Tesla AutoPilot – I give up, it's downright lethal
teslamotorsclub.com
teslamotorsclub.com
Here's a video of Waymo car in Phoenix. Around min. 17 it gets confused by a cone and stops in the middle of two lane road, hugging both lanes.
Then google sends support but just when they arrive, the car drives away from them.
They were lucky it didn't lead to an accident and as long as they keep the fleet to 600 cars then yeah, the accident rate will be much lower than Tesla's AutoPilot, shipped in more than a million cars.
My point is not to rag on Waymo just to inject some reality.
We don't have a choice between "safe and unsafe" way of developing self-driving software.
We have a choice between "test software we know can't handle all situation on real roads and make it better based on that testing" or "we'll never have self-driving software".
Except the other option will rather be: "U.S. doesn't allow testing of self-driving software on real roads and a Chinese company will develop it and will capture a trillion-dollar market in U.S."
This is like saying that we'll never have a cure for cancer if we can't experiment on the public without their consent.
The bar for medication, at least, is proving safety first before testing on large amounts of people and allowing the public to buy it.
Except for vaccines, apparently...
It's also entirely possible Waymo hasn't achieved peak perfection in its software development practices despite doing better than Tesla, and that another entity could do it more safely.
The reason is widely known. Phantom braking is caused by rogue radar reflections that confuse the car into thinking there’s an obstruction in its path, activating the AEB automatic braking.
The real question is, why does it happen more often with Teslas than with other cars equipped with radar AEB? Maybe Tesla’s is just more sensitive.
And this part from the previous poster strikes me as a big problem: "They were lucky it didn't lead to an accident and as long as they keep the fleet to 600 cars then yeah, the accident rate will be much lower than Tesla's AutoPilot, shipped in more than a million cars."
That seems like an excellent reason to keep the number of active cars very, very small. Rather than, as stated, an excuse for shrugging at a death rate at least 1667 times higher.
But “move fast and kill people” is ludicrous and it’s exactly what Tesla is doing.
I bet you that'd reduce traffic fatalities dramatically too.
How far do you want to go to 'save lives'.
I guarantee you with 100% certainty I can design a society that will 'save lives' at every turn for every single activity, and I can guarantee you with 100% certainty you wouldn't want to live in it.
https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
fortunately our regulators don't take a one size fits all approach for how new technologies can be developed
Even if we trust them on that stat, which I certainly don't, that still doesn't mean they aren't killing people unnecessarily.
Plenty of businesses are able to build very effective safety mechanisms for motor vehicles without subjecting the general public to Beta software. To me this is a case where the ends do not justify the means.
Now, if you drive one of these "FDS" cars and it ends up in an accident where people die, who is responsible? Are you responsible? Is the car manufacturer responsible? Do we just write it off as a freak accident with 1 in a million chance of happening again?
What if we made driving tests far more difficult (otherwise, you can drive a 50(?)CC moped that tops out at 35mph)? What if we had government subsidize rides home after going out drinking? There are a lot of solutions that don't involve "let companies test 5000lbs autonomous vehicles on public roads." Heck, those companies have enough money let them buy a city and test it on the now private streets.
> Tesla and Waymo seem to be making progress. I don't expect them to be perfect but in the long run this will save lives.
Let's assume for a second your unstated assumptions I was alluding to above are correct. This is the only way to make a better system and that system has to be tested on public roads. Why do we allow two private companies to reap the inevitable huge monetary rewards when we all pay for that system with a higher increased risk of dying in the meantime?
When Ubers started self-driving it took just a few hours before there were videos on twitter and youtube of them driving right though red lights without a care in the world.
Tesla: many deaths, no halt, no improvement in the program. See: phantom braking
That's how bureaucracy and laws form. Individuals (people or companies) do X. The rest of society doesn't like it. They outlaw or regulate it. That's why the rivers no longer catch on fire in the US.
And how does one prove something is true "statistically"?
By doing it many times. So many times that you can be statistically confident of the result.
Statistically, there is ~1.4 deaths per 100 MILLION miles driven.
To prove, statistically, that software is as good, it would have to drive at least 1 billion miles. And yes, it would kill 14 people in the process (or more, if it's worse than humans; or less, if its better).
Tesla is already doing what you say car companies should be doing i.e. statistically testing the software
Except you don't like it and think there's a magic fairy test that will show something "statistically" without driving statistically significant number of miles.
If we go with your suggestion, what would you consider "proven safe"?
Autopilot has been running in hundreds of thousands of cars, has driven several billion miles, and we still don't have enough data to prove whether it is safer or more dangerous then an average human driver. Accidents are rare and we therefore need a huge amount of data before we can be confident that the accident rates we are seeing are predictive. I have no idea how you collect that type of data without them being tested on real roads with other real drivers.
(Warning: unnecessarily loud video for some reason): https://twitter.com/finance_degen/status/1307529357951467531
Lets start with passing these basic tests before selling them as working features. I don't think we're asking for a very high bar.
It also isn't clear from watching that video what the safest and therefore desired behavior should be in that situation. A self driving car is obviously not going to prevent all accidents, so it is a question of minimizing potential harm. We don't want a car to aggressively brake whenever someone at a street corner takes a step towards the road. We therefore need to balance the chance of a person stepping into the path of the car with the risk of braking when it is unnecessary and causing a rear end collision. The problem in the linked thread is overaggressive braking so forcing the car to pass a test that rewards overaggressive braking would only make that specific example worse.
That leads back to my point about needing a huge amount of data. You can't just run a car through an obstacle course to know whether it is safer or more dangerous than a human. You need to have it interacting with unpredictable humans and you need to do it repeatedly before you can confidentially predict whether it is safer or more dangerous than a human.
[1] - https://copradar.com/redlight/factors/IEA2000_ABS51.pdf
IIRC, Subaru and other companies pass these simple emergency braking tests 100% of the time.
That test was a Chinese test IIRC, but the software doesn't change between countries. Similar tests have been done here in the USA by insurance groups to set insurance rates, but a government-mandated test for what "emergency braking" really means (before you "sell the feature to the public", lets actually have a government-mandated test similar to that video).
You shouldn't be allowed to call your stuff "autopilot" or "full self driving", or "emergency braking" or "pedestrian avoidance" (or some other set of words) unless you can... you know, avoid pedestrians and emergency brake in a well-controlled test.
Avoiding balloon people is enough. But its a well known fact that Tesla repeatedly fails at these simple tests, when other groups (ie: Mobileye group / Mobileye hardware) manages to emergency brake in time.
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IIHS test: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/performance-of-pedestrian-c...
The issue is that 3rd party non-government groups (ie: IIHS) are the ones running these tests. There's no advocacy group for US consumers as far as I can tell. IIHS is primarily about serving their master (insurance companies).
Don't get me wrong: IIHS is doing good work here. But its not their job to protect the consumer.
EDIT: I got my sources mixed up. Tesla apparently passed the IIHS test.
It was the AAA test they failed: https://insideevs.com/news/377427/video-tesla-model-3-failed...
They do not pass 100% of the time unless you have a very narrow definition of "these simple emergency braking tests". No emergency braking system is foolproof.
>But its a well known fact that Tesla repeatedly fails at these simple tests,
You say this while at the same time the source you include has Tesla in the middle tier of results.
Either way, my point is not that Teslas are safe or that they perform well on this test. The point is that this test does not tell you whether a car being driven by Autopilot is safer than a human.
Lets get them working consistently under well defined, standard, simple, emergency braking tests before worrying about the real world.
Like not hitting a balloon dressed up as a pedestrian during clear skies in sunny weather. I don't care about rainy days until we get the bright / sunny weather figured out.
Automatic emergency braking is the exact wrong feature to use for your example. Either the driver sees the pedestrian, stops in time, and the automatic emergency braking is of no use or the driver would have hit the pedestrian and any effort from the automatic system is a benefit. This is the type of feature that should be deployed as soon as possible assuming it is not tuned too aggressively to stop at false alarms.
Has it really though?
> I have noticed for me at least it started happening after I updated at 2021.4.18.11
This implies that the functionality of the AutoPilot is constantly changing, presumably meaning each version has thousands of miles rather than AutoPilot having 'several billion miles'. It doesn't seem like you can trust past performance is the users are to be believed.
My assumption is that OTA updates won't be allowed once this stuff starts requiring certification.
>My assumption is that OTA updates won't be allowed once this stuff starts requiring certification.
It is unclear whether this would actually be safer or not. I am reminded of how both Tesla[1] and Toyota[2] had similar software problems with their antilock brakes. Both companies had a software fix relatively quickly. Tesla deployed the fix immediately to cars through OTA updates. Toyota issued a voluntary recall meaning its cars wouldn't be updated to the fixed software for months, years, or potentially ever.
[1] - https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/30/technology/consumer-reports...
[2] - http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/02/09/japan.prius.recall/in...
I would point out that given the dangers involved with accidentally turning over a million vehicles into autonomous 5000 lbs missile, erroring on the side of caution seems fine. The benefits are quite low: if the autopilot had been on since inception between 20 and 100 lives would have been saved (I accept your "several billion miles" number and point out that that the average fatality rate is 1.1 per 100 million miles driven, but that is based on averaging in 40 year old cars with fewer safety features and shrinks ever year.). The costs could be astronomical: a simultaneous failure (security, mistraining, date bug, whatever) could result in hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths.
Which means there are three errors to consider. (1) Obviously, some things (bugs, exploits) are unknowns and there will always be an inherit risk there. I would say that these risks may forever make self-driving cars too risky. (2) It is difficult to come up with any actual test of driving skills. This is especially true because any test will suddenly become the target so we have to have the test cover everything. (3) Actual driving errors: Both of the above assume that the AI can drive as well as a person. That's obviously difficult to do. And we would need to see a huge improvement to justify adding a new risk factor.
This is only the case if you look at the current system as the finished product. The biggest benefit is that it gets us closer to a true self driving system. That would not only save millions of lives, but it would revolutionize logistics and economics of transportation which can in turn reshape society.
>The costs could be astronomical: a simultaneous failure (security, mistraining, date bug, whatever) could result in hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths.
I have no idea what scenarios you are imaging that could lead to "hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths." Almost every Autopilot death in the US makes national news. There is no way hundreds of people could die without there being some type of intervention in the system.
Having used other products, I think this is objectively not true. I've seen "Pro" pilot accelerate itself into its own collision warning and randomly fail at basic curves.
I've seen video of Ford Copilot failing due to glare and jerking toward trees.
For some reason, Tesla just gets more attention. Some of the other beta-like behaviors are actually worse.
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/68627925129377792...
I'm really not convinced that is objectively better, even with whitelisted roads.
I've also been observing a general trend of reviewers rating the performance of new vehicles based in part on how long it can go without nagging the user to hold the wheel. sigh
You have to remember that human drivers are extremely dangerous, and cause millions of deaths and serious, life-changing injuries worldwide every year.
Any regulations that hold back the development of self-driving software would likely be counter-productive. It’s a bit like arguing that we should have held back Covid-19 vaccines because a small number of people had blood clots or heart inflammation.
Would you apply the same standard to human drivers?
On a more similar note, that's what we apply to aircraft. They are illegal to fly until proven safe to the authorities (ie. certified).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
NHTSA is investigating Tesla, some 20-30 accidents. If they find that Tesla is doing something seriously dangerous, I'm sure they will force Tesla to take corrective actions.
The same applies to European regulators.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/07/28/teslas...
> By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 479,000 miles.
So, Tesla numbers are better even in the article you link, but still not apples-to-apples comparison. Accident vs. crash.
And Tesla is adding pro forma camera driver monitoring.
Let's start with this segment of the title:
"Teslas Aren’t Safer On Autopilot"
Then, further down:
"Teslas are not safer with Autopilot on"
"Of the 2.1M miles between accidents in manual mode, 840,000 would be on freeway and 1.26M off of it. For the 3.07M miles in autopilot, 2.9M would be on freeway and just 192,000 off of it. So the manual record is roughly one accident per 1.55M miles off-freeway and per 4.65M miles on-freeway. But the Autopilot record ballparks to 1.1M miles between accidents off freeway and 3.5M on-freeway.
In other words, about 30% longer without an “accident” in manual (with forward collision avoidance on) or TACC than in Autopilot. Instead of being safer with Autopilot, it looks like a Tesla is slightly less safe.
But not a lot less safe. And if the predicted 3:1 ratio of accidents freeeway to non-freeway is too high, it might even be about the same. But almost certainly not 1.5 times better as Tesla’s numbers imply."
Which I think is a pretty fair and even handed evaluation of the available data.
> Tesla (...) are doing much worse than those ordinary drivers.
That was response to:
> Those successfully tested ordinary drivers also kill many people every year.
The not-apples-to-apples comparison indicate that Tesla are twice less likely to cause accident/crash when on Autopilot, and even less when not on Autopilot.
I find it also highly likely that Autopilot slightly increases the chances of accident right now.
> This sounds to be precisely the type of roads where autopilot/autosteer should not be used - it is not limited by entry and exit ramps. If autopilot/autosteer is used in circumstances where it is not for use, then from time to time it is going to perform in an undefined way.
> Using ANY tool outside its operating environment will be dangerous. Put your experience down to user error.
One big problem is the sheer unpredictability of what's going to happen the next moment. If you turn on cruise control on the wrong street, its behavior is still going to be entirely predictable. You're simply not going to get suddenly erratic behavior just because you pressed the cruise-control button. Autopilot on the other hand seems to actively make the situation far more unpredictable than it would otherwise be, increasing the dangers people find themselves in. That's just horrible by any standards I can consider sane, no matter how it's marketed.
Another (somewhat related, somewhat distinct) problem is that a system that works (say) 99% of the time and fails 1% of the time can easily be more dangerous than one that works 20% of the time and fails 80% of the time. (Obviously I made up the numbers, but adjust accordingly.) If you have to constantly correct something, then you're used to it; it's second nature to you. But if you might get used to it working too well... then as a human you won't be necessarily ready for the rare cases, especially when they're more difficult to predict. So an autopilot that works 'better' than something like cruise control can easily end up being more dangerous because of this, and it would be a mistake to hold them to identical standards.
So I guess I have to take back my earlier comment then, they’d still be criticised!
I’m not hating on Tesla, they make beautiful cars and tremendously fun to drive. If I had $50k to spend frivolously I’d buy one in a heartbeat (without “FSD”!).
Seems like Tesla manufactured a reality distortion field with FSD to market it like a fully self-driving vehicle where that is no where near the case as it is still admittedly Level 2 cruise control. Not the over-promised 'Level 5' FSD.
I'm not going into the pricing of this, since that is a complete scam and on this, Tesla really took their customers for a self-driving ride for years on a beta product feature that still doesn't work as advertised.
No thanks and no deal.
> Build upon Enhanced Autopilot and order Full Self-Driving Capability on your Tesla. This doubles the number of active cameras from four to eight, enabling full self-driving in almost all circumstances, at what we believe will be a probability of safety at least twice as good as the average human driver. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat. For Superchargers that have automatic charge connection enabled, you will not even need to plug in your vehicle.
The following is almost unchanged on Tesla's current Autopilot page[2]:
> All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you don’t say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you there as the assumed destination or just home if nothing is on the calendar. Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed. When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park itself. A tap on your phone summons it back to you.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2016/10/21/behind-t...
To be clear, Tesla is representing that a car you can buy today will one day drive itself. It would be very hard to represent that a car sold today will someday magically develop fusion capabilities. Again, I don’t happen to believe that current Tesla models will achieve what is stated in the marketing copy.
That's still more than they could say for fusion drives, but it doesn't imply they will ever provide you with any self-driving software. Just that they believe it's possible to write such software.
Put another way, there are a lot of people who are going to be really pissed when they realize that their car will never do those things, and they paid $10k for practically nothing (ok, technically they get autopilot and the ability for the car to stop at red lights today).
I think this bit is meant to cover their rear: "The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions."
Translation: we don't/can't actually guarantee this will ever happen, and if it does, it may depend on where you're located.
“Hi mate. I had this now a few times and I learn to expect it and step the pedal ahead. Which software version you are at the moment? I have noticed for me at least it started happening after I updated at 2021.4.18.11.”
So you put in that you have a Tesla on FSD update 2021.7.20.123 and the supplemental AIs you want to be sure to use, and my AI will recommend you 3-5 other AI systems that receive good reviews with your existing choices. Thumbs up if you like it, thumbs down if not, if your car is totaled, that's an auto-downvote. Looking for funding.
And by uneasy I mean unsafe enough that I believe you literally should not be allowed to drive like that.
Every car is capable of doing this; every car is one transmission / differential / electric motor lockup away from stopping its drive wheels immediately.
In an internal combustion engine there are a few other possibilities including a thrown piston or rod, a significant lack of oil
Sure, and have you heard of brake checks? They're (very) illegal despite what you said for a reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_check
Brake testing and tailgating are examples of aggressive driving, and both may be punishable as vehicular assault, careless or reckless driving, or vehicular homicide if death occurs.
yeah, but these risks of mechanical lockup are usually better mitigated against because they're an understood risk.
Driveshaft lockups can occur, generally because an appliance on either side of them failed -- certain manufacturers mitigate this by very simply using mechanisms that are unlikely to ever break, and some manufacturers go an extra step and use BreakBolt style fasteners that will destroy themselves in the event of a lockup that torques them harshly.
An engine seize event doesn't stall or stop a vehicle that uses a CVT (most low-end 'automatic' cars on the market), it just creates additional engine braking pressure -- and before CVTs were in common use we used traditional torque converter automatics that failed similarly.. this is one of the major features of a hydro-mechanical linkage element like a torque converter.
Many CV axle designs now incorporate straps to limit movement during a failure, to prevent wheel lock or steering lock.
New style manuals can automatically engage the clutch during an engine seize event, limiting the physical reaction from the car during the event.
Shit still happens, wheel locks are uncommon but they still exist; but I think it's safe to say that people are waiting to hear what Tesla's engineering answer will be to the whole 'suddenly-stopped-car' problem.
The other was a similar situation involving a vehicle merging in a short merge lane. I think the car was anticipating that the person was merging due to the short space that they had, but in reality they were slowing to wait on me to pass.
Both involved the car jumping immediately to a full on panic braking type solution when no collision was imminent or likely. To be clear, I don't know that these involved dropping >10 mph either... but it definitely would have if I hadn't intervened.
It is scary to people because the Tesla makes an unsettling alert noise at the same time the vehicle speed changes slightly.
The only way this would result in an accident is with someone else speeding and tailgating. I'll get my tiny violin and 360 dashcam ready for that one.
> the vehicle speed changes slightly
20mph is not a "slight" change. That's easily a full third of your speed in a freeway (or a quarter if you're speeding), literally the difference between a street and a freeway. And that's easily half your kinetic energy you'd be losing.
> The only way this would result in an accident is with someone else speeding and tailgating
Surely you can't pretend you've thought of every possible scenario this could turn into an accident?
If nothing else, people can momentarily miss the fact that the car in front of them randomly slowed down 20mph, especially when other cars are maintaining their speeds. Doubly so if they're glancing somewhere else to change lanes or watch out for other dangers or whatever. A million things can go wrong that I can't pretend to think of, and I'm shocked you just so confidently ruled them all out. As I see it, just because some of us are mortals, that doesn't excuse letting small mistakes bare our mortality in the middle of a highway.
Let's examine a Tesla traveling at 60 mph starts full on breaking to 40mph, and the person behind them is traveling at (1) the same 60mph and (2) is maintaining the recommended separation for 60 mph and (3) has instant breaking (bonus condition). The driver behind has 2.5 seconds to react to avoid a collision. The average human reaction time for a driver who is expecting breaking soon is 1.5 seconds, but this "phantom breaking"'s deceleration comes out of nowhere. And the average car doesn't have instantaneous speed changes.
In fact, an F-150 with similar automatically computer activated breaking would be a coin flip to avoid a collision, certainly a matter of a couple of feet.
I've never heard of a better case that even these "safety features" should be disallowed on public roads.
It's a multi-ton machine with a non-trivial amount of lithium, ffs.
Outside the community, we get frustrated by silly debates about lane centering and other FSD-like features that actually work pretty well. Sigh...
There's nothing that could make the whole population of human drivers unsafe all at once, we know the upper bound of the destruction we can cause. We've spent a century earning that predictability. With software, we'll never have it.
Tesla doesn’t just peddle super car capabilities with FSD, but just recently they seem to support the idea it can travel through dangerous flooded waters. [1]
[1] https://twitter.com/ray4tesla/status/1419312854759448585?s=2...
That's just a bold faced lie.
That twitter account is just some dude, not Tesla.
Furthermore it's not some staged ad.
It really happened. A Chinese Tesla owner was able to drive through dangerous flooded waters, happened to record it and posted it on social media.
Then someone re-tweeted it.
What exactly do you object to in that sequence of events?
More distressing is the above commenter described a nightmare scenario which went unaddressed. I guess that's your right. I wonder what you think about that part of their comment and whether it is "believable" or not. I find many aspects of messaging coming from Tesla, either the company itself or supporters, as unbelievable.
“If curious abt TSWLM car, am still planning to do a sports sub car that can drive on roads. Just a side project. Limited market potential :)“ Musk, 10:29 am 6/19/16 The spy that shagged me car which is a reference to a amphibious car. There is more in this article too.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11975452/tesla-model-s-fl...
> Your Tesla can function as a boat for brief periods of time
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/10685821263065825...
Wouldn't the logs make that pretty clear? Or were you and/or the police not able to access those for whatever reason?
I don't understand why Tesla are still permitted to sell vehicles with this feature.
Regulators look at data.
in most of the world i'd hope an accident caused by using these features is the drivers fault for switching them on and not 'driving with due care and attention'
all of the stuff about it being "safe if" miss the core concept of what safety means if you take it seriously, which you always should when driving. safety and stability isn't something you get by ignoring edge cases, its about handling them so robustly you can't have problems.
people who have never experienced problems can /maybe/ justify using these features... but what they say on the tin should be enough to not want to use them.
giving beta features to regular consumers is fine. doing it when those features can cause injury or death is absolutely abhorrent behaviour that should be prosecuted.
allowing software updates for something like this is pretty counter to safety practises too, and the QA process clearly has too many problems to be reliable... not that it should be relied upon anyway on the timescales involved here.
too many of these tech companies 'pushing the limits' are doing so by ignoring the law, and it costs lives. when individuals do this they are fined and/or imprisoned, and rightly so.
the idea that a company results in no accountability is not a failing of the law, but a failing of those whose duty it is to enforce it.
If I can die because a driver has a big red "kill" button in their car, I'm not going to blame them for pressing it. I'm going to blame the manufacturer and regulators. That button is just too damn dangerous for humans.
Similarly, there's a reason we don't put a "nuke" button on the president's desk directly guarding missiles and then blame him for pressing it at the wrong time. Some things are just too damn dangerous to put in a single human's control, let alone so easily.
The environment can't get any more controlled, they could even put trackers on every single passenger, and person, down there.
Yet the thing is still just a glorified taxi fleet, human drivers slowly driving trough RGB lighted tunnels.
[0] https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a36686635/las-vegas...
Yesterday while on navigate on autopilot is veered to the left on the off ramp and almost crossed the line. It took a lot of force to stop the wheel. They’re making it really aggressive which can be good but it shouldn’t rip the wheel out of your hands.
Both of them have quite a bit of experience with Power Wheels and other random wheeled vehicles around the property.
I think I'd trust my six year old on the road over Autopilot, given "weird things." At least her vision processing system is capable of going "... huh, that's weird..." instead of "I know what that thing is!" when nonsensical. And she has object persistence, combined with a sense of road speed.
We occasionally see weird optical illusions and have to work through them, but she understands the difference between a stoplight and random lights in the night sky (which, around here, are often enough crop dusters).
I love our Tesla, but the TACC is not that great, the most annoying part is when passing cars on the freeway it sometimes all of a sudden it thinks the car next to me that I'm passing is in the same lane, and then phantom brakes while trying to pass. It is disappointing.
For reference, I've had a Honda with adaptive cruise control for about 10 months, and it's done that once. But I don't think it is designed to brake that hard no matter what.
Of course it's not easy. But nobody forced them to release this half-baked steaming pile.
Full visual won't fix the fundamental problem. At best it decreases the cost and energy requirement (but then they'll likely use that for more processing anyway, to try to squeeze more information out of the remaining sensors).
I can see the day coming when a piece of trash falls on a road, and the car seeing it auto brakes, and the car behind it auto-brakes, all the way back to some antique without auto-brake, which rear-ends the last automated car and takes the blame.
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/tesla-ful...
Of course, it’s not my 2010 4Runner that would hit the brakes in a corner if it detected a wheel slipping, which would pitch me in to an outside lane. I bout had three head ons before I got rid of it.
Its not an autopilot, stop calling it AutoPilot tm.
Its downright misleading and potential lethal. Almost no one read manuals, not to mention small print.
If I make a DefiBrillator tm that looks like an actual defibrillator, but gives gentle electric shock for fun. I would be in jail.
Have a billionaire do it and its national hero
https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-crash-elon-musk-autopi...
Is it too hopeful to think that it won't take a lot of human blood sacrifice to get there?
Is it cynical for me to think that if it does require human blood, then maybe I don't want to go down that research path -- and at best I don't want to be in the testing group?
As I was driving home the other day, heading west down the highway, my Tesla Model 3 duly warned me that its front-facing cameras were blinded by the setting sun and temporarily non-functional. If the car had been operating in Autopilot, it would have disengaged and put me back in command. If it had been operating in Level 3 or higher autonomy, perhaps driving my kids home from school, I have no idea what would have happened. I do not believe Tesla will get to Level 4 or 5 autonomy with the current cars on the road, despite what Elon has promised.
No, they don't. Tesla won't release enough data to allow anyone else to evaluate it, so you're stuck with their bulk statistics, which generally speaking compare middle aged (safe) drivers, in luxury cars (safe), in well marked road conditions (safe) during good weather (safe) with "all accidents, for all vehicles, for all drivers, in all road conditions, in all weather."
But I guess the thing is, AutoPilot is using a human as the backup. The human is saving the car from making mistakes. The very thing that is supposedly worse than the car is the only thing capable of making certain decisions well enough when things get a bit dicey.
Edit: typo. ‘treat’ -> ‘test’
Pay attention.
One is trading lives today for the hope of saving more in the future sooner.
As other users in that forum thread point out, the current software is more like enhanced cruise control, lane keeping, and automatic breaking assist. It is also //only intended// for //limited access highways and freeways// e.g. onramp / offramp limited.
Tesla aren't doing the right thing voluntarily so regulators need to step in.
That said I didn't realise autopilot is only intended for highways and freeways. Maybe that's not explicit enough?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/tesla-autopilot-self-driving...
This is more like 'Fools Self Driving' I'm afraid. Especially with messing around with beta software that doesn't function properly as advertised.
Tesla’s marketing is optimized to convince users that the software is better than it is, and the software’s failure modes align horribly with the worst case: when things are working, everything is smooth, but without warning the car will suddenly decide to make a dangerous active change (swerving, braking, etc) in a way that can kill a driver who is even partially distracted.
Put the above together and it starts to look like Elon has created a perfect storm for traffic accidents.
That being said, I have a Honda with assistive braking and it is terrible. Shadows, pot holes, ghosts all seem to cause it to brake and not in predictable ways which is frustrating. I only leave it on, because I imagine one day I won't quite react fast enough to someone in front of me and it will save me the pain of rear ending someone.
But I definitely almost did when it slammed the brakes on a highway off ramp and got me rightfully honked at by the car behind me.
Whats worse is I'm not even sure if mine could receive updates at any point. Maybe at the dealership.
That's not a solution for you, just thought I would share commiseration. Your experience with it is slightly worse than mine has been but I leave mine on for the exact same reason.
The worst phantom brakes that I've had from AP were cases where a car really was creeping into my lane a bit. Its just that hard braking wasn't the right fix for the situation as a slight swerve was safer.
It's a slowdown typically within the range of regeneration, not even touching the brakes, and it's nowhere close to squeaking tires or the dramatic scenario you describe
I own a Tesla Model 3 as my daily driver. Phantom breaking works exactly the way I described it. And it’s not hard to understand why: the intent of the system (like all other emergency braking systems on modern cars) is to avoid a collision with a perceived object in front of the car. A gentle regenerative slowdown wouldn’t even make sense in that scenario.
Phantom breaking behaves the way a human driver would if they were attempting to stop short of an impending front collision. It just so happens that the Tesla is happy to engage that behavior in all kinds of fun scenarios, like if somebody leans an inch into your lane, or a bridge has a shadow it doesn’t like, or it decides the potholes are a force field in front of your car.
or maybe you're using it off highway?
Maybe the phantom breaking is so harsh in your car it’s giving you amnesia, because it’s a well-understood Tesla failure mode on the Teslamotors subreddit, TMC, and every other Tesla owner forum I’ve seen.
This seems like a pretty easy way to ensure the features are not misused. If you're going under a certain speed or lines aren't painted (or they're unclear) you are more likely to not be on the type of road or situation recommended for these features.
Also something to remember: actual pilots that use real auto pilot in planes have countless hours of training in how to properly integrate its use into the operation of the plane.
In Tesla's too, just not the speed part - I don't think you can assume highways are always above 45 miles an hour, especially if you've ever been on an interstate with lanes closed during rush hour.
“Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.” - Thomas Friedman
Otherwise your assumption that it's just a hate-vote is just your assumption.
For me personally, any article that helps to define the risk of driving on the same roads as Teslas is important. I didn't opt in to this greed-fueled lunacy and don't want to die because of it.