WARNING: I rear-ended someone today while using Auto Pilot in my brand new P90D!

[green1]

. I have said before and now I say it again with greatly renewed conviction - I don't think Tesla should have released autopilot if they knew it was as bad as it is. Somebody is going to die, and there is going to be a very costly lawsuit, more costly in terms of lost sales and popularity of the car than in money, by far.

Please do us all a favour and launch a law suit and get it over with. You already admitted multiple times that you have completely ignored Tesla's instructions on how to use AP, and that at the time of this incident you in fact did not have your hands on the wheel, despite all the instructions to do so.
PLEASE sue Tesla so we can get this out of the way and finally prove to you that YOU are responsible for the vehicle at all times. I hope the judge is smart and awards costs to Tesla.

 

[JunesongProvisn]

I really hope the most recent update fixes these issues. I also never experienced it with 7.0 but with 7.1 have seen my car try to dive into the other lane like Electricfan's vid. Very unsettling for sure.

 

[Electricfan]

I've listened again, with ear phones, on high volume and can't hear any beeps...

I can't hear any beeps either. But, you also can just BARELY hear the talk radio station I had on. So its not surprising to me that the dashcam mostly recorded road noise. I played back the original .mov file at high volume and the road noise is all I can hear, with just a whisper of talk.

I realize since you can't see the instrument cluster you might wonder. But if AP was off, why did the car dive to the right? For it to do that I would have had to hit the wheel with my leg. As a human I could be mistaken about AP being on, but I'd also have to basically be a liar, because if AP didn't steer the car to the right then I must have, and I didn't.

So, I guess it boils down to taking my word, or not. I posted because I think that Tesla owners need to be aware AP will exhibit this kind of behavior. I had never seen this before. I can't imagine what would happen if you were beside an 18-wheeler and not paying strict attention (forget reading a book, what if you were just scratching your eye, or tuning the radio, or reaching for something in the glovebox?) and the car suddenly dived to the right?? Death - yours, passengers and other cars - it could truly end in a horrific accident. That's the only reason I'm posting about it.

All I've seen before is AP will drift across the lanes, but I had thought it would not do it if there was a car nearby because the ultrasonic sensors would prevent it. I was wrong about that.

I'm wondering if the white/black stripes had something to do with it, and caused AP to get confused about the lanes, as ankitmishra suggested above. You can see in the video the car did drift to the left right before it dove to the right.

 

[AWDtsla]

My car tried to sideswipe a truck today. I grabbed the wheel and avoided the accident - I'm 100% sure it would have hit the truck. I trust AP much less now than I did when I woke up this morning. Sure hope we see a massive improvement soon. If anybody can see anything in the video that might have confused AP, please comment. I can't think of anything. The windshield was clean. The lane ahead was clear, no confusing markings of any kind. The car just dove to the right like it wanted to ram the truck. I did not hit the wheel causing it to move. I wasn't touching the wheel. My arms were at the sides on armrests. My leg didn't hit the wheel. The wheel moved completely of its own accord.

Looks like the the "normal" ping-pong behavior lots of people (everyone?) sees. Where 7.0 was scary with no bias, 7.1 may hit the lane marker while another car is doing the same. I see no preference to biasing away from moving objects as advertised.

 

[Discoducky]

I'm wondering if the white/black stripes had something to do with it, and caused AP to get confused about the lanes, as ankitmishra suggested above. You can see in the video the car did drift to the left right before it dove to the right.

Record that section again, at the same time of day, in the same weather conditions and post the video.

 

[ChadFeldheimer]

The pickup truck has running boards and a stylized groove along the bottom of the doors. Perhaps AutoSteer picked up on those cues and interpreted those as lane markings?

As to why the ultrasonic sensors didn't pick up the truck - I don't believe the range on the ultrasonic sensors is long enough to be of much use with the closing speed in the video. Where you took over control is probably at the limits of the useful range of the ultrasonic sensors.

 

[Electricfan]

Record that section again, at the same time of day, in the same weather conditions and post the video.

It will have to wait. That road is I-610, the south loop, and right before where the incident in the video took place the road is currently under construction - 3 lanes become 1. I was stuck for a half an hour waiting to get through it, and am not about to go through there again.

I also didn't charge my Tesla last night, planning to charge it during the day today on solar, but the sun isn't cooperating at all. Or actually I guess you have to blame the clouds; I'm sure the sun is still shining but we can't see it in Houston right now.

- - - Updated - - -

The pickup truck has running boards and a stylized groove along the bottom of the doors. Perhaps AutoSteer picked up on those cues and interpreted those as lane markings?

As to why the ultrasonic sensors didn't pick up the truck - I don't believe the range on the ultrasonic sensors is long enough to be of much use with the closing speed in the video. Where you took over control is probably at the limits of the useful range of the ultrasonic sensors.

I've wondered about this - can the car "see" a trailer that's flat and has no load on it, as well as it "sees" a full-box type trailer? And I've noticed it doesn't seem to "see" a tow truck very well - had a tow truck pull in front of me recently and if I hadn't taken over it would have rear-ended it for certain. So, I think you're on to something - the car doesn't "see" odd shapes as well as normal shapes.

 

[ankitmishra]

I think I didn't explained myself properly the 1st time. I was not talking about the real lane boundary painted in white/black stripes. I am talking about the consistent black thick marking in the middle of your lane and in the truck lane. They might be tyre tracks or something else. But my suspicion is this that those black marks form a pseudo/false lane of their own and the car might have been overwhelmed by the continuously changing data. As you also noticed, it was swerving before the truck. I hope that this helps. If you didn't misunderstood me the 1st time, I hope I am not bothering by repeating myself.
Still, my suggestion would be to contact Tesla as they will be able to tell what happened.

 

[ChadFeldheimer]

I've wondered about this - can the car "see" a trailer that's flat and has no load on it, as well as it "sees" a full-box type trailer? And I've noticed it doesn't seem to "see" a tow truck very well - had a tow truck pull in front of me recently and if I hadn't taken over it would have rear-ended it for certain. So, I think you're on to something - the car doesn't "see" odd shapes as well as normal shapes.

Neural networks are the state of the art technology for feature and object detection. They consist of a very rudimentary model of how our brains work to achieve the same task - layers of interconnected neurons progressively identify fundamental lines, then features, then shapes, and objects. They are not explicitly programmed - instead, they are trained. The neural network is shown thousands or millions or even billions of examples of objects. The network gradually learns how to recognize the objects that it is trained with.

At a minimum, for AP in the 7.1 release, the distinct objects the processor is trained to recognize include lane markings, speed limit signs, trucks, cars, and motorcycles. Obvious, because this is the feedback we get from the instrument cluster.

The neural network in the current AutoPilot hardware has limited processing ability. It is nowhere near the complexity of the portion of the human brain that we use to drive on the highway - even ignoring street signs, traffic lights, traffic cones, pedestrians, animals, etc etc.

Like you, I've also observed that it doesn't classify certain vehicles very well. There was a picture uploaded in this forum earlier of AP 7.1 identifying a car (sedan, I think) in a drive-through bay as a semi-truck - possibly the tall rectangular outline of the drive-through bay tricked the neural network into identifying the car as a truck. These poor classifications could either be a fundamental limit in the processing ability of the processor hardware or in the breadth training data - or both.

Since identifying the exact type of vehicle isn't critical (versus, say, finding lane markings), I'm guessing Tesla hasn't devoted much time to getting that classification to perform well. Especially for less common vehicles, like the tow trucks or empty trailers that you've noted.

 

[Electricfan]

I think I didn't explained myself properly the 1st time. I was not talking about the real lane boundary painted in white/black stripes. I am talking about the consistent black thick marking in the middle of your lane and in the truck lane. They might be tyre tracks or something else. But my suspicion is this that those black marks form a pseudo/false lane of their own and the car might have been overwhelmed by the continuously changing data. As you also noticed, it was swerving before the truck. I hope that this helps. If you didn't misunderstood me the 1st time, I hope I am not bothering by repeating myself.
Still, my suggestion would be to contact Tesla as they will be able to tell what happened.

Ok, I understand you now. I don't know if that could be the answer because those dark stains (ICE vehicles are so nasty!) from gasoline and diesel exhaust fumes and leaking oil are so common that the car would be having this problem much more often. But who knows? Only Tesla, at this point. And I can't believe they are unaware of this behavior of their AP. I think they're most likely working extremely hard on 7.2, and I hope to God they fix this bug before an accident happens.

 

[Beryl]

At speeds below 30mph or so, my car appears to be reasonably capable of autonomous (hands completely off) travel. The range and reliability of the radar and ultrasonics appear to be sufficient in this slower speed range to inform the car to drive reasonably well even with little human supervision. Once I get above 35mph, the car can get itself into trouble much more quickly, especially with lane detection mistakes.

As such, in heavy congestion (stop and go), I let autopilot do its thing and it has done a great job for me. I feel comfortable diverting much of my attention to my phone, checking and responding to messages. But when traffic allows speeds beyond 30mph or so, I begin to transition to paying close attention to the driving task and being ready to take over instantly (in terms of human reaction time).

Excellent post.

This is how I use autopilot now that my camera and sensors have been calibrated correctly. If I'm all alone on a relatively straight road above 30mph, I can comfortably divert my attention a bit more.

It appears that Electricfan's video was shot at ~78mph.

What is the speed limit on that road anyway?

 

[ChadFeldheimer]

I think I didn't explained myself properly the 1st time. I was not talking about the real lane boundary painted in white/black stripes. I am talking about the consistent black thick marking in the middle of your lane and in the truck lane. They might be tyre tracks or something else.

I believe the thick black marking is accumulated motor oil =) With enough Teslas on the road, those will eventually go away!!!

I had the same thought. But the motor oil was quite consistent throughout the video, and the car only drifted when the truck was close. So I looked at the truck for visual cues that look similar to lane markings. Both are plausible explanations, given the little information we have.

 

[Electricfan]

Excellent post.

This is how I use autopilot now that my camera and sensors have been calibrated correctly. If I'm all alone on a relatively straight road above 30mph, I can comfortably divert my attention a bit more.

What is the speed limit on that road anyway?

118 kph = 73 mph. Speed limit is 65. If you drive 65 you get run over in Houston. 73 is on the slow side of normal Houston speeds.

 

[AWDtsla]

As to why the ultrasonic sensors didn't pick up the truck - I don't believe the range on the ultrasonic sensors is long enough to be of much use with the closing speed in the video. Where you took over control is probably at the limits of the useful range of the ultrasonic sensors.

I have never seen my car use the ultrasonics to get away from another car, or for the matter even the front radar when the car notices another car encroaching on the shared lane marker.

I always take over past a certain point of anxiety, and I let it get _real_ close. Passenger commented yesterday on how close we were to another car and I didn't take over for it.

 

[Quantum`]

Owner's manual says the ultrasonics turn off over some minimal speed. But I've got to think they at least pretend to turn on for lane-changing.

The radar -and- camera are ostensibly used for Autopilot, and the radar should be an absolute dead-reference that something's in front of you, but this is letting us down. This is why I say the software is overwhelmed and getting way behind in these swerves and close calls.

 

[ChadFeldheimer]

I have never seen my car use the ultrasonics to get away from another car, or for the matter even the front radar when the car notices another car encroaching on the shared lane marker.

Me neither, although I regularly have side collision avoidance push me away from stationary barriers. It only kicks in for me when the barriers are within about 2 feet away.

I don't let other cars get that close - the side mirrors would be inches away at that point, which is too close for comfort.

 

[Beryl]

118 kph = 73 mph. Speed limit is 65. If you drive 65 you get run over in Houston. 73 is on the slow side of normal Houston speeds.

Yes. I live in a Houston suburb. Many Texan have insane driving habits which I don't plan to adopt. +5 is enough for me unless I'm passing or driving in the left-most lane. (Haven't been run over yet, thank God.)

 

[copyhacker]

@ElectricFan
The road has a consistent black strip marking. I am not sure what happened there, but it is the only remote possible reason I can think of. These markings are present in the lane you were driving and in the lane truck was. Maybe your car begin following the false lane formed between black markings. I think your car was swerving between the real lane and pseudo lane much before the truck came. Check around 0:11, your begins correcting into real lane and then swerves again. 0:08-0:11, your car is going into false lane.

After watching several times, that is what I think is happening as well. Especially given the (dusk?) lighting conditions and the fact that the yellow left edge line begins to be smudged about the time the car starts heading to the right. As you look toward the horizon at that point, the parallel oil stains are much clearer than the real lane markings, and it looks like the car is beginning to track them instead. FWIW.

 

[davidc18]

Right before that video I had spent 30 minutes in a bumper to bumper traffic jam, and was very happy to get be moving again. But I was reading during the bumper to bumper part. I only read on beltway 8, (or in bumper to bumper stop and move 4 ft, stop again traffic) where I thought it was safe. I'm rethinking that now. This is the first time the car ever just dived toward another vehicle for no reason. Really scared me. I have said before and now I say it again with greatly renewed conviction - I don't think Tesla should have released autopilot if they knew it was as bad as it is. Somebody is going to die, and there is going to be a very costly lawsuit, more costly in terms of lost sales and popularity of the car than in money, by far.[/QUOTE

Reading, really?!? This is the behavior that brought us 7.1 - Please STOP reading while using AP and start paying attention. Please.

 

[ecarfan]

After watching several times, that is what I think is happening as well. Especially given the (dusk?) lighting conditions and the fact that the yellow left edge line begins to be smudged about the time the car starts heading to the left. As you look toward the horizon at that point, the parallel oil stains are much clearer than the real lane markings, and it looks like the car is beginning to track them instead. FWIW.

Well, maybe. To me, the image quality of the video is too poor to make a determination as to the clarity of the lane markings.

Right before that video I had spent 30 minutes in a bumper to bumper traffic jam, and was very happy to get be moving again. But I was reading during the bumper to bumper part.

Reading, really?!? This is the behavior that brought us 7.1 - Please STOP reading while using AP and start paying attention. Please.

Agreed. We are years away from AUTONOMOUS driving. Autopilot DOES NOT equal Autonomous.