[rlpvl]

Echoing MP3Mike's sentiment, you should report this to NHTSA. That's what they're there for.

 

[ohmman]

I'd like to go back and reproduce the problem some more (minus the second vehicle behind me needing to make an evasive maneuver), but it is a huge PITA at this location because one must traverse the bridge span, downtown areas, and Treasure Island on and off-ramps each time you wish to repeat the scenario.

My guess is that you'd have a really difficult time reproducing it even if you went to the same location. I get the feeling it was a combination of things and not merely the particular location.

My main concern is that your vehicle has some kind of faulty sensor in it, and this will crop up again for you specifically. I haven't seen this behavior in my X. But the fact that it has happened once to you is good reason to be extra cautious as you merge. At least until your confidence level can return to normal.

The disappointing thing is that Tesla isn't able to get much from telemetry to tell you what's going on. It seems that whenever we need answers to issues that we've had, Tesla can't seem to find them in the logs. When someone's making harmful claims against Tesla, on the other hand.. those logs seem pretty rich with information.

 

[Colby Boles]

Echoing MP3Mike's sentiment, you should report this to NHTSA. That's what they're there for.

Filed. I'll let everyone know what becomes of it.

 

[Colby Boles]

My guess is that you'd have a really difficult time reproducing it even if you went to the same location. I get the feeling it was a combination of things and not merely the particular location.

My main concern is that your vehicle has some kind of faulty sensor in it, and this will crop up again for you specifically. I haven't seen this behavior in my X. But the fact that it has happened once to you is good reason to be extra cautious as you merge. At least until your confidence level can return to normal.

The disappointing thing is that Tesla isn't able to get much from telemetry to tell you what's going on. It seems that whenever we need answers to issues that we've had, Tesla can't seem to find them in the logs. When someone's making harmful claims against Tesla, on the other hand.. those logs seem pretty rich with information.

Yes - I was a bit surprised by the limited telemetry. Some of it is due to privacy concerns as well. I wanted to have them look up the GPS location of my second event I mentioned in this thread so I could point it out on a Google Street View image to show that scenario but they said they could not access the location info when that event happened due to self-imposed restrictions for privacy.

I think I will try to safely reproduce it a couple times if only to get some confidence back that it won't happen again. What I am really pushing for is optional disablement of this feature though. Even with it disabled Tesla could learn a thing or two from the passive logging of all the instances where the car thought a crash was imminent with acceleration but turned out to be innocuous (as would have been the case if it had let me accelerate).

 

[MITE46]

I had a similar problem...faulty front right ultrasonic sensor...

 

[Colby Boles]

I had a similar problem...faulty front right ultrasonic sensor...

Did it cause the "Obstacle Detected" warning and prevent acceleration?

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

What I find really troubling is this isn't discussed by the manual.

This isn't the only car with this, but it might be the only one where it's a hidden feature. The Subaru Eyesight has the same "feature", and on it you have to either turn the wheel, or hit the brakes to get it to let go.

I also think that all these "driving aids" should have a way to be turned off completely. Not like the AEB where it only turns off till you turn the car back on. I don't mind if they have a warning every time I turn the car on that tells me I turned them off.

For some of us the false positives aren't worth the gain. When I get into my Jeep I can run anyone over that I want to. I should be able to do the same in the Model S. Err. I mean at least push them.

 

[Skotty]

These are the kinds of things that make me so skeptical of ever having self driving cars. Automated driving assist systems have their advantages like always being alert, but they can likely never compete with the intelligence, rich sensory feedback, situational awareness and abstract processing capabilities of a healthy human. Until our road system is revised, there are times when our biological advantages will continue to outweigh the technological advantages of our digital co-pilots. This incident is one example.

Not saying they shouldn't keep working at it, just saying I think a lot of people expect too much too quickly. If autopilot systems are forced on drivers, it will actually be a net negative in the early years for drivers who stay alert and drive responsibly.

 

[Canuck]

This feature is not related to the "Collision Avoidance Warning" and cannot be turned off.

This needs to change and fast. It's one thing to implement a beta system people can opt out of -- it's a complete other to force new systems on unsuspecting people.

If I was to die in an accident, I could live with it being my fault but I couldn't live with it being the fault of new tech being tested on me (pun intended).

I've come to appreciate my large frunk, 80 amp chargers, non-AP car more and more in recent days -- but I'd much prefer to be looking forward to all the new tech than fearing it.

 

[Skotty]

This needs to change and fast. It's one thing to implement a beta system people can opt out of -- it's a complete other to force new systems on unsuspecting people.

If I was to die in an accident, I could live with it being my fault but I couldn't live with it being the fault of new tech being tested on me (pun intended).

I've come to appreciate my large frunk, 80 amp chargers, non-AP car more and more in recent days -- but I'd much prefer to be looking forward to all the new tech than fearing it.

I can generally agree with this sentiment. Generally, when bad things happen to me, I prefer it be my own fault whenever possible.