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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

#61

Post by olyjohn »

124816 wrote: post #16
robonerd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You continue using this feature despite these errors occurring daily? The way you describe it makes autopilot seem like an inexperienced teenage driver; I think whatever marginal safety benefit you get from it might be erased by the life-shortening stress such erratic car behavior must induce.

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…

Can you put some tape over the sensors?

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

#63

Post by Robotbeat »

r00fus wrote: post #28
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.

I don't think real L4+ self-driving will be feasible until we change how the roads are designed to support such vehicles. Having clear indicators and markings that are maintained properly will not only help L4 but also L2 and even human drivers. So yes, it would require a standards-based solution - and that's where government involvement is essential.

A grade-separated (ie tunnel) system for autonomous vehicles would be one such method.

Government can certainly assist in this, but industry is usually better at coming up with better standards which the government can then deploy

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

#64

Post by soheil »

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…

I think the takeaway should be that autopilot cannot be generalized. You can't say it's better or worse under all situations than an average driver. Sure there are situations that it's clearly better or worse than an average driver like driving on a pretty straight freeway for hours long or driving on a twisty road without clear lane markings.

The problem arises with ambiguous situations like phantom breaking. Is it phantom breaking because the tree overhangs are too close to the surface of the road, the sun is shinning directly into one of the cameras or is there smudge on the camera lens? For this category of problems we're likely to see both improvements and further regressions. The ambiguity will bifurcate into clearly worse and clearly better than average human driver categories. This is the part we need patience for the technology to improve.

The clearly worse than human driver category may be an intractable set of problems and that's what we should judge viability of self-driving technology base off of.

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

#65

Post by JoshGlazebrook »

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.

Radar is only turned off if you are accepted into the full self driving beta and turn it on. Then it switches over to full vision.

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

#66

Post by jjcm »

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…

If the accelerator pressed at all, it wont break automatically. Not sure if you're pressing it or just hovering on it, but that might be why.

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

#67

Post by kube-system »

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…

You can see this in actuarial data that the IIHS posts. Often, cars that perform comparably in crash tests have wildly different real world loss rates. The difference is likely explainable by differences in driver behavior.

For example, look at any car also sold under a hybrid trim model, the hybrid almost always has lower rates of injury. For an identical chassis.

Or, consider the brands that have good crash test rating, but target subprime buyers.... in comparison to brands that have similar crash performance but target higher incomes and/or higher credit profiles. Nissan and Kia vehicles often have good crash test ratings, but they consistently have bad real-world crash data.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/insurance-losses-by-make-and-mo...

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

#68

Post by fipar »

majormunky wrote: post #12
jra101 wrote: post #5

This happens to me just using the adaptive cruise control, no Autopilot or FSD enabled and it's super annoying. Can happen on a completely empty road driving in a straight line.

My 2019 Subaru Crosstrek has adaptive cruise control, and i've had it hit the brakes pretty hard when there's nothing in the way. Luckily it doesn't happen often.

I have a 2021 one and it never hit the breaks with nothing standing in the way. I don't have the manual in front of me but IIRC, it should only activate without an actual obstacle if the circumstances are such that something may be confused for an obstacle (e.g., driving down a steep enough hill that the end of it may be detected as a wall, never happened to me but I've never done more than 25 deg slopes).

I know you're not asking for advise but I'd recommend to have that checked, my recollection is that the manual spends far more pages listing the circumstances under which the system may fail to apply the brakes than those in which it may break when it didn't have to, so it seems odd enough for me that I'd get that checked if it happened to me.

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

#69

Post by Teever »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #59

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…

> 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).

That's quite the leap.

A far more reasonable statement would be 'we need someone like Ralph Nader to spearhead initiatives to regulate self driving cars to prevent the disasters we saw in automobile safety in the 1950s-1960s.'

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

#70

Post by [deleted] »

JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #65
colordrops wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Radar is only turned off if you are accepted into the full self driving beta and turn it on. Then it switches over to full vision.

[deleted]
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