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Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

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Re: Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

#51

Post by Robotbeat »

colordrops wrote: post #29
toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak for OP, but I'm supposed to be paying attention at all times while autopilot is enabled; as soon as I feel the vehicle may phantom brake, I apply more pressure to the accelerator to maintain speed. I believe the NHTSA is going to require Tesla retrofit radar on all vehicles to mitigate their Tesla Vision functionality deficiency. (submitted lengthy dash cam videos and accelerometer data to the NHTSA as a…

I have an early release Model 3 with radar. I suspect they stopped using the radar in a software update once they started releasing Model 3s without radar, as it didn't have this jerky stopping behavior before that.

I’m convinced they ditched radar because they were having big supply chain constraints with radar, and then Musk convinced himself that Machine Vision with AI is the path forward anyway and decided to rip the bandaid off and address both issues at the same time. (& I really do think he believes that because he obsessed over the AI safety thing in the past in a way I think is unforced and a little silly and pretty clearly falsified at this point.) I do think radar ought to help, at least in principle. Although they probably can eventually get vision to be better than Vision+Radar used to be, although I STILL think it’d be better off also with radar (and perhaps a different, better kind of radar unit).

Re: Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

#52

Post by robonerd »

rvz wrote: post #13

Oh dear. Much worse than I expected by unexpected breaking; and FSD (Fools Self Driving) is involved in these problems, once again putting the lives of the driver and others at risk on the road. > Tesla has drawn scrutiny from safety advocates and regulators for its willingness to allow its customers to test what is essentially an unfinished version of a software product that Musk has long promised will lead to fully…

I'd like to know when "beta test" entered the layman lexicon and came to be an accepted justification for a product under-performing expectations. Google's ngram viewer suggests usage of the term in literature began around 1980, but that doesn't really capture the use and perception of the word by consumers.

Re: Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

#53

Post by mcbishop »

dotancohen wrote: post #37
colordrops wrote: post #3

This is probably happening a lot more than the number of reports mentioned in the article indicates. It happens to me every other day in my Model 3. It's also not binary - sometimes it slows down more quickly than other times, or stops too suddenly when a car is stopped in front of you. Seems real easy to get rear-ended. I've only got autopilot, not FSD. It's very conservative. It always considers someone to be in fr…

For what it's worth, I've tried and failed to reproduce this on my Model 3. I've driven next to trucks, motorcycles, under overpasses, under very-low overpasses, near pedestrians, and even passed camels and horses on the side of the road. No phantom braking. That said, when using the lane-assist, I do prefer to keep my foot on the accelerator pedal anyway. To increase range, I try not to get into regen at all unless…

We'll know that AI is really coming along once cars also break to gawk at camels.

Re: Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

#54

Post by 124816 »

notJim wrote: post #44
124816 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot turn this behavior off persistently -- you need to open car settings and disable it every time you leave Park. My guess is that some jurisdictions mandate this behavior. When this "feature" triggers you have a short window in which to do _something_ to tell the car that you are paying attention. Your options are either: accellerate or brake. If you do nothing the car may apply full brakes and bring you to…

What behavior are you referring to? We are talking about autopilot, and possibly FSD, neither of which are engaged by default (obviously!) What do you mean they can't be turned off? > When this "feature" triggers you have a short window in which to do _something_ to tell the car that you are paying attention. Your options are either: accelerate or brake. If you do nothing the car may apply full brakes and bring you t…

> What behavior are you referring to?

Automatic Emergency Braking. You cannot turn off AEB persistently.

> I'm not aware of any feature that requires me to accelerate or brake to prevent the car from stopping itself

Before the car emergency brakes, it will warn you via "Forward Collision Warning"; the screen will show the object it thinks you're about to hit in red. You can set this to "Late" to reduce false positives -- but if you do, you'll have less time to take action yourself. So now I set it to Early.

After a FCW, you have a small amount of time to do something before the car will do something for you. The M3 manual describes AEB here:

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-8EA7EF1...

It also explains "Automatic Emergency Braking is always enabled when you start Model 3. To disable it for your current drive, touch Controls > Autopilot > Automatic Emergency Braking."

Re: Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

#55

Post by judge2020 »

robonerd wrote: post #22
outworlder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... appalling. My 2019 Leaf has absolutely zero problems maintaining distance with adaptive cruise control, using the ancient technology formerly known as radar. It can somehow even see stationary vehicles, something I thought wasn't feasible.

> It can somehow even see stationary vehicles, something I thought wasn't feasible. Radar seeing stationary objects is trivial, it sees them just like it sees any other. The trick is seeing only the stationary objects which are actually relevant; e.g. not seeing a street sign suspended above the road, or a tree next to the road, but only the stationary objects in the path of the car. The radar configuration that Tesl…

Doesn't it also have to handle things like windy roads and steep angle changes when going uphill? it seems you need both vision and radar to confirm things, eg:

- when on level ground approaching a steep hill, the radar might not know if the object directly in front of the car is just a continuation of the road or not

- when approaching a sharp curve in the road, is the object directly in front of the car actually in its path, or is it just on the side of the road

Re: Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

#57

Post by jayd16 »

qwertox wrote: post #50

How do they deal with insects hitting the glass covering the cameras? Also if multiple cameras get blurred because of insect dirt in front of them?

If something obstructs the camera, autopilot will signal as such and disengage. I assume there's _some_ overlap in camera coverage but it won't work if they're disabled. Also won't work if there's too much glare.

Re: Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

#58

Post by dkarl »

robonerd wrote: post #10
TrevorJ wrote: post #2

How much better than a human driver does a self-driving system need to be before we as a society will accept fully autonomous vehicles? That seems like the key question which we are spending very little effort trying to understand. Until we have a national conversation about this, I suspect self-driving will be an intractable problem.

Beating the national average never should have been seen as the finish line. The average is dragged down into the gutter by a minority of drivers who choose to engage in very poor behavior, like driving drunk, speeding, making unnecessary trips at night and bad weather, street racing, etc. By simply avoiding these few behaviors, it's easy to put yourself well above the average. (inb4 "everybody thinks they're better…

> If you want to impose self-driving on everybody, it should be at least as good as the best drivers.

I would gladly have self-driving imposed on me if it were also imposed on drunks, teenagers, and the elderly. Sounds like a great trade-off.

Re: Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

#59

Post by mensetmanusman »

They should give drivers a simple way to notify Tesla exactly when phantom breaking happens.

E.g. use the mic and when Tesla users say ‘Tesla phantom’ it would send the flagged data to a central repository to train against.

Regardless of your feelings towards Tesla, we need someone to figure out safe self driving before the effort is halted and humanity has to wait a century before a new generation tries again (like with nuclear tech today).

Re: Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse

#60

Post by analog31 »

qwertox wrote: post #50

How do they deal with insects hitting the glass covering the cameras? Also if multiple cameras get blurred because of insect dirt in front of them?

On my Subaru if the sensors are blocked, for instance with ice, it disables the controls.
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