Reported autopilot accident

[Max*]

LOL. Yeah, kinda what I was thinking. Autopilot still needs a ton of work(years), before it's ready for prime time.

I think you're thinking of autonomous, which needs years. AP is out now, AP is a drivers assist.

 

[solaris007]

I'm not arguing any of that nor do I have a solution that would make this work better (I think it's good as it is, it's very rare for someone to think AP turned on when in fact it didn't), you just said you don't understand what's so hard to understand if the blue steering wheel icon is on or not. I explained why some people are having problems with it.

roger that! i just got carried away with sharing a strategy that works well (for me).

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I can think of many. How about a huge red "X" and a screaming alarm? How about the whole display blinks in and out of visibility with a message "AP DID NOT ENGAGE", anything BUT what we have now. What we have now is hard to discern as different from when AP is successfully engaged. Many times I've thought AP was on and drifted out of my lane.

sounds like a disco!

i think i can agree that the difference between the grey and blue wheel is not optimal. the wheel should only appear when AP is active, and the state change could be announced by the wheel blinking yellow into existence, then becoming solid blue or better green. disengaging could be the wheel blinking red and then disappearing. the question would then be how AP availability is announced without the wheel.

at least the AP disengage sound could be a bit more aggressive.

 

[green1]

at least the AP disengage sound could be a bit more aggressive.

Please no! It's already quite aggressive if it disengages at the AP's request (take over immediately) so much so that it panics any passengers I may have, even though I take over instantly and the car never has a chance to wander.
And if I chose to disengage it manually, the sound it gives now is plenty obvious to confirm the success in doing so.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

I took delivery of my new P90D last weekend (trading in my model 85 from 2013) and downloaded Firmware 7.1 two days ago. I had used autopilot for a few days with Firmware 7.0 and found it wonderful (astounding). Today was the first day I tried it using 7.0.

At about 8:30 AM this morning on I90 (road conditions perfect, visibility good), I was doing about 60 MPH and switched on Autopilot. I initiated a lane change with my turn signal and the car switched lanes seamlessly. My car automatically modulated my speed (with a two car distance) with the car in front of me, and I was cruising along happily when the car in front of me changed lanes and my car caught up to the car in front of him. After following this new car for a few minutes, the traffic began to slow.

My car slowed as well. But when the car in front of me came to a complete stop (not a sudden emergency stop, but rather a gradual stop), I expected my car to do the same (as it had been doing previously). It didn't. I slammed on the brakes in that dreadful instance before I realized my car wouldn't stop in time, but I still hit the car in front of me (while going maybe 5-10 MPH). I'd like to mention that I consider myself a very safe driver and have never been involved in any accident before (I'm 52). I damaged that car's rear bumper and cracked the plastic cover on my new Tesla (see attached photo).

After the police came (the other driver insisted we file an accident report) and I received a $120 ticket, I called Tesla's technical assistance. The gentleman I spoke with told me that the Autopilot function is "flawless" and that it was my responsibility, as the driver, to avoid any collision. I asked to speak with his supervisor who told me that this was the first time anything like this has ever happened, and found it "very strange." They were clearly intimating that I did something wrong.

They guy at Tesla said they will remotely run the logs from my car to see what happened. I told him that I understand it's my financial responsibility to pay for the repair to both cars, but that my main issue is to find out what happened, and if there is a flaw in the system to fix it. I hope they will be transparent and not try to cover up anything.

Sorry to hear this.

I can't really tell from your description, but this may be a similar case to an accident that occurred in a brand new P85D a while back before Autopilot was released, and the root cause was the limitation that TACC is not programmed to detect stationary objects.

In that instance, the Tesla was driving with TACC engaged, maintaining following distance to the car in front of him. That car then subsequently changed lanes to the right, and now ahead of the Tesla was a stopped vehicle that was out of the radar range. The driver expected TACC to then detect the stopped vehicle and slow the Tesla to a stop, but it did not. He hit the stopped vehicle with enough force to total the P85D.

I wonder if something similar happened here. If the car in front of you came to a near stop out of the radar's range, a similar series of events would have occurred. You happened to be able to catch the situation nearly in time, and only bumped him instead of crashing into him.

 

[brkaus]

If people are going to not pay attention they are going to get in accidents.
The AP indicators are pretty tough to miss and the audible cues now in place make it really tough to miss.
It does take a bit of getting used to, but while getting used to it the driver should be even more careful.

The driver is responsible for the car's behavior, AP or not.

I find the AP cues to be very difficult. I'm colorblind. Gray or blue? Can't always tell. I have submitted a request to enhance the cues. Something not colored - slash through it, dotted outline, different icon.

 

[Zythryn]

I find the AP cues to be very difficult. I'm colorblind. Gray or blue? Can't always tell. I have submitted a request to enhance the cues. Something not colored - slash through it, dotted outline, different icon.

Great point. Would red/gray be discernible?
A dotted line might be sufficient. Although right now the lines turn dotted as lanes are changed.

 

[sandstruck]

Sorry to hear this.

I can't really tell from your description, but this may be a similar case to an accident that occurred in a brand new P85D a while back before Autopilot was released, and the root cause was the limitation that TACC is not programmed to detect stationary objects.

In that instance, the Tesla was driving with TACC engaged, maintaining following distance to the car in front of him. That car then subsequently changed lanes to the right, and now ahead of the Tesla was a stopped vehicle that was out of the radar range. The driver expected TACC to then detect the stopped vehicle and slow the Tesla to a stop, but it did not. He hit the stopped vehicle with enough force to total the P85D.

I wonder if something similar happened here. If the car in front of you came to a near stop out of the radar's range, a similar series of events would have occurred. You happened to be able to catch the situation nearly in time, and only bumped him instead of crashing into him.

I think what's most disturbing is that I was following the very car I struck for a few minutes, and everything was working normally. There was no indication of anything wrong. AP was engaged but it just stopped working.

 

[Caretaker]

I had a close call too. I engaged AP and it drove fine for a mile until the road had a slight climb and while coming downhill I almost hit the car in front of me. The collision warning came up, beeps got louder and I hit the brakes to fortunately stop the car on time. I use AP quite a bit but in this case I blame the terrain, I think it did not detect the car in front due to the ascend and descent. AP and TACC are awesome, I hope it keeps getting better, until then we have to be vigilant and watch out to override when needed.

-C

 

[brianman]

You assume that AP is available, you double pull the cruise stalk, you hear ..., you let go of the wheel only to realize that AP didn't engage.

Feature used incorrectly.

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15 pixels of blue

Poor estimate.

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I find the AP cues to be very difficult. I'm colorblind. Gray or blue? Can't always tell. I have submitted a request to enhance the cues. Something not colored - slash through it, dotted outline, different icon.

Good feedback. Thanks for sending that along to Tesla!

 

[Max*]

Feature used incorrectly.

Agreed.

 

[AWDtsla]

Feature used incorrectly.

That didn't hold up for Steve Jobs and antennagate, it won't hold up for Tesla. They need to stop dropping a ball at UI design from the mobile app to the nav system to cruise control, to park distance control, to AP.

 

[ModelX]

When I was at the SC in SLC on Monday there was a gentleman supercharging and talking with tesla personnel. He said he had just been in an accident with AP engaged. At the time I assumed it was an unavoidable accident. I wonder how many people are having issues and are not on the forum.

 

[GoTslaGo]

On 7.0 my car was routinely trying to do exactly this on AP. It wasn't just a case of the car not seeing the truck drift into my lane. My car was actively sliding right towards the back of the tractor trailer. At one point it happened 3 times in one week and I learned to turn off AP when overtaking trucks in a left hand turn. Hopefully this is cleared up in 7.1.

Do you think it is because of the open space beneath a tractor trailer, that the autopilot doesn't "see" the trailer of the truck? I know the sensors pick up stuff low to the ground (I notice it pinging off the curb all the time), but is there a dead zone along the window level adjacent to the car?

 

[schonelucht]

"Multiple confirmed accidents" in Teslas that were caused by drivers thinking AP was active but it was not, really? Please provide sources. I was not aware of this rash of Tesla accidents due to driver confusion about AP.

Here is a direct quote from Elon himself talking about accidents (multiple). That was even before the report that started this thread which may be one too. From the article :

But, Musk said, he was not aware of any accidents caused by autopilot. He said the closest scenario were accidents where drivers mistakenly believed they were in autopilot mode.

 

[nctalkinghead]

Looks like we have now come full circle on our fear of AP causing crashes. Now it seems we fear not having AP on is causing crashes! If your teenager was learning to drive and was this inattentive behind the wheel, you would be choking him/her.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

I find the AP cues to be very difficult. I'm colorblind. Gray or blue? Can't always tell. I have submitted a request to enhance the cues. Something not colored - slash through it, dotted outline, different icon.

Somewhere around 6-8% of men and 0.4% of women have a red-green type of color vision deficiency, but not being able to discern blue is extremely rare, less than 1 in 20,000 have this type of deficiency.

Can you please download a small color vision exam app that I wrote about 10 years ago: Color Vision Exam (Windows XP and up)

Take the exam (takes about 3 minutes) and post the results here.

I never found an individual who had a blue color vision deficiency while I was testing it, so I never found out if it was able to reliably detect that.

(And sorry for the off-topic post).

 

[AWDtsla]

Somewhere around 6-8% of men and 0.4% of women have a red-green type of color vision deficiency, but not being able to discern blue is extremely rare, less than 1 in 20,000 have this type of deficiency.

Can you please download a small color vision exam app that I wrote about 10 years ago: Color Vision Exam (Windows XP and up)

Take the exam (takes about 3 minutes) and post the results here.

I never found an individual who had a blue color vision deficiency while I was testing it, so I never found out if it was able to reliably detect that.

(And sorry for the off-topic post).

This is going down the wrong path. Really, the entire freakin' instrument cluster should change, you should be able to tell if the things on or off or not if you're looking directly beside you with your peripheral vision.

Not only that but as I've said before the car should in a physical way make sure you know, the first thing I'd think of to do this is to make autopilot on/off instead of on and maybe disengaged for 10 different reasons. It would continually try and drive and/or warn you it can't while on.

 

[nienco2]

Looks like we have now come full circle on our fear of AP causing crashes. Now it seems we fear not having AP on is causing crashes! If your teenager was learning to drive and was this inattentive behind the wheel, you would be choking him/her.

So riding with AP engaged seems about like riding as passenger with my teenager driving? Does okay most of the time, not so good in exceptional situations. Not very relaxing way to travel in either case.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Count me as another person who was driving at freeway speeds for a while thinking that Auto steer was on when it wasn't. Kinda freaky when I realized no one had been steering the car for a while. It is very easy to miss the auto steer disengage sound...

Edit: And by auto steer disengage sound, I don't mean the triple beep panic take over sound, I mean the subtle beep-boop when you've torque the steering wheel too much or tapped on the brakes a little.

 

[Ingineer]

I too have been driving w/o autosteer when it was only TACC. I think the IC should show the original circular speedo with power gauge when it's in "human drive" mode, and then change to the present "toy car" display when in AP. This makes a clear distinction and would give us back our preferred gauge.

Tesla could also add an optional alert that sounds in the event that hands aren't on the wheel when in normal mode.