Video: what's causing this?? Emergency braking? Collision avoidance?

[OConnorStP]

Here's a very short Youtube video showing a couple of instances where the car rapidly slows down to avoid a vehicle that is moving away from us and happens after the car in front has left our lane. In one case there was a person tailgating us and we scared the heck out of them. This is not an April Fool's post.

You'll hear us commenting less with fear/surprise and more in frustration -- that's because the car had already done this a few times. Unfortunately the puny SD card in the dash cam had rolled over the prior instances already. The first time was pretty startling.

Factoids that pertain across all of these:

- Firmware 6.2 -- installed last night
- Cruise control engaged
- Speed is just under 60mph
- TACC is not aware of the car in front ("cruise" gizmo is grey, not blue/TACC)
- TACC is set to the maximum separation distance

Do other people experience this in similar circumstances, so this is a feature not a bug? Or is this something I should push along to the service team?

 

[Stoneymonster]

Definitely make Tesla aware I would say.

 

[Todd Burch]

Car in adjacent lane is being recognized as a potential risk and the car brakes. This has been an issue since TACC rolled out.

 

[greensprit]

This is not surprising at all. Every car that I've owned that has forward collision warning systems (Volvo, Audi, Acura) reacts this same way, the radar system detects rapidly closing distance, but the system can't understand that the car is about to turn left and pull out of the lane. When the collision warning sounds you should either put your foot on the brake or the accelerator, either one will prevent the auto braking function from kicking in because it tells the car that you're taking control.

 

[Todd Burch]

I just anticipate this situation and apply a little accelerator input to counteract the braking.

 

[Wolfgang Nomayer]

The software is working on a worst case scenario. The software is just not smart enough yet, to "understand" that the vehicle in front is making a turn left and or right. It is just like greensprit stated in an earlier post. I am sure Tesla will fix this soon.

 

[LetsGoFast]

All of the people who proffer the explanation that the car is reacting to the car turning are implicitly rejecting the assertion in the OP:
TACC is not aware of the car in front ("cruise" gizmo is grey, not blue/TACC)

In every case where I've had the car slow down it was blue. It might just have briefly changed to blue and the OP didn't notice, but I've never had TACC slow down while reporting the grey cruise indicator.

 

[OConnorStP]

Ah! This is really helpful for this newbie. Thanks all. Here's what I'm taking away.

- It's probably Collision Avoidance (related to TACC/cruise) rather than the brand-new Emergency Braking. I'm thinking this because it's something that y'all have seen before and have learned to cope with. That says I should turn the brand-new Emergency Braking back on (we turned it off after the third or fourth of these episodes).

- There are cooperative strategies to be learned. I like the idea of anticipating when this is going to happen (it seems pretty easy to do that). Then, when it's likely to happen, get on the foot-feed even though I'm in cruise and gently override it if it starts to get cranky.

- Keep a closer eye on TACC just before it starts slowing the car down. I'll have to look really closely for that the next time -- that'll be part of the human-adaptive behavior.

 

[Todd Burch]

All of the people who proffer the explanation that the car is reacting to the car turning are implicitly rejecting the assertion in the OP:
TACC is not aware of the car in front ("cruise" gizmo is grey, not blue/TACC)

In every case where I've had the car slow down it was blue. It might just have briefly changed to blue and the OP didn't notice, but I've never had TACC slow down while reporting the grey cruise indicator.

Thanks for pointing that out--I missed that.

In that case I think this is definitely a reportable incident.

 

[Stoneymonster]

Ah! This is really helpful for this newbie. Thanks all. Here's what I'm taking away.

- It's probably Collision Avoidance (related to TACC/cruise) rather than the brand-new Emergency Braking. I'm thinking this because it's something that y'all have seen before and have learned to cope with. That says I should turn the brand-new Emergency Braking back on (we turned it off after the third or fourth of these episodes).

Almost definitely not Emergency Braking. That feature only triggers when the car thinks a crash is imminent and unavoidable. It's also likely to be slamming on the brakes.

 

[Doug_G]

If Emergency Braking engages, it's because you're about to have a collision. You'll know.

 

[cgiGuy]

Had an Infiniti with Distance Control and it would do the same thing. Eventually just got used to hitting the gas a little when a car was turning in front of me.