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Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

Another end user mistaking marketing hype behind 'AutoPilot' as 'Full Self Driving' (E.G. that level 5 driving feature).

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.

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If enhanced cruise control in my non-Tesla routinely slammed on the breaks out of nowhere, I’d be pissed about that too.

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.

I'm not justifying how Tesla's assistance works as I've driven a rental and it really is glorified cruise control right now.

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.

I have a Subaru with assistive braking (EyeSight) and it does the exact same thing on a very specific off ramp. My best guess was that it's detecting the big yellow "turn" sign right before the loop. It's about big enough to be the back of a car to the primitive detection.

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.

IMO, Tesla is a bit worse, but I agree with this in principle. I've had other cars phantom brake in similar situations.

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.

There's no "slam" on the brakes you are being sensational.

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’m not sure what you’re talking about.

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.

we must have different highways. I've never had anything close to full braking. only slowing for disabled vehicles/highway barriers

or maybe you're using it off highway?

I’ve experienced it on highways, but as I noted in a parallel comment, if Tesla thinks Autosteer isn’t viable on non-highways, it’s odd that they make it available. They have no trouble identifying road type and using it to determine speed restrictions for autosteer, and no problem disabling autosteer if they can’t ID the lines.

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.

Yes and it should be gps fenced to only activate where safe.

Tesla aren't doing the right thing voluntarily so regulators need to step in.

Isn't it the case that the death rate per miles driven is lower in the Teslas than almost any other vehicle on the road?

No. This is Tesla spin. The Tesla is no safer than any other luxury vehicle which it shares it's demographics with.

Also, it is an inherently screwed data collection, where people will drive manually in more dangerous situations - so you pretty much get a statistics on going on a straight line for hundreds of kilometers, except for the actually problematic intersection/people walking before after the car, etc.

They need to compare against cars in the same class, not the whole industry. Also, I’m not sure death per miles is the right metric. What matters is the accident rate while operating in cruise.

Why? Should they do it for cruise control too?

Yes, autopilot is just cruise control. No other cruise control I've used before violently brakes on the highway for no reason. I don't think expecting it to not do that is unreasonable.

I don't think what he describes fits "full self driving" - I would have expected autopilot to handle it OK.

That said I didn't realise autopilot is only intended for highways and freeways. Maybe that's not explicit enough?

That's the exact reason a German court barred them from using that very label last year in advertising material. They need to start calling it what it is, driving assistance.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/tesla-autopilot-self-driving...

I wouldn't expect "driving assistance" to slam on the brakes abruptly like that either.

If by "mistaking marketing hype" you mean "believing the actual words that they were told", I guess. But I think that goes well beyond the sort of puffery [1] that is legal because nobody believes it. Indeed, I'd argue that Tesla's valuation is precisely based on people believing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery

To be fair it is also referred to to as such in the car UI and in the disclosures that appear before you enable them (lane keeping vs. auto steer isn't too different in my opinion - both terms imply a regular competent driver, not some "always perfect" driver).

In other cars, similar features are restricted to when the vehicle's sensors are 1) able to discern clear lane lines and 2) the vehicle is traveling above a certain speed. Otherwise they're automatically turned off.

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 other cars,

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.

That's what I mean though: these features are not really ideal for traffic that isn't flowing smoothly. Rush hour with a lane closed is a scenario where the driver should be fully aware & in control. Behavior is often unpredictable in such cases with tightly spaced cars and frustrated drivers.

Many manufacturers now offer those features to a stop, or even stop and go situations

I've been in such traffic and the only issue is TACC's 1-2 car spacing allows more people in to my lane than I usually allow, but otherwise it does fine. Tesla's TACC (compared to Honda) is even better in this sense since it often accelerates at the same time as the car in front of it, while Honda's will wait for a 1 car gap to continue driving on its own.

Ok, fair, whatever. But can one use Tesla with normal radar cruise control? Systems like these been super robust for over a decade if not two. Can one disable all these proactive security features that seem to not work.

Yes, you can, that’s called traffic aware cruise control (TACC), and is activated with a single pull on the stick. TACC absolutely does exactly what is mentioned in this article - it suffers from phantom braking where it hauls the car to a stop suddenly in the middle of the highway. Yes, other cars with radar cruise control don’t seem to do this.

Sounds like break assist is assisting a bit too hard

Exactly this. It's like turning on cruise control and blaming it for rear ending someone at a slow down.

No, it's not. I know exactly what my car is going to do when I turn on cruise control no matter the circumstances. It's predictable as hell. With autopilot you have no clue what's going to happen a split second later if you use it on an unblessed street.

Falsely advertised and packaged as 'Full Self Driving' by Tesla for years, but recently admitted to be Level 2 cruise control rather than the 'ambitious' so-called Level 5 that was repeatedly due for last year.

This is more like 'Fools Self Driving' I'm afraid. Especially with messing around with beta software that doesn't function properly as advertised.

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