Police/Emergency Vehicles auto alert?

[PittCaleb]

I got my Model 3 just 2 weeks ago. While riding home the other night on local roads, a local police SUV had someone pulled over on the side of the road with its lights flashing.

As I approached them, the car indicator on the dash screen turned red, flashed and an alert toned over my audio system.

I had never heard of this before and was more than pleasantly surprised. I was driving on my own.

Since then, I have driven past 3 more flashing-lights police cars/suv's. Not once did I get this same alert. I honestly can't tell you if I was driving or more likely nav on auto pilot was in control. On the highway, I was sure to be in the next lane to see if it would register. Never did.

So if this a feature? Why did it work once and not the other times? It's awesome and maybe it is because of who was driving, me vs machine, or the speeds, local vs highway. Very cool, like it... Anyone else have experience or issues with this?

 

[opiuman]

It's a not a feature specific to emergency vehicles, this is because if the road is curving to the right and you're in the lane closest to the shoulder or curb the car thinks you will hit it sometimes which gives you the alert. It varies on the kinds of cars there and density it seems.

Even on the same road I drive home every weekday it used to happen 50% of the time when I got the car. After November it's down to maybe 15%. Again road with a slight right curve and vehicles parked or stopped there may trigger this. It's much more noticeable on residential areas.

 

[PittCaleb]

LOL. You think it's because the car thought I was going to hit the police car which was jutting out into the road and not that it identified it as a police car? Funny.

 

[opiuman]

Yes.

 

[SD_Engnr]

LOL. You think it's because the car thought I was going to hit the police car which was jutting out into the road and not that it identified it as a police car? Funny.

That's exactly why it alerted you.

 

[woodisgood]

There are some residential roads, possibly due to their curves or hills and combination of speed limit and the speed you’re going that make the system very sensitive to parked cars at the side of the road. That’s likely what you experienced. I haven’t heard of a specific emergency vehicle alert - if there was one, we’d know by now.

 

[Kilotango74]

LOL. You think it's because the car thought I was going to hit the police car which was jutting out into the road and not that it identified it as a police car? Funny.

Yes that's exactly it.
How do your think your car would be able to tell if it was a police or emergency vehicle?

 

[lolder]

Yes that's exactly it.
How do your think your car would be able to tell if it was a police or emergency vehicle?

Flashing lights. The car is seeing much more than you think. I'm not sure Tesla always knows what features they have turned on or off. FSD will have to recognize flashing lights. With AP on the car will usually put the brakes on if it thinks a vehicle is protruding into it's lane. It's not clear if the AP was on for the OP.

 

[Kilotango74]

Flashing lights. The car is seeing much more than you think. I'm not sure Tesla always knows what features they have turned on or off. FSD will have to recognize flashing lights. With AP on the car will usually put the brakes on if it thinks a vehicle is protruding into it's lane. It's not clear if the AP was on for the OP.

It would have to be more than that. There are a lot of vehicles on the road that have flashing lights. Construction, Tow trucks, random utility vehicles....This is another reason I think FSD is a long way off.

 

[lolder]

There is a YouTube video of a hacked M3 driving in Knoxville TN and recognizing most traffic lights and their color. FSD is near. There are many features that are about to merge. How they are implemented may depend on what hardware you have.

 

[Kilotango74]

There is a YouTube video of a hacked M3 driving in Knoxville TN and recognizing most traffic lights and their color. FSD is near. There are many features that are about to merge. How they are implemented may depend on what hardware you have.

Well I will only agree with your statement so in as far as a half a$$ed "beta" version of FSD is probably near release. It will still need to be determined how useful/dangerous that release is.

 

[animorph]

Forward Collision Warning. We get that infrequently for cars parked on the street.

 

[Rottenapplr]

LOL. You think it's because the car thought I was going to hit the police car which was jutting out into the road and not that it identified it as a police car? Funny.

Omg that happened to me driving slowly in a neighborhood. I was angled in such a way the car thought I was going to hit the parked car to the right next to the sidewalk. I’m like WTF. This was my first night with the car. Although a system that you described sounds awesome and helpful. This would be a good feature to have Elon.

 

[thewishmaster]

For a while I turned off forward collision warning because of all the false positives, at least one per drive. It has gotten a lot better so I've turned it back on, set to "late".

 

[PittCaleb]

How do your think your car would be able to tell if it was a police or emergency vehicle?

The flashing lights would be relatively easy to code from an AI pov. But that it didn't happen on subsequent ones had me wondering if the police gave out an active radar signature that was read by our radar units. That would make sense, esp in a car-to-car communications world.

 

[derotam]

The flashing lights would be relatively easy to code from an AI pov. But that it didn't happen on subsequent ones had me wondering if the police gave out an active radar signature that was read by our radar units. That would make sense, esp in a car-to-car communications world.

And where is your reference to show that there is car to car communication fielded out in the wild?

 

[PittCaleb]

And where is your reference to show that there is car to car communication fielded out in the wild?

Um, I never said this was how it worked. I asked a question, you asked how I thought it would do it - I gave two potential answers. They were wrong, which is why I was asking the question.

FTR, I have friends at the University of Michigan who have been working on c2c communication for at least 5-6 years. I have no idea if what I have seen and heard of what they have done has made it into any vehicle yet. But the future is c2c and in this perfect world, we'll never stop at controlled intersections, the cars will work it out amongst themselves and mesh through politely.

So my evidence was a question, but if you need to know, I have seen it work, in the wild, in actual cars. Granted, they were retrofitted cars confined to a single city for testing purposes, but I have seen this in the wild with my eyes.

 

[derotam]

Um, I never said this was how it worked. I asked a question, you asked how I thought it would do it - I gave two potential answers. They were wrong, which is why I was asking the question.

FTR, I have friends at the University of Michigan who have been working on c2c communication for at least 5-6 years. I have no idea if what I have seen and heard of what they have done has made it into any vehicle yet. But the future is c2c and in this perfect world, we'll never stop at controlled intersections, the cars will work it out amongst themselves and mesh through politely.

So my evidence was a question, but if you need to know, I have seen it work, in the wild, in actual cars. Granted, they were retrofitted cars confined to a single city for testing purposes, but I have seen this in the wild with my eyes.

You replied/quoted the wrong person, I never asked you that.

Are you completely discounting our theory that it gave you an alert for an object that it perceived as a collision risk, at the same time you come up with some wild technological idea that has never been talked about by any car manufacturers as being in any vehicles?

Edit, "wild", in that those ideas are not even close to actually being put into consumer vehicles yet.

 

[PittCaleb]

I think there is something being lost in the ether here...

The third comment I agreed with the 1st response; from which 2 more ppl said both "yes" and "exactly" and if you look, I "liked" those statements.

I 100% agree, the Model 3 thought the police car, which was parked sticking out in my lane a little, was simply marked as a potential accident scenario, not identified as a police car. The fact that I saw red lights flashing and the car on the screen turned red gave me the impression it identified itself as an emergency vehicle.

My response just a little big ago to "why" would I believe it could identify emergency vehicles was based on known technologies and not knowing if they were or were not in any vehicles, let alone a Model 3.

Emergency vehicles *did* at one point throw out a radar signature to warm speeders to slow down. They used this a lot at the start of construction zones to fire off anyone who was using a radar detector. That we have radar (and thus a detector) in our Model 3's, I thought that also might be how the M3 would know an emergency vehicle was ahead.

I believe in an automated world, we need supplemental input, such as an RF signal, to notify (semi)-autonomous cars of roadway anomalies. I can see such a signature being sent by both emergency vehicles and construction zones where manual intervention is either required or advised.

We've all see the videos of auto-pilot driving cars into the jersey barriers for lack of understanding the messed up road lines and cones. If there were a radio signature the radar detector picked up at the start of said zone, it could force the driver to take manual control in those situations. But this is a different topic entirely.

Question was: Can the M3 identify emergency vehicles? First response: Nope, it detected a potential front impact and warned you. I very quickly liked this and subsequent posts, tacitly agreeing with their reasoning.