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Tesla drivers report a surge in ‘phantom braking’
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- ohgodplsno 5y agoCan't wait for the Tesla apologists to come over and tell everyone that "it doesn't bother them that much". Tesla's FSD is a bad joke that has gone on for too long.
- maxdo 5y agoIt was at FSD Beta 10.7 right now it's gone. They made settings to strict and stop on any potential issue.
- SkyPuncher 5y agoIMO, it's a problem to me that I need to carry the mental load of knowing which version of my car's software is safe/dangerous.
- bruce343434 5y agoWhy is this software still legal? First the stop sign thing, now this.
- readams 5y agoPhantom braking is a problem common to many automatic emergency braking systems which are widely available on many cars, not just Tesla.
- discodave 5y agoIs it really a common problem? I've had a Rav4 for 3 years. I use the adaptive cruise control a lot on highway/freeway and I have never, ever had it exhibit phantom braking. It will sometimes brake a little longer than you expect for cars that are exiting on off ramps, or changing lanes, but it's always for a real car that's really going slower than I am.
- readams 5y agoHere's an article talking about other similar issues: https://www.autosafety.org/autobraking-tech-will-be-standard-in-cars-by-2022-but-drivers-complain-of-phantom-braking-2/ https://www.autosafety.org/autobraking-tech-will-be-standard... It may well be more prevalent in Teslas though; I don't have any data on that.
- aperson_hello 5y agoToyota's system is one of the better ones from my experience (driving a variety of rental cars)
- k8sToGo 5y agoI had a Model 3 and the phantom breaking is horrible. Yes my VW ID.4 sometimes shows an orange line indicating I am too close to something, but it does not slam on the brakes. Teslas have this issue way too often.
- Someone1234 5y agoI've had a Subaru with Eyesight for almost six years and had zero phantom brakes during that time. I've had it disable itself momentarily (<30 seconds) due to driving against strong sunlight (it uses visible light cameras) but aside from that the system works flawlessly. I don't understand why more sophisticated systems that are continuously improved are simply expected to "commonly" phantom brake, but a much dumber/simpler system based on parallaxing two cameras (like the human eyeball, per the name) works reliably. Actually I don't understanding why nobody else is using parallax in their systems? It is basically depth information for FREE using the cameras you already have. Just angle them a little, so they overlap, and then calculate the depth.
- electrondood 5y agoThe "stop sign thing" was only when you had FSD set to assertive mode, were already traveling under 5.6 mph, no pedestrians were present, no other cars were taking the right of way, and the intersection's speed limit was < 30 mph. There was no actual risk involved, and it was removed immediately with an OTA update.
- soperj 5y ago>There was no actual risk involved, and it was removed immediately with an OTA update. Then why are they recalling them?
- letitbeirie 5y ago> A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
- junipertea 5y agoBecause they are forced by NHTSA. I fully condone that btw.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoThey're not recalling them in the traditional sense. Tesla is not taking your car. They're just sending an OTA update that disables the behavior.
- stusmall 5y ago"no pedestrians were present" Should we trust their software enough to accept that it can accurately make that judgement? It's a really hard problem and they are struggling enough with the fundamentals. I don't think their software is actually at the point where they can make that assertion with any believable certainty.
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- throwaway894345 5y agoBecause automatic braking systems are still a net positive, as frustrating as phantom braking is. It also has nothing to do with the stop sign issue.
- readams 5y agoI've occasionally seen my Tesla on autopilot slow down for like a shadow or something. You definitely need to pay attention to it. The article quotes: “With only one sensor type, it’s harder to be sure because you do not have the cross-check from a different type of sensor,” he said. This is presented as though it's a clear win though. We know for example from the Uber fatality that you can also get false negatives because of failures of sensor fusion, which is a very hard problem. Requiring multiple sensors means that all of your sensor systems need to notice a danger, and you need to be able to integrate that data properly, before you can react. So I can definitely see that there are major advantages to vision-only. But it's clear that the problem has not yet been solved by Tesla nonwithstanding Elon's inflated claims.
- jcun4128 5y agoWould be cool to know what approaches they take. Stereo and then perspective scaling (smaller thing are farther away) and then probably a blend of spice of ML for recognizing things/knowing expected scale on the fly... idk I'm arm-chair skeptical of vision only but humans do it.
- ctvo 5y ago> Would be cool to know what approaches they take An increasingly complex set of if / else statements. Is it a left turn? Is it a stationary emergency vehicle? Is it a small child? Don't worry, it's all software and we'll keep sending OTA updates until we catch every edge case.
- jcun4128 5y agoYeah it's just amazing to have this real time world system chewing through data. Particularly if say they're taking a picture and pulling points from it and doing that at some refresh rate/computing... idk just cool. And the loops checking like "I accelerated, it has been this much time, did I actually move 10 meters" or whatever. Then you check if something stationary shrunk by that much in size from the camera perspective... Side tangent but some drones use this cool technology called "visual inertial odometry"
- cypherpunks01 5y agoDriving a rented Tesla Y, this became the most dangerous part of using the highway autopilot. The phantom braking seemed to trigger sometimes by going under an overpass, or when lighting contrast was high, but it definitely happened a couple times for no discernible reason at all in good conditions, and had no regard for traffic behind the vehicle when suddenly braking really hard out of nowhere.
- nlowell 5y agoOverpass phantom braking has been getting reported by drivers for years. IIRC Tesla's solution was to mark those overpass locations in some special hexmap so that the cars would then just not brake there. I don't have a source for that, though. I would hope Tesla can solve phantom braking because that could certainly be causing accidents out there.
- pkulak 5y agoThis is nuts. I rented a Model 3 several years ago and had to stop using autopilot because the phantom breaking, which is really phantom _panic_ breaking, was so dangerous and terrifying. How has this not been solved? I've used lane keeping in many other cars since then and never once had an incorrect breaking event.
- dmead 5y agocome on elon. just use the lidar.
- SkyPuncher 5y agoEven a good ol' front facing radar would solve this. My L2 Hyundai does highway auto-cruise without issue.
- quasarj 5y agoYou would think so, but early models of the Model 3 have a radar and still do it.
- dragontamer 5y agoElon pissed off the company with good radar + camera integration: Mobileye. In 2016, Mobileye got into a bit of a spat with Tesla, and Mobileye fired Tesla as a customer. Every other company continues to work with Mobileye's radar+optical+ultrasonic solution, but Tesla had to build its design from scratch independently. Its no surprise to me that Mobileye, with a base of dozens-of-millions of cars, manages to do something better than Tesla (who has less than a million cars IIRC).
- _ph_ 5y agoConsidering they sold 930k cars in 2021 alone, I would guess they have a good bit more of cars on the road now, but less than Mobileye. Radar, as we know from some Autopilot incidents, has problems detecting stationary obstacles. I sincerely hope all the progress with the FSD package, which is different from the Autopilot software causing the phantom braking, quickly leads to an Autopilot update which avoids phantom braking and is good at avoiding any obstacles.
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- tbabb 5y agoThe failures will continue indefinitely, until Tesla decides to use stereopsis for ranging.
- gumby 5y agoHumans don’t really use stereopsis beyond the reach of their arms (which makes sense if you think about it). Beyond that we use semantic cues, which is why we can also understand pictures. Sadly most research in this area went out of fashion 30+ years ago.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago> Humans don’t really use stereopsis beyond the reach of their arms (which makes sense if you think about it). But of course we do. It's how we throw rocks and hit what we aim at. It's how we catch things. It's how we walk around anywhere that has obstacles. We use it beyond the reach of our arms really frequently.
- oh_sigh 5y agoI can still throw a rock fairly accurately with one eye closed. I can catch pretty much perfectly with one eye closed. I can walk around without hitting anything with one eye closed.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoThe point was that you don't need stereopsis to do that. Basically, could you do it with one eye closed? Without stereopsis, tasks involving close-up things are harder, but farther away things are not.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoDepends. If I'm hunting with a bow or a throwing stick, I'd bet stereopsis is pretty important. Do I need it? Maybe not, but I'll be more accurate with it. If I'm running through the woods, trying to escape from a bear, stereopsis is pretty useful, because dodging trees while at a dead run is life or death. I don't do either of those, but some of my ancestors probably did. But I play sports. I may be able to catch a ball with one eye. Getting myself to where the ball is going? I couldn't do that as well with only one eye. So: Do I need stereopsis? No. Did the human race? Yes, it was a competitive advantage to have.
- rhacker 5y agoTesla v11 "Break Check" update released.
- endisneigh 5y agoI’ve never understood the point of cruise control. You still have to drive and pay attention might as well do everything yourself. Could someone share their experience?
- penjelly 5y agodo you mean cruise control as in autopilot and lanekeeping? or traditional cruise control that just keeps the same speed? for the latter, long drives it helps relieve some tension in my legs to not have to be pressing the pedal to maintain speed. i cant speak for the former as i havent used them
- illwrks 5y agoDriving on motorway in low or medium levels of traffic. What traffic is there moves at a consistent pace and cruise control can give your foot a rest for a period of time.
- BuildTheRobots 5y agoI find cruise control (in a 20 year old vehicle) extremely handy. Means I'm maintaining a constant speed no matter the grade/slope of the road and on long journeys also means I don't get cramp in my right ankle. I tend to despise most modern driving aids, but cruise control (just the very basic "maintain speed") is extremely handy and makes driving a lot easier. Maintaining a constant speed (to within 1mph) by foot over a 2 hour drive is almost impossible. It also seems to help my fuel economy.
- slowmovintarget 5y agoThat plus a push button "slow down a little, or speed up a little" make a big difference on long trips.
- dragontamer 5y agoTry driving for 4-hours or longer. Your foot gets physically tired pushing the accelerator for that long. Cruise control prevents that tiredness from occurring.
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- TomVDB 5y agoI’ve driven 15000 miles in the past year on my Model Y, a large part of it shuttling between the Bay Area and Reno, so mostly I-80. And many miles of autopilot. So for, not a single phantom break. So I wonder what it is that makes it not happen for me? Probably half of those miles are in the evening, so that might be a partial explanation. Maybe the direction from which the sun is coming?
- invisible 5y agoFWIW: I'm in the same boat (albeit lots of miles in Florida and Texas). I think I've had a total of _one_ "uncomfortable" issue from an overhang 2 years ago in my model 3 (which was corrected by me just hitting the accelerator). It seems the right set of circumstances convince the navigate on autopilot system that jamming on the brakes is the right thing to do. Here are some threads about the same type of issue in VW and in Ford (the latter being on I-80): https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiguan/comments/nrkc3d/phantom_braking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiguan/comments/nrkc3d/phantom_brak... https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/phantom-braking-experienced-in-the-mache-for-the-first-time-7-months-in.9376/ https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/phantom-braking-expe...