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Phantom braking in my new Model Y

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Hey,,,,children are all different:). Glad you had a better experience. It will be interesting to see the responses of others here. To see if the Tesla process has a common thread,,,,that the cars come to us with little issues that somehow get fixed by software updates or by working through them (with our interactions) or both.
The PB complaints have overwhelmingly gone away. It's been here and in lots of threads on the topic. It's REALLY nice.
 
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Hey,,,,children are all different:). Glad you had a better experience. It will be interesting to see the responses of others here. To see if the Tesla process has a common thread,,,,that the cars come to us with little issues that somehow get fixed by software updates or by working through them (with our interactions) or both.
It’s very unlikely that the neural net training module is in the car. The likely process is that the cars send all the data to the galactic headquarter and the neural net training happens there. Then a new software version is generated with that training and is then pushed to the cars. The car only has the inference engine.

so, in summary, the car learns but they all learn collectively, not individually.
 
Hey,,,,children are all different:). Glad you had a better experience. It will be interesting to see the responses of others here. To see if the Tesla process has a common thread,,,,that the cars come to us with little issues that somehow get fixed by software updates or by working through them (with our interactions) or both.
I work in this field. I can assure you that this is most definitely a function of OTA updates, especially with all the recent publicity around phantom braking and NHTSA investigations being opened up due to consumer complaints. As a practitioner who trains and deploys such computer-vision and deep learning models, nothing could be scarier than a run-away algorithm trying to "improve" itself in the field with very limited data and zero oversight. That would be a big liability for a company and with the way the training of these algorithms work, they anyway need large GPU clusters to train, even though inference can be run on much more constrained and customized hardware.

I'm glad to hear that phantom braking has gotten a lot better for you. I really hope they can also increase the max speed limit for AP for vision-only that has been languishing at 80mph from the very first day they made the vision-only transition with a promise that this would be "temporary".
 
It is simply too dangerous to use any type of autopilot on a single lane (per travel direction) road. if you and the opposite lane car off center a foot each toward the center line, you will see the other driver's shocked face very well right before you crash head on.
I truly appreciate your concern, but you don't live where I live. I can drive an hour on the trip i am referencing without encountering more than 2 other vehicles. It's standard practice and, I will tell you honestly, the headons happen regardless of whether or not someone is using cruise control.

I do agree that it is my habit normally to drive on the right edge close to the fog line rather than right in the middle, to give me a better escape route. Autopilot locks you in the center of the lane, so when it's rational, I turn it off or take over (such as when encountering a bolus of vehicles).

Ultimately, though, if I am in a head-on the way you describe, it won't be because of Tesla's autopilot or traffic aware cruise control (which at least will sometimes try to get me out of the way). It will be the fault of the other driver or my fault for not paying attention. And trust me, I pay attention.
 
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I truly appreciate your concern, but you don't live where I live. I can drive an hour on the trip i am referencing without encountering more than 2 other vehicles. It's standard practice and, I will tell you honestly, the headons happen regardless of whether or not someone is using cruise control.

I do agree that it is my habit normally to drive on the right edge close to the fog line rather than right in the middle, to give me a better escape route. Autopilot locks you in the center of the lane, so when it's rational, I turn it off or take over (such as when encountering a bolus of vehicles).

Ultimately, though, if I am in a head-on the way you describe, it won't be because of Tesla's traffic aware cruise control (which at least will sometimes try to get me out of the way). It will be the fault of the other driver or my fault for not paying attention. And trust me, I pay attention.

I drive/commute 20 mile stretch of single lane road (hilly and curvy with 50 mph limit) Monday thru Friday during the busiest commute time, and I experience all kinds of potential hazards from either side of the road, such as people trying to make turns at the last minute, distracted oncoming traffic, people trying to enter the road without looking, animals jumping right in front of you, people brake for no reason, etc.
 
Looks like most experience the phantom braking while on 2 lane highway (1 lane per direction), and I don't understand why would you use the autopilot or cruise control while on the single lane road??
I do it all the time. On the rare occasions that AP does something stupid, my hand are on the wheel, so I grip and take over. It really isn't hard and is useful for long non-interstate stretches.
 
I drive/commute 20 mile stretch of single lane road (hilly and curvy with 50 mph limit) Monday thru Friday during the busiest commute time, and I experience all kinds of potential hazards from either side of the road, such as people trying to make turns at the last minute, distracted oncoming traffic, people trying to enter the road without looking, animals jumping right in front of you, people brake for no reason, etc.
Oh, for sure I turn it off on the hilly, curvy stuff. AP can't handle elevation changes with curves. Especially going downhill.

Animals. That's another thing. Can Teslavision really see dogs? It sure doesn't see deer. Or elk. Or cattle.
 
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I work in this field. I can assure you that this is most definitely a function of OTA updates, especially with all the recent publicity around phantom braking and NHTSA investigations being opened up due to consumer complaints. As a practitioner who trains and deploys such computer-vision and deep learning models, nothing could be scarier than a run-away algorithm trying to "improve" itself in the field with very limited data and zero oversight. That would be a big liability for a company and with the way the training of these algorithms work, they anyway need large GPU clusters to train, even though inference can be run on much more constrained and customized hardware.

I'm glad to hear that phantom braking has gotten a lot better for you. I really hope they can also increase the max speed limit for AP for vision-only that has been languishing at 80mph from the very first day they made the vision-only transition with a promise that this would be "temporary".
Its easy to fantasize a bit when you don't know all the details:). Thanks Orion for the facts. Very good to hear. Since you have chimed in I have another couple of questions for you. I take it that the dramatic PB came along when vision was instituted. Right? (Because my experience with my {non-Vision} 2020 model 3 was not the same). Also,,,with that said,,,has the radar been most likely turned off in my model 3 via OTA updates and been converted to vision? Just curious how Tesla is working through this all.
 
Looks like most experience the phantom braking while on 2 lane highway (1 lane per direction), and I don't understand why would you use the autopilot or cruise control while on the single lane road??

The latest software updates have largely eliminated the phantom braking problem with oncoming trucks on two lane rural roads. The difference is amazing.

Two lane highways are just inherently more dangerous. Humans frequently make mistakes on them.
 
Its easy to fantasize a bit when you don't know all the details:). Thanks Orion for the facts. Very good to hear. Since you have chimed in I have another couple of questions for you. I take it that the dramatic PB came along when vision was instituted. Right? (Because my experience with my {non-Vision} 2020 model 3 was not the same). Also,,,with that said,,,has the radar been most likely turned off in my model 3 via OTA updates and been converted to vision? Just curious how Tesla is working through this all.
It's a bit of a long story. Despite Tesla's claims about the superiority of vision-only, they originally made the switch due to a parts shortage for radar components which forced their hand as they wanted to keep selling vehicles. I believe that current AP/FSD still uses Radar + cameras for radar equipped vehicles. Only FSD beta has switched to vision-only at the moment. I think the plan is to eventually make the general AP/FSD release be vision-only but that hasn't happened yet. This switch was very controversial within Tesla and largely driven by Elon pushing for it.

With radar there also used to be PB but only in very specific scenarios (overpasses being a common one) where poor localization of radar reflections from things like the overpass on Tesla's end made it hard for them to reconcile camera and radar return signals (this reconciliation process is called sensor fusion) and the car would PB out of caution because the radar reflections from the overpass would manifest as a potential obstruction within the road.

However, when Tesla moved to vision-only, although they didn't have this sensor fusion problem, they had a much bigger problem that they had jettisoned a very useful sensor that provides signals grounded in real-world physics that lets you get a map in at least 2D space of where potential obstructions are. In the absence of that, they had to rely solely on their Neural net based visual perception + recognition algorithms to reason about entities and potential obstructions in the scene and while these can work very well, their outputs aren't grounded in real world physics and they also have their own set of challenges around determining whether there are obstructions or oncoming traffic in your lane. Previously, the radar helped disambiguate things in these situations but with vision-only, they have nothing to corroborate with and so end up having PB events to be conservative.

That's a general gist of it. Tesla has been working on addressing these vision-only limitations and it certainly sounds like they have made some improvements on that front over the most recent releases.
 
On a very recent road trip from Lodi to Boise, I experienced phantom braking 12 times - sometimes on full AP and sometimes only on TACC. The weird part is that it was on long stretches of I-80 from Truckee to Winnemucca and nothing out of the ordinary to cause it. Highway pavement and sage brush. It also happened on US 20 between Boise and Bend on the way home. Again, long stretches of nothing and it starts braking. In only two of the instances was there any traffic behind me and only once did the following car have to brake to avoid an accident. Most often it occurred with no oncoming traffic - no 18 wheelers, no unusual road signs and no oncoming vehicles at all. It has caused me to avoid using any part of AutoPilot because of this experience. Still love my Y but it shook me up a bit. Why hasn't this been fixed?
 
On a very recent road trip from Lodi to Boise, I experienced phantom braking 12 times - sometimes on full AP and sometimes only on TACC. The weird part is that it was on long stretches of I-80 from Truckee to Winnemucca and nothing out of the ordinary to cause it. Highway pavement and sage brush. It also happened on US 20 between Boise and Bend on the way home. Again, long stretches of nothing and it starts braking. In only two of the instances was there any traffic behind me and only once did the following car have to brake to avoid an accident. Most often it occurred with no oncoming traffic - no 18 wheelers, no unusual road signs and no oncoming vehicles at all. It has caused me to avoid using any part of AutoPilot because of this experience. Still love my Y but it shook me up a bit. Why hasn't this been fixed?
I had a phantom breaking incident a few weeks ago in a friends 2022 MYLR. I was going 60 on a 4 lane Hwy. far ahead, maybe 200 yards, a pickup was coming out of a side road and turning left towards me. Obviously he wasn’t going to stop in the road and there was plenty of time to react even if he did. I wouldn’t have even slowed down in a normal car. I was using AP and My car slammed on the breaks and all my food sitting in the passenger seat went flying…….
 
I had a phantom breaking incident a few weeks ago in a friends 2022 MYLR. I was going 60 on a 4 lane Hwy. far ahead, maybe 200 yards, a pickup was coming out of a side road and turning left towards me. Obviously he wasn’t going to stop in the road and there was plenty of time to react even if he did. I wouldn’t have even slowed down in a normal car. I was using AP and My car slammed on the breaks and all my food sitting in the passenger seat went flying…….
There's a road by my house with a power transformer off to the side near the apex of the curve, with a 45 mph limit. My MDX will full on slam on the brakes, engaging both ABS and the seat belt precollision tensioners, when I drive past that thing at the right angle. Likewise, there's another street near my kids school with a light post in a similar position. Both my Infiniti and MDX will slam on the brakes 100% of the time if I'm in the right most lane going down that street, also with a 45 mph limit. Luckily my vision only Y has no problems with either of those roads.
 
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There's a road by my house with a power transformer off to the side near the apex of the curve, with a 45 mph limit. My MDX will full on slam on the brakes, engaging both ABS and the seat belt precollision tensioners, when I drive past that thing at the right angle. Likewise, there's another street near my kids school with a light post in a similar position. Both my Infiniti and MDX will slam on the brakes 100% of the time if I'm in the right most lane going down that street, also with a 45 mph limit. Luckily my vision only Y has no problems with either of those roads.
Scary when that happens.

I’ve been using AP a lot on 30-45mph single lane roads the last few days to see if it will PB and had no issues. Just one overly aggressive brake tonight when the car in front of me stopped.
 
There's a road by my house with a power transformer off to the side near the apex of the curve, with a 45 mph limit. My MDX will full on slam on the brakes, engaging both ABS and the seat belt precollision tensioners, when I drive past that thing at the right angle. Likewise, there's another street near my kids school with a light post in a similar position. Both my Infiniti and MDX will slam on the brakes 100% of the time if I'm in the right most lane going down that street, also with a 45 mph limit. Luckily my vision only Y has no problems with either of those roads.
I wonder if the MDX forums are filled with as many phantom braking posts as Tesla forums.
 
I wonder if the MDX forums are filled with as many phantom braking posts as Tesla forums.
A brief search and it appears the answer is yes. Although they don’t call it phantom braking.


This is all just evidence for me that any AI based braking/driving system is so far from being 100% reliable.

If a computer can’t solve chess, not sure it’s gonna solve all the variables driving….
 
A brief search and it appears the answer is yes. Although they don’t call it phantom braking.


This is all just evidence for me that any AI based braking/driving system is so far from being 100% reliable.

If a computer can’t solve chess, not sure it’s gonna solve all the variables driving….
Er, chess was “solved” years ago. Took a lot of computer power though but became unbeatable by a human. Still want dumb cruise control.