Tesla’s ‘phantom braking’ problem is getting worse • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by Rygian » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:21 PM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #134

silax wrote: post #113

2022 Model Y with FSD. I use Autopilot 50+ miles a day, and use it 98% of the way on trips from San Diego to SF. It infrequently phantom brakes, and more often brakes hard and late and sometimes people think I'm brake-checking them. It also is annoying slow to recover back to cruise speed from a slow down. Also if you're in the right lane when the two right lanes merge- it is totally unreliable, I've been sandwiched…

> It infrequently phantom brakes, and more often brakes hard and late and sometimes people think I'm brake-checking them. Honestly, it sounds to me like this technology should be made illegal until it's fixed. "Infrequently" isn't good enough, especially if it brakes as aggressively as you say. I want self driving to succeed, but Tesla's self-driving tech is just too immature to use on public roads.

Just to be clear, you want to make TACC + lane-keep illegal? Because that's what the comment is taking about.

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

#272

Post by noirbot » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #266

noirbot wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question isn't who's legally liable. The question is are you doing things more unsafely than you need to be. You don't have to be legally at fault to be doing something that's unsafe for other drivers to deal with. Sudden breaking at highway speeds, especially for no actual reason, even if the person behind you is following at a safe distance, is rolling the dice that every car behind you for a while is driving a…

You seem to view safety as some binary that doesn't account for frequency or severity of incidents. Your framing suggests you think it's better to continue with human drivers and the commensurate 40k lives lost each year than to use an AI that has even the slightest possibility of causing even the least significant accident irrespective of whether or not any accident occurs in practice. I suggest it's better to compa…

I'm not trying to say that at all. What I'm saying is that we're at an awkward time now, where this sort of quick AI-assisted breaking is especially dangerous because fallible humans are most of the rest of the drivers on the road. In an all FSD world, this wouldn't really be a problem.

You're putting a lot of words in my mouth and assuming I'm against working on AI driving because one person might ever die. All I'm trying to point out is that it's pretty worrying to have a system that could cause a highway-speed accident because of a well-known and decently common bug. I'd be equally worried if it came up that some other decently selling model of car would randomly have the ABS system engage.

I wrote my OP here because the parent poster was casually talking about "not really break checking people" as if that's just normal behavior that's a part of R&D, instead of an AI accidentally emulating dangerous aggressive driving patterns that FSD is supposed to do away with. I'm not trying to ban FSD research or anything. I want this improved! It's just scary when people excuse dangerous behaviors by FSD systems because it's otherwise safer.

The other issue is that more data and greater transparency are both not things Tesla seems to have any interest in providing anyone, so while this may get fixed, it's not really pushing the industry forward all that much if no one other than Tesla is going to benefit. There's plenty of mentions in this thread of this sort of issue happening on other cars and adaptive cruise control systems that could benefit from an improvement for the betterment of all drivers, but instead "not breakchecking people" is going to be a unexplained feature improvement in some FSD patch probably.

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

#273

Post by ALittleLight » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #204

ALittleLight wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, the person behind you might fail the brake check. I can't believe people are knowingly operating faulty autopilots on public roads. If my car randomly braked I would take it to the mechanic - not continue to drive it.

Autopilot should be fixed, but the problem in your scenario is people trailing others too closely. If you fail phantom braking, you're going to fail real braking whether it's activated by a computer or not.

Accidents tend to happen when multiple things "go wrong". If a car accident happened every time some single thing was imperfect - well, car accidents would be more common than safe journeys. It's the confluence of multiple imperfections that result in car accidents (usually) - e.g. Driver 1 steps suddenly on the brakes AND Driver 2 is fiddling with the radio AND it's raining - or whatever, and you get a car accident.

So, yeah, maybe Driver 2 should be able to pass the brake check, but that doesn't mean it is good or safe or desirable for Driver 1 to be randomly brake checking people. Having a car that randomly brakes is like having a driver who randomly applies the brakes - you shouldn't do that, it's bad, and unsafe.

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

#274

Post by Rygian » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

eternityforest wrote: post #263

I still don't understand why this is a hard problem. You can make radars and lidars cheap. You can confirm radar findings with an ultrasound. If the global priority was safety at all costs, a lot of this stuff could probably be solved with deterministic algorithms, and some mandatory changes to manual cars(Like an unsafe distance warning radar).

Radar is basically false positives everywhere.

Ultrasound is few meters deep max.

Lidar is a clunky wart that no modern production car carries at the moment, afaik.

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

#275

Post by silax » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

silax wrote: post #113

2022 Model Y with FSD. I use Autopilot 50+ miles a day, and use it 98% of the way on trips from San Diego to SF. It infrequently phantom brakes, and more often brakes hard and late and sometimes people think I'm brake-checking them. It also is annoying slow to recover back to cruise speed from a slow down. Also if you're in the right lane when the two right lanes merge- it is totally unreliable, I've been sandwiched…

Damn, lots of strawman rage in the responses. Remember that I'm still gripping the controls and looking out the window. I don't allow the system into any kind of corner case unless I am the only one on the road. Letting the computer attempt to drive straight on the highway while a practiced and skeptical driver is ready to take over does not feel like a blatant compromise of public safety. Every incident I've encountered was very easy to handle, with lots of margin for reaction. Hopefully everyone practices this kind of regard for others while still allowing emerging technology to have a path for safe testing in the real world.

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

#276

Post by dkarl » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

TrevorJ wrote: post #80

robonerd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't disagree, but that's not quite the problem space I am curious about. My thesis is that as a society we've accepted that humans make mistakes and will kill people on the road. I suspect that society will be much less willing to accept that sort of thinking when it's an AI-driven vehicle making the mistakes, no matter how much better at driving it is. I suspect we will always want, or need someone (as opposed t…

It's also an exotic, scary risk, as opposed to a familiar risk we've come to accept, like the risks of nuclear power versus the risks of fossil fuel power. We'll never compare a death from one fairly with a death from the other because one feels extra and the other feels normal.

A future in which self-driving cars kill 3,000 people per year in the U.S. sounds unimaginably grotesque to most people, even though that's less than a tenth of the number of people killed by human-driven cars.

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

#277

Post by ericbarrett » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #219

ericbarrett wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought was, what if it's a sheriff, police officer, or state patrol? Now you've got a couple nights in the county lockup, a reckless driving charge (this can be a misdemeanor or felony depending on the severity), and $thousands in towing and impound fees.

I don't think abrupt braking constitutes reckless driving (maybe it varies by location), and it seems like it would be pretty easy to fight by claiming you saw a deer/etc in the road. If the cop says he didn't see it, you respond with some variation of "unsurprising because you were following me too closely to see anything else". Of course, none of this absolves Tesla from fixing their software.

I can't imagine a cop anywhere in the world responding well to the phrase "unsurprising because you were following me too closely," especially if s/he already thinks you were brake checking them!

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

#278

Post by silax » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

absnetneg wrote: post #157

yupper32 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it often brakes hard and late to the point that people think you're brake checking them, then you shouldn't be using it. They don't think you're brake checking them, you ARE brake checking them. Stop being dangerous on the road. This isn't a game.

It's not a brake check if the person in front of you is slowing down and your braking is to maintain safe distance. A brake check is braking for the purpose of affecting those behind you. It seems clear he means it is braking due to the slow down ahead.

^ It's this. I haven't been honked at yet, but I have felt a little apologetic to people behind me. I recently updates my follow distance from 3 to 4 and its helped tremendously.

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

#279

Post by silax » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

kitsune_ wrote: post #218

bink wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds dangerous enough that I'd reconsider even driving the vehicle. I have a 2019 model 3 and I've experienced phantom braking twice. Both times I was on the highway with autopilot enabled and was passing a truck that cast a shadow over my lane. After the first experience I refused to even use autopilot for months afterwards. Just recently I was driving in the right lane of a suburban road (with no assisted dr…

It boggles my mind that people would continue to use a car that randomly breaks without their input.

Most cars have this starting in 2016. Later this year every single car will be mandated to have automatic emergency braking. At least Tesla will have millions of miles of practice. https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/most-new-cars-hav...

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

#280

Post by Delphiki » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

qsdf38100 wrote: post #249

Delphiki wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2018 Model 3 with Enhanced Autopilot. I took a weekend trip from LA to Phoenix a few months back. I was in the left-most lane for a majority of the trip, and had ~10 phantom braking occurrences each way. It seemed to think the shadow of a car in the adjacent lane (where the shadow fell well into my lane) was something that needed to be avoided. It also doesn't infrequently highlight a car in an adjacent lane (or even…

Would you still recommend Tesla after these experiences?

I like driving, so I don't mind not using Autopilot as frequently as I have the opportunity to. And it's the most fun and best car I've driven.

But honestly I hesitate to recommend it. Not because it isn't a great car, because it is, but because I'm growing more skeptical of Tesla as a whole in the past year:

- extremely delayed timelines (Roadster, Semi, Cybertruck, etc)

- focus on some robot thing

- FSD vaporware/false promises

- Elon's general immaturity

- frequent price changes

- supply chain shortages

- etc

It all adds up and I can't help but wonder if Tesla's initial market advantage is waning. I'm not sure there's another competitor that's caught up to them, but it isn't as clear cut as it was just a couple years ago.