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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

#101
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A human driver is no longer the null hypothesis they have to beat. Most vehicles in the US are now sold with collision avoidance systems. The alternative to an autonomous vehicle is a vehicle with the combined efforts of humans + automated systems. Also, until there's a SAE level 5 vehicle in existence, we're comparing different sample sets. The situations humans crash most often in are many of the same situations wh…

What I'm 'driving at' (hehe) here is that there's a lot of daylight between what the math says, and what people are likely to accept. We are, for better or worse, somewhat comfortable with the fact that a human driven semi truck will occasionally wipe out a minivan. It's not clear to me at all that we as a society are, or will ever be comfortable with a computer-operated semi-truck doing the same. No amount of "Well,…

Well, there are different failure modes that we care about too. People think about first-party losses much differently than third-party losses. And, people currently take actions to mitigate those losses. Preventable crashes can be avoidable, by avoiding the situations in which humans engage in dangerous behavior. And the factor of control is why people are more comfortable with that failure mode, than a failure mode which may be more unpredictable.

For instance: If I'm worried about killing my child in a first-party drunk driving crash, the average crash rate is irrelevant, because I can decrease the risk to zero by not drinking and driving. If I'm worried about third-party risk of a drunk driving crash, I can greatly mitigate that risk by choosing when and where I drive with my child in the car.

> No amount of "Well, the number say this truck is statistically safer when driven by a computer..." will move the needle on that

And I think the reason for that is that people subconsciously understand that the people who would be interested in (or financially capable of) purchasing an autonomous vehicle for the safety features are the same people who have lower accident rates than average.

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

#102
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To say nothing of the "inconvenience" to the driver who wasn't at fault but would have been assumed to be.

Where I live (not the US) the only way rear-ending would be the tailing vehicle's fault is if the front vehicle was running in reverse. Otherwise, it's your responsibility to maintain a safe distance form the vehicle ahead, and one should assume this vehicle may stop unexpectedly. You're always at fault if you rear-end someone.

IIRC from law school (in the US), the driver of the back car would be rebuttably presumed to be at fault. This presumption could be rebutted, for example, if it were shown that the front car braked hard for no reason whatsoever.

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

#103
post #96
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.'

No disrespect to Ralph Nader, but cars claim about the same number of lives (more in most years) than they did then. Sure, many _many_ lives are saved by seatbelts, but car-centric inner-cities combined with the psychology of invincibility for the people inside the vehicle are a recipe for dead kids in city blocks, and it's an absolute blood bath out there. Sure, there are fewer deaths per capita, and fewer deaths pe…

I'm confused. Are you saying Nader didn't do any good thus regulation is a fool's errand?

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

#104
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.

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.

Are you sure about stationary? My 2018 leaf does not do that. I replaced the system with Open Pilot and never looked back. I also have a Tesla Model Y sometimes for testing. It is amazing how much better OpenPilot is. On the highway it is unbeatable and also able to recognize stationary objects like cars and motorbikes.

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

#105
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.

This is something that robotaxi companies have already spent a ton of time figuring out - there are a ton of different metrics the cars have to hit before they remove the driver (as companies have done in Phoenix, San Francisco, Miami, and Austin).

There are already robotaxis on the road right now.

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

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like radar equipped cars had less issues and they've finally worked out some of the kinks with the vision only system.

he says he has a 2022 which is radar free.

User1: I have model 3 w/o radar and it had bad phantom breaking until a recent release.

User2: seems like the cars without radar were really bad, but that they are finally getting it fixed.

You: he said he has a car without radar

Everyone: wtf

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

#107
post #25

I think Elon needs to open source the braking flowchart…

There is a long list of things that work poorly and would be nice to change out with something that works.

UI - Just let me integrate 3rd party apps finally.

Deeprain - My car likes to run the wipers on a perfectly dry sunny day sometimes. To my great vexing annoyance.

Autoheadlights - Its just bad. On off, on off constantly.

Deepsleep - Car just doesn't want to wake up sometimes. Either on entry or when accessing it on my phone.

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

#108
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.

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…

My vision-based Tesla rarely if ever experiences phantom braking unlike my previous radar-equipped Model 3 (it was pretty common in 2018 / 2019).

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

#109
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.

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…

TL:DR; Radar is not the silver bullet here

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

#110
post #28
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.

Requiring dedicated infrastructure eliminates the point of self driving cars - you might as well just build public transit infrastructure.

On top of that, this won’t eliminate any of the real edge cases - humans and other cars will still violate these rules and drive or walk across these roads, at which point the AV will still need to know how to handle this novelty.

These are the main reasons AV companies don’t consider approaches like this.

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