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Phantom braking so bad I want to return my car
- Thread starter RHINO SKIN SOL
- Start date
Case and point....I just got back from Florida and my rental for the week was a Hyundai Sonata. It's adaptive cruise never missed a beat in the 365 miles I put on the car.
Tesla isn't going to shut down TACC. It'd be an admission of a major fault and embarrassing for the company. And even if they do, I'd rather have no TACC than one that phantom brakes all the time. There is literally no excuse for getting this wrong. I have two other vehicles with adaptive cruise, including a F450 dually that tows a big fifth wheel trailer. Neither of these vehicles has ever phantom braked, whether we were on a divided highway, regular freeway, undivided road, etc. I used my Subaru Ascent in heavy SF Bay Area traffic all the time. People CUT in front of you with no mercy and no signal. And even then the adaptive cruise has not let me down.
sleepydoc
Well-Known Member
EAP? Do you mean TACC? and how do you define great? only phantom braking every 20-30 minutes rather than every 10-15?
sleepydoc
Well-Known Member
We’ll, I don’t get phantom braking when I use the employee assistance program, either. Maybe you should try TACC so you can experience what the reSt of us deal with.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
FYI EAP stands for Enhanced Autopilot. It existed as an option previously in the US and still exists in may markets.
Full Self-Driving Capability Subscriptions
https://www.currentautomotive.com/tesla-changes-autopilot-feature-availability/
His point is there are plenty of people that have no problems with phantom braking with Tesla's system. People that don't experience problems obviously will not share your views about Tesla being behind, especially if the system can do more advanced things like keeping the car in the lane and even changing lanes on its own.
sleepydoc
Well-Known Member
Thanks - I was trying to figure out what EAP stood for and WhiteWi wasn't helpful in his response. I finally found out after I posted - I think the site needs a glossary of all the acronyms!
I honestly have a hard time believing stories of people having no problems with phantom braking. Not because I doubt that someone's experience can be different than my own but because it's so pervasive and every owner that I've actually spoken to has experienced it to varying degrees. Some less than others and it bothers some more than others, but they all experience it at least occasionally.
sleepydoc
Well-Known Member
That's the thing - the frequency of true emergencies where emergency braking is necessary is generally quite low. It also depends on your driving style and location but for me I'd say it's less than once a year so one can very easily go months without any actual emergencies to test the system. This is also the problem and difficulty with EAB systems. Essentially the pre-test probability is quite low so the system needs a very high degree of specificity to avoid significant numbers of false positives.
We have a Subaru Forester and in the 18 months we've owned it we haven't had a single EAB activation. To my knowledge we haven't had an occasion to need one, either.
Friend of mine with a Model Y that's about a year old has put on 40,000 miles, largely on 2 lane highway going north and south here in Idaho. He uses TACC and FSD (which, afaik doesn't use radar anymore) except in towns and just told me he recalls maybe 2 episodes of significant slowing in all of that time. This is on curves and hills and grades and trestles and bridges and narrow roads with log trucks as well as everything else you might imagine.
How can his experience be so different from the daily "slam on the brakes" episodes that others are experiencing? Same software and same basic hardware, presumably. Maybe recent hardware is different, or there are just some lemons out there in this regard.
I absolutely believe some people are experiencing this.
I have, in the 1 week of ownership and 300 miles driving canyon/mountain roads, had a couple of slowings. More like a hesitant let off the gas than actual braking and certainly not slam on the brakes. Both times it felt like the software was being cautious (tight curve ahead, large truck close to the centerline) so I don't even know if that counts as PB.
I hope I don't experience the drastic stuff others are, but I also understand that it's absolutely a judgement call in the software programming and it's a choice between more false positives vs more false negatives. For head-ons, I'll take the false positives if they are what I have and my friend has experienced.
How can his experience be so different from the daily "slam on the brakes" episodes that others are experiencing? Same software and same basic hardware, presumably. Maybe recent hardware is different, or there are just some lemons out there in this regard.
I absolutely believe some people are experiencing this.
I have, in the 1 week of ownership and 300 miles driving canyon/mountain roads, had a couple of slowings. More like a hesitant let off the gas than actual braking and certainly not slam on the brakes. Both times it felt like the software was being cautious (tight curve ahead, large truck close to the centerline) so I don't even know if that counts as PB.
I hope I don't experience the drastic stuff others are, but I also understand that it's absolutely a judgement call in the software programming and it's a choice between more false positives vs more false negatives. For head-ons, I'll take the false positives if they are what I have and my friend has experienced.
sleepydoc
Well-Known Member
Can I have his car?
I agree - same car, same hardware, same software you should get same results, right?
I think part of the discrepancy is the wide variation in definitions and types of slowing. You can have everything from the car 'hesitating' like you describe to klaxons blaring and the brakes slamming. It can happen on a wide open road on a bright sunny day, or when you come 'too close' to a semi. In some respects all of them are 'phantom braking' but many people will say if there's a reason it doesn't count, even if the reason is wrong.
Example - driving to work this morning on a 2 lane road, 45 MPH using cruise control. I passed a school bus driving the opposite direction. The school bus was well on the other side of the yellow line (at least 3-4 feet) and I was at least 4 feet on my side of the line but I still got the panicked beeping and the car hit the brakes. Is that phantom braking? It was unnecessary but there was a nominal reason, even if it wasn't appropriate.
Well, it clearly wasn't a phantom. I would call it a calibration issue. Is it your car, or is it generalized?Can I have his car?
I agree - same car, same hardware, same software you should get same results, right?
I think part of the discrepancy is the wide variation in definitions and types of slowing. You can have everything from the car 'hesitating' like you describe to klaxons blaring and the brakes slamming. It can happen on a wide open road on a bright sunny day, or when you come 'too close' to a semi. In some respects all of them are 'phantom braking' but many people will say if there's a reason it doesn't count, even if the reason is wrong.
Example - driving to work this morning on a 2 lane road, 45 MPH using cruise control. I passed a school bus driving the opposite direction. The school bus was well on the other side of the yellow line (at least 3-4 feet) and I was at least 4 feet on my side of the line but I still got the panicked beeping and the car hit the brakes. Is that phantom braking? It was unnecessary but there was a nominal reason, even if it wasn't appropriate.
I am sorry if you already said, but have you done a recalibration on your cameras? I know that when we got our car we just drove home. Across Boise, then up and down and up the canyons. It calibrated somewhere along the way. But that was certainly not the 20 miles in the center right hand lane of a 6 lane freeway Tesla recommends. If I start having problems like you describe, that's the first thing I would do (first chance I got. Not convenient).
And this is the point. What you are asking for is a system with low false positives and reliable true positives (i.e. low false negatives). And that's fine, we all want that. But all these other brands you hold up as examples only have (to your knowledge) low false positives .. you have no way to know what the rate of false negatives is (that is, the car fails to brake when it should). So they fail to meet your own criteria for "good" examples of AEB.
If all you want is a car that has very low false positives for AEB, that's easy .. get a car wtihout AEB entirely (or turn it off). Problem solved!
As I noted here, one issue is defining what constitutes a PB event. Sure, a massive "slam on the brakes" gut-wrenching near-stop is clearly PB (assuming there really was no external cause), but what about a slight slow-down for no apparent reason that is more "hey! .. what was that??". No doubt everyone has seen the car do some form of unexpected braking at some point (though they may not all be PB events, remember the car may see a true danger the human misses). But at what (objective) point does this go from "odd" to "annoying" to "scary" to "dangerous"? Right now, with no basis on which to judge things, one person may rate something as annoying while another rates it as dangerous. And when things get emotional, there is a tendency to trawl for anything that looks like a PB event and promote it up the severity scale (that's human nature, like it to not), and so it's very hard to objectively judge how bad PB truly is.
I was towing my fifth wheel in Okanagen, B.C., came around a corner and traffic had stopped. My adaptive cruise reacted faster than I could have. I've had people cut right in front of me as they merged at speed in heavy traffic while in my Subaru. No problem. Vehicle hit the brakes and reacted faster than I could.
So you're making an excuse for Tesla? LOL LOL LOL. Come on. Don't be such a fanboi. Every other car manufacturer has figured this out already. Sheesh.
Have they really?
Federal Regulators Investigate Honda Unexpected Braking Complaints - Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports shares details of NHTSA's investigating consumer complaints that the automatic emergency braking system on some Honda vehicles unexpectedly activates.
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