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WARNING: I rear-ended someone today while using Auto Pilot in my brand new P90D!
- Thread starter sandstruck
- Start date
From the Owners Manual:
Automatic Emergency Braking operates only when driving between 5 mph (8 km/h) and 85 mph (140 km/h).
Automatic Emergency Braking does not apply the brakes, or stops applying the brakes, in situations where you are taking action to avoid a potential collision. For example:
• You turn the steering wheel sharply.
• You press the accelerator pedal.
• You press and release the brake pedal.
• A vehicle, motorcycle, bicycle, or
pedestrian, is no longer detected ahead.
Automatic Emergency Braking is always enabled when you start Model S. To disable it for your current drive, touch Controls > Settings > Driver Assistance > Automatic Emergency Braking > Disable.
The DS does not cover ANYTHING in detail. They give you enough information so you can start the car and get home without getting stuck. My sales demonstration ride was vastly more informative. You must read the manual yourself.
By DS covered all of this in detail. He even recommended a 6 or higher until I became comfortable with TACC. I believe they are all trained the same way so maybe yours needed training?
ElectricTundra
P85D AP1
I've driven several thousand miles with AP 7.0 engaged (AP as in TACC & AS) and now have about 1800 miles with AP 7.1 engaged. I am also sort of a journalist and spend considerable time every week writing about cars, traffic engineering, and related areas.
IMO any attacks on the OP are unnecessary, unhelpful, and uninformed. I've not analyzed everything everyone as written word for word nor tried to pick each post apart but from a quick reading of the entire thread I can't see where the OP has done anything to deserve any attacks from anyone.
Elon and Tesla are big boys. Tesla's technology will only improve through honest and rigorous analysis of a multitude of events both good and bad. OP's reporting this event is good for Tesla and good for every one of us. Honest discussion of Tesla's faults, and there are many, is how Tesla will stay ahead of other car companies and, to Tesla's mission, lead other companies to continuously improve their cars. Ignoring Tesla's faults, sticking our heads in the sand, or criticizing those who mention faults is how Tesla will become a mediocre also-ran. Fortunately I don't think Elon nor most of his leaders are the types to stick their heads in the sand.
IMO any attacks on the OP are unnecessary, unhelpful, and uninformed. I've not analyzed everything everyone as written word for word nor tried to pick each post apart but from a quick reading of the entire thread I can't see where the OP has done anything to deserve any attacks from anyone.
Elon and Tesla are big boys. Tesla's technology will only improve through honest and rigorous analysis of a multitude of events both good and bad. OP's reporting this event is good for Tesla and good for every one of us. Honest discussion of Tesla's faults, and there are many, is how Tesla will stay ahead of other car companies and, to Tesla's mission, lead other companies to continuously improve their cars. Ignoring Tesla's faults, sticking our heads in the sand, or criticizing those who mention faults is how Tesla will become a mediocre also-ran. Fortunately I don't think Elon nor most of his leaders are the types to stick their heads in the sand.
The OP understands that on paper he's legally required to pay attention yadda yadda yadda.
I've driven a lot of miles with just TACC, a lot of miles with AP under 7.0. TACC is bulletproof. The only time TACC makes me worried and I take over is if my car is flying towards a stopped car. Would TACC stop? probably. But I'd rather use the regen rather than friction brakes.
Auto-steer is not as bulletproof, and this isn't an autosteer issue.
The car is supposed to slow down in the case the OP brought up. The Automatic Emergency Braking is supposed to kick in. I don't blame OP at all, and I can 100% imagine myself in his shoes because you rely on TACC to work, and you hope auto-steer will work.
I rely on my power windows to work too, and when they don't I'd get pissed off. Sure, I could open the car door and do what I need to do, but I was sold a car with power windows (bad analogy, but the point is there).
I'm very interested in seeing what the logs say.
I've driven a lot of miles with just TACC, a lot of miles with AP under 7.0. TACC is bulletproof. The only time TACC makes me worried and I take over is if my car is flying towards a stopped car. Would TACC stop? probably. But I'd rather use the regen rather than friction brakes.
Auto-steer is not as bulletproof, and this isn't an autosteer issue.
The car is supposed to slow down in the case the OP brought up. The Automatic Emergency Braking is supposed to kick in. I don't blame OP at all, and I can 100% imagine myself in his shoes because you rely on TACC to work, and you hope auto-steer will work.
I rely on my power windows to work too, and when they don't I'd get pissed off. Sure, I could open the car door and do what I need to do, but I was sold a car with power windows (bad analogy, but the point is there).
I'm very interested in seeing what the logs say.
sillydriver
Member
I have sympathy for Sandstruck. I am not arguing that he doesn’t have legal responsibility (and neither is he) but based on the information here I think he is blameless in any moral sense that might apply. Nor is there anything he could have reasonably done to prevent the accident, other than not subjecting himself to the risk of using AP at all, which is a risk that most of us take. And I’m surprised at the number of posts that assume he must have made some mistake operating the AP system or the car. Even in systems that are statistically reliable, odd glitches sometimes happen, and I suspect this was one of these. It would be an anomaly if a complicated control system operated in real-world conditions in a fleet of cars that logs a million miles a day never failed.
I am one of those who won’t use AP with hands on the wheel (for reason’s I’ve detailed elsewhere) but I pay very good attention and keep my hands near the wheel, so I have been able to grab it and take control when autosteer does something it shouldn’t, which it has done a number of times. But that’s relatively easy to do because a sudden jerk of the car (and the wheel) is a clear signal that something has gone wrong, so my reaction time for reflexively grabbing the wheel has been much less than a second.
On the other hand, I am not so confident that either I or most of the other people here would be able to catch and override an error where the car is decelerating and thus doing what it is supposed to do (as the OP said in his original post) but not doing it quickly enough. I suspect the reaction time needed to detect a failure of degree rather than a failure of kind is much longer, probably too long to correct, particularly given that TACC has such a good record of reliability that it is reasonable for the driver to be focusing on other kinds of potential system failures than that particular one.
My conclusion is that the same result could have happened to me or to almost any of us except that we have so far avoided the OP’s sheer bad luck.
I am one of those who won’t use AP with hands on the wheel (for reason’s I’ve detailed elsewhere) but I pay very good attention and keep my hands near the wheel, so I have been able to grab it and take control when autosteer does something it shouldn’t, which it has done a number of times. But that’s relatively easy to do because a sudden jerk of the car (and the wheel) is a clear signal that something has gone wrong, so my reaction time for reflexively grabbing the wheel has been much less than a second.
On the other hand, I am not so confident that either I or most of the other people here would be able to catch and override an error where the car is decelerating and thus doing what it is supposed to do (as the OP said in his original post) but not doing it quickly enough. I suspect the reaction time needed to detect a failure of degree rather than a failure of kind is much longer, probably too long to correct, particularly given that TACC has such a good record of reliability that it is reasonable for the driver to be focusing on other kinds of potential system failures than that particular one.
My conclusion is that the same result could have happened to me or to almost any of us except that we have so far avoided the OP’s sheer bad luck.
I don't work for Tesla but I have invested a little in TSLA and a $100K Model S.
I also want to know this.
3s-a-charm
Active Member
i'm embarassed to admit that i largely ignored the AP warnings in the manual as mere legalese. My DS asked me where i wanted to set the distance between cars. I said "2." He gave me no warnings or cautions (i don't blame him). I'm sure my first experiences with AP were similar to everyone else: as i cautiously monitored it, the system slowly won my trust.
When i saw autopark videos with owners standing outside their cars, trusting their machines to pull into tight garage spaces without plowing into walls, i mistakenly assumed that while using AP I needn't cover the brake for every stop-and-go. Again, my accident happened after my car slowed ITSELF to 10-15 MPH. Essentially, it was stop-and-go traffic when i collided.
i find it hard to believe that no one else has been in a situation where, if AP had failed, they'd have had an accident. I never trusted AP would stop me at highway speeds, but i certainly expected the car to stop at 10-15 mph. If i was wrong to believe that, am i also wrong to assume it will stop at 5 mph?
I'm actually hoping the logs show i inadvertantly disconnected AP. I can't conceive of having to monitor every slow stop during rush hour traffic, not being able to zone out a bit while the car does its thing.
.
I had an incident (well my wife did) a long time ago on 6.2 with just TACC, we were in bumper to bumper traffic and TACC was working great, until at one point the car in front of us was stopped, and we were approaching it and TACC didn't start to slow down. My wife slammed the brakes and stopped, everything was fine. The issue then was TACC explicitly stated that it would not work for stopped cars, and while it tracked the car in front of us well for a long time, at one point it stopped tracking it
I think the manual on TACC now removed that explicit statement, and in practice TACC does work for stopped cars.
I had a different issue where I forgot I had disengaged Autosteer and was running just TACC and the car started to drift into the next lane. I caught it in time because my hands were on the wheel but it occurred to me that I need to be much more diligent. Stuff happens, don't beat yourself up. That's why they call it an *accident*.
My implicit point was that people generally use the word Autopilot when the intent is to designate either Autosteer (usually) or TACC (sometimes). I think this is Tesla's "fault" and it's too late to correct the situation. If problems were ranked by severity, this would be near the bottom of the list.
I understand where you are coming from and there are absolutely times in stop and go traffic that I don't monitor the car's braking that closely, because I've seen it work flawlessly in that scenario thousands of times. I do still try to be very careful about cars pulling into my lane at the last minute or situations where I'm coming up rapidly on stopped traffic, because I've seen it cut those situations far too close for my comfort. I understand why people are saying that you are ultimately responsible, but if TACC routinely failed to detect that the car ahead of it was gradually slowing and then stopping, I think we'd see lots more accidents. Perhaps not from any of the hyper-vigilent denizens of TMC :wink:, but in the real world there will be many drivers who would get in accidents in that scenario.
Jaff
Active Member
To be honest here, I think this is a problem for us as drivers.
I think most would agree, that if you use a number much larger than "2", in moderate to heavy traffic, you get jerks constantly cutting in front of you and taking away your buffer zone...but for me, in 65-70 mph traffic, I am not comfortable with "2" as I feel that I am following too close...I don't see a way around this for now...
I think most would agree, that if you use a number much larger than "2", in moderate to heavy traffic, you get jerks constantly cutting in front of you and taking away your buffer zone...but for me, in 65-70 mph traffic, I am not comfortable with "2" as I feel that I am following too close...I don't see a way around this for now...
Andyw2100
Well-Known Member
I just want to point out that this statement isn't exactly right, or rather needs clarification.
It is TACC that should slow and then ultimately stop the car. If TACC functions properly, AEB will not be involved at all.
If for some reason TACC has failed to slow the car properly, at that point we could expect AEB to kick in.
After reading everything written in this thread, if I had to take a guess as to what happened, my guesses, in order, would be:
1) TACC wasn't tracking the stopped car for some reason, with the most likely reason being the OP failed to notice (as he acknowledges he may have, though he doesn't think he did) that the car the TACC had been tracking had left the OP's lane, leaving the stopped car directly in front of the OP's car, but not yet tracked.
2) TACC had inadvertently been disengaged by the OP, most likely by a light application of the brake pedal. It could have been a "brushing" of it, or perhaps even a subconscious, light tapping of it at some point when the OP's instincts reverted to a time before TACC existed, since he spent most of his adult life driving without TACC. He may not have realized that he instinctively had lightly touched the brake at some earlier point, to slow the car, because that's what he had been doing forever.
I'm not attaching blame here. The OP has said he is actually hoping that the logs show TACC was not engaged. My guess is that they will, in fact, show that, very possibly for one of the reasons above.
Vger
Active Member
1. I commend the OP for their forthrightness and humility in describing and reviewing this incident. Some other posters here, not so much.
2. I have had at least one or two incidents just like this, except that I managed to stop in time. In one recent case, I had to mash the brake and missed the car in front by maybe 3 to 5 feet.
3. I agree with the OP that this precise use case (cars in front slowing, not stationary, then slowing more) seems to be not fully covered by Tesla's design. I look forward to hearing the explanation from the logs.
2. I have had at least one or two incidents just like this, except that I managed to stop in time. In one recent case, I had to mash the brake and missed the car in front by maybe 3 to 5 feet.
3. I agree with the OP that this precise use case (cars in front slowing, not stationary, then slowing more) seems to be not fully covered by Tesla's design. I look forward to hearing the explanation from the logs.
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