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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

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 front of you even if they've mostly moved out of your lane into the next lane, or they swerve slightly into your lane. I suspect the engineers erred on the side of being rear-ended rather than rear-ending cars in front.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>Seems real easy to get rear-ended. Which, in this age of cheap ubiquitous dash-cams, isn't nearly as likely to be the "inconvenient waste of time but zero financial risk" deal it used to be Edit: Since apparently this needs explaining, insurers will consider evidence and happily doll out blame to a party that does something dumb in proportion to their fault (with slight variations per differences in law from state to state). The fact that said dumbness results in the back of your car getting hit with the front of another only matters in the base case in which no other reliable information about the situation is available. In the case of a car that just stops in the roadway with no reason to do so some of the blame is likely to land on the driver thereof. Insurers are well aware that the rules of the road are built around redundant requirements so that crashes don't happen when one party can't or won't hold up their end. Infantile "but the other guy is responsible for.." arguments don't tend to hold much water with them when there's evidence (video or otherwise) that in the events that lead up to the accident your hand was no more forced than the other guy's were because both drivers are still bound by whatever the default responsibility to operate their vehicles in a safe manner is (wording varies by state).
- antiframe 4y ago
  I don't understand what you mean. You seem to be implying that if a driver rear-ends you he can use his dash-cam to show you were at fault? Most places I've driven it is the following car's responsibility to maintain a safe distance which includes being able to stop if the car you are following suddenly stops. Yes, brake checking is a thing and could complicate any civil suit, but mechanical (now software) failure wouldn't be that.
  - olyjohn 4y ago
    Yeah they should be following further back. There's no excuse to rear-ending somebody. If your car can't stop as fast as a heavy-ass Tesla, you need to be following further back. If you hit someone brake checking you, you were following too close. You never know when someone might need to do a full, 100% brake slam to avoid something.
    - userbinator 4y ago
      You never know when someone might need to do a full, 100% brake slam to avoid something. I don't know about you, but I usually look beyond the car in front and possibly the one in front of that one too in order to anticipate braking. If it's all clear ahead and the one immediately in front suddenly brakes hard, I don't think it's clear that it isn't culpable.
- rideontime 4y ago
  To say nothing of the "inconvenience" to the driver who wasn't at fault but would have been assumed to be.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    In which jurisdiction would the rear-ending driver not be at fault? He was either inattentive or failed to maintain proper distance. Sure, driving too close is common, but that doesn't make it right
    - jjav 4y ago
      The car behind who rear ends the car in front has a presumption of being at fault, but if there is evidence to show the car in front caused the accident (say, by brake checking them) then that can change the outcome. Before dash cams, it was very rare for the car behind to be able to show any proof otherwise, so they were usually at fault unless there were credible witnesses of the brake checking. But no, you can't just randomly threshold brake in the middle of the highway for no reason and expect to blame the car behind for your actions (or the actions of your car).
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    Surely rear ending a misbehaving Tesla is still the fault of the following car? Or am I misunderstanding you?
  - fipar 4y ago
    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.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      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.
- mpalczewski 4y ago
  > Which, in this age of cheap ubiquitous dash-cams, isn't nearly as likely to be the "inconvenient waste of time but zero financial risk" deal it used to be Chance of permanent injury or death is not negligible. e.g. get rear ended by a semi, or just suffer from whiplash that doesn't go away.
- robonerd 4y ago
  > the rules of the road are built around redundant requirements so that crashes don't happen when one party can't or won't hold up their end. Exactly; this is why brake-checking is illegal. The person behind you has a responsibility to keep a safe distance, but you also have a responsibility to not drive like a lunatic. If the dash-cam footage shows you brake-checking somebody right before the crash, don't expect to get off scot-free by blaming the guy you were fucking with.
robonerd 4y ago
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.
- 124816 4y ago
  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 a full stop, regardless what is behind you. > Reports of “phantom braking” first surfaced last fall This has been happening for much longer than that -- at least as early as Winter 2019, when I unintentionally brake checked a Prius after merging while going over 101 @ Rengstorf.
  - notJim 4y ago
    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 to a full stop, regardless what is behind you. Again, what is this? I have a Tesla, and I'm not aware of any feature that requires me to accelerate or brake to prevent the car from stopping itself.
    - 124816 4y ago
      > 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-8EA7EF10-7D27-42AC-A31A-96BCE5BC0A85.html 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."
dotancohen 4y ago
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 I actually do want to brake. I feel that the cruise control is to strict in keeping a particular speed in hilly areas, and I live and work in hilly areas. Let the vehicle speed up in the dips and slow down on the peaks, just like all the other cars (probably manually driven) are doing.
- pa7ch 4y ago
  Agreed this always bothered me about cruise control as well. Particularly for electric cars I am wishing for a dedicated physical toggle or slider to instantly disable or dial-back regen for the times I want to coast.
  - trhway 4y ago
    Regen in Prius managed by your foot pressure on brake pedal. I wonder why would anybody do it differently.
    - kijiki 4y ago
      Prius will regen slowly when you take your foot off the gas. Just like a Tesla. The difference is that Teslas regen aggressively, so you really notice the deceleration, whereas a Prius will not start major regen braking until you press on the brakes. If you have the energy flow view up on the screen, you can see the power going from the motor/generator to the battery when you release the gas.
  - adregan 4y ago
    Hyundai cars use the little paddles behind the steering wheel to control regen level. It's pretty nice to be able to coast when you want to.
- 4y ago
klyrs 4y ago
I don't drive a Tesla, but my car is a newer model with "smart" cruise control. It freaks out whenever there's a slight curve in the road and there's a car in the next lane over. Do Teslas have the same issue?
- nrjames 4y ago
  No, only if the lane markings aren't visible. It's pretty good at identifying where the lanes are.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    > No, only if the lane markings aren't visible That's... most of Canada, thanks to the snowplows. Good to know.
    - robonerd 4y ago
      Besides the plows and grit, this CBC article claims the paint they choose has something to do with it: > Most of the paint is environmentally friendly but being water-based, it rarely lasts more than a year, especially on the province's busiest roads and highways. > "The paint used for highway striping eventually wears down as a result of the wear and tear from vehicle traffic as well as the effects of necessary winter maintenance activities," said a spokesperson with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. > The provincial government only uses oil-based paint in cold weather. The bulk of road work is completed during the summer months, so it seems unlikely many fresh painted lanes this year will survive the winter. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/disappearing-road-paint-frustrating-drivers-1.2628148 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/disappearing-ro... I'm not sure about the paint composition matter, but at least I can attest to the road lines in Canada being very poor. I've driven most of the Trans-Canadian Highway (all of it west of Quebec) and the line paint was virtually nonexistent for much of even this road.
      - userbinator 4y ago
        You can be even more "environmentally friendly" by doing away with the markings, or even the paving... The markings here seem to be some sort of dense plastic material and don't wear much.
soheil 4y ago
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.
mirekrusin 4y ago
More bugs flying closer to the Summer? I guess that would fit "bug" definition?
MarkMarine 4y ago
Happens to me all the time as well, I've got FSD (not the beta, the highway version, because apparently I take turns too quickly) and I have to be alert to bury the accelerator in case this happens on the highway. It's rare enough that I'm never quite prepared, but frequent enough that I know to be on my toes. I've never seen it happen when I was following someone, I bet the software is biased to follow the vehicle in front even if one of these events happen. It happens to me when I'm headed up a hill and there is an overpass on the far side of the hill, or I'm passing a low overhead sign. I can understand why radar thinks it's about to slam into a wall, from the radar's low slung perspective I'm sure it just sees a barrier ahead. Considering Tesla's early penchant for driving right into the side of a truck, I do somewhat prefer the sudden braking.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago

>Seems real easy to get rear-ended. Which, in this age of cheap ubiquitous dash-cams, isn't nearly as likely to be the "inconvenient waste of time but zero financial risk" deal it used to be Edit: Since apparently this needs explaining, insurers will consider evidence and happily doll out blame to a party that does something dumb in proportion to their fault (with slight variations per differences in law from state to state). The fact that said dumbness results in the back of your car getting hit with the front of another only matters in the base case in which no other reliable information about the situation is available. In the case of a car that just stops in the roadway with no reason to do so some of the blame is likely to land on the driver thereof. Insurers are well aware that the rules of the road are built around redundant requirements so that crashes don't happen when one party can't or won't hold up their end. Infantile "but the other guy is responsible for.." arguments don't tend to hold much water with them when there's evidence (video or otherwise) that in the events that lead up to the accident your hand was no more forced than the other guy's were because both drivers are still bound by whatever the default responsibility to operate their vehicles in a safe manner is (wording varies by state).

antiframe 4y ago
I don't understand what you mean. You seem to be implying that if a driver rear-ends you he can use his dash-cam to show you were at fault? Most places I've driven it is the following car's responsibility to maintain a safe distance which includes being able to stop if the car you are following suddenly stops. Yes, brake checking is a thing and could complicate any civil suit, but mechanical (now software) failure wouldn't be that.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  Yeah they should be following further back. There's no excuse to rear-ending somebody. If your car can't stop as fast as a heavy-ass Tesla, you need to be following further back. If you hit someone brake checking you, you were following too close. You never know when someone might need to do a full, 100% brake slam to avoid something.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    You never know when someone might need to do a full, 100% brake slam to avoid something. I don't know about you, but I usually look beyond the car in front and possibly the one in front of that one too in order to anticipate braking. If it's all clear ahead and the one immediately in front suddenly brakes hard, I don't think it's clear that it isn't culpable.
rideontime 4y ago
To say nothing of the "inconvenience" to the driver who wasn't at fault but would have been assumed to be.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  In which jurisdiction would the rear-ending driver not be at fault? He was either inattentive or failed to maintain proper distance. Sure, driving too close is common, but that doesn't make it right
  - jjav 4y ago
    The car behind who rear ends the car in front has a presumption of being at fault, but if there is evidence to show the car in front caused the accident (say, by brake checking them) then that can change the outcome. Before dash cams, it was very rare for the car behind to be able to show any proof otherwise, so they were usually at fault unless there were credible witnesses of the brake checking. But no, you can't just randomly threshold brake in the middle of the highway for no reason and expect to blame the car behind for your actions (or the actions of your car).
- lostlogin 4y ago
  Surely rear ending a misbehaving Tesla is still the fault of the following car? Or am I misunderstanding you?
- fipar 4y ago
  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.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    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.
mpalczewski 4y ago
> Which, in this age of cheap ubiquitous dash-cams, isn't nearly as likely to be the "inconvenient waste of time but zero financial risk" deal it used to be Chance of permanent injury or death is not negligible. e.g. get rear ended by a semi, or just suffer from whiplash that doesn't go away.
robonerd 4y ago
> the rules of the road are built around redundant requirements so that crashes don't happen when one party can't or won't hold up their end. Exactly; this is why brake-checking is illegal. The person behind you has a responsibility to keep a safe distance, but you also have a responsibility to not drive like a lunatic. If the dash-cam footage shows you brake-checking somebody right before the crash, don't expect to get off scot-free by blaming the guy you were fucking with.

robonerd 4y ago

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.

124816 4y ago
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 a full stop, regardless what is behind you. > Reports of “phantom braking” first surfaced last fall This has been happening for much longer than that -- at least as early as Winter 2019, when I unintentionally brake checked a Prius after merging while going over 101 @ Rengstorf.
- notJim 4y ago
  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 to a full stop, regardless what is behind you. Again, what is this? I have a Tesla, and I'm not aware of any feature that requires me to accelerate or brake to prevent the car from stopping itself.
  - 124816 4y ago
    > 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-8EA7EF10-7D27-42AC-A31A-96BCE5BC0A85.html 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."

dotancohen 4y ago

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 I actually do want to brake. I feel that the cruise control is to strict in keeping a particular speed in hilly areas, and I live and work in hilly areas. Let the vehicle speed up in the dips and slow down on the peaks, just like all the other cars (probably manually driven) are doing.

pa7ch 4y ago
Agreed this always bothered me about cruise control as well. Particularly for electric cars I am wishing for a dedicated physical toggle or slider to instantly disable or dial-back regen for the times I want to coast.
- trhway 4y ago
  Regen in Prius managed by your foot pressure on brake pedal. I wonder why would anybody do it differently.
  - kijiki 4y ago
    Prius will regen slowly when you take your foot off the gas. Just like a Tesla. The difference is that Teslas regen aggressively, so you really notice the deceleration, whereas a Prius will not start major regen braking until you press on the brakes. If you have the energy flow view up on the screen, you can see the power going from the motor/generator to the battery when you release the gas.
- adregan 4y ago
  Hyundai cars use the little paddles behind the steering wheel to control regen level. It's pretty nice to be able to coast when you want to.
4y ago

klyrs 4y ago

I don't drive a Tesla, but my car is a newer model with "smart" cruise control. It freaks out whenever there's a slight curve in the road and there's a car in the next lane over. Do Teslas have the same issue?

nrjames 4y ago
No, only if the lane markings aren't visible. It's pretty good at identifying where the lanes are.
- klyrs 4y ago
  > No, only if the lane markings aren't visible That's... most of Canada, thanks to the snowplows. Good to know.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    Besides the plows and grit, this CBC article claims the paint they choose has something to do with it: > Most of the paint is environmentally friendly but being water-based, it rarely lasts more than a year, especially on the province's busiest roads and highways. > "The paint used for highway striping eventually wears down as a result of the wear and tear from vehicle traffic as well as the effects of necessary winter maintenance activities," said a spokesperson with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. > The provincial government only uses oil-based paint in cold weather. The bulk of road work is completed during the summer months, so it seems unlikely many fresh painted lanes this year will survive the winter. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/disappearing-road-paint-frustrating-drivers-1.2628148 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/disappearing-ro... I'm not sure about the paint composition matter, but at least I can attest to the road lines in Canada being very poor. I've driven most of the Trans-Canadian Highway (all of it west of Quebec) and the line paint was virtually nonexistent for much of even this road.
    - userbinator 4y ago
      You can be even more "environmentally friendly" by doing away with the markings, or even the paving... The markings here seem to be some sort of dense plastic material and don't wear much.

soheil 4y ago

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.

mirekrusin 4y ago

More bugs flying closer to the Summer? I guess that would fit "bug" definition?

MarkMarine 4y ago

Happens to me all the time as well, I've got FSD (not the beta, the highway version, because apparently I take turns too quickly) and I have to be alert to bury the accelerator in case this happens on the highway. It's rare enough that I'm never quite prepared, but frequent enough that I know to be on my toes. I've never seen it happen when I was following someone, I bet the software is biased to follow the vehicle in front even if one of these events happen. It happens to me when I'm headed up a hill and there is an overpass on the far side of the hill, or I'm passing a low overhead sign. I can understand why radar thinks it's about to slam into a wall, from the radar's low slung perspective I'm sure it just sees a barrier ahead. Considering Tesla's early penchant for driving right into the side of a truck, I do somewhat prefer the sudden braking.