<story><title>U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-opens-formal-safety-probe-into-tesla-autopilot-crashes-2021-08-16/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>postmeta</author><text>As this reddit post pointed out, this appears to be a common problem with radar TACC.
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;teslamotors&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;p5ekci&amp;#x2F;us_agency_opens_formal_probe_into_tesla_autopilot&amp;#x2F;h95fpr9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;teslamotors&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;p5ekci&amp;#x2F;us_agen...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;
These events occur typically when a vehicle is partially in a lane and radar has to ignore a stationary object. This is pretty standard and inherent with TACC + radar.&lt;p&gt;The faster Tesla pushes the vision only stack to all cars after they’ve validated the data, the faster this topic becomes moot. Andrej Karpathy talks and shows examples of what that would do here. Minutes 23:00-28:00
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;a510m7s_SVI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;a510m7s_SVI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Older examples from manuals of other TACC systems which use radar:&lt;p&gt;Volvo’s Pilot Assist regarding AEB&amp;#x2F;TACC.&lt;p&gt;According to Wired, Volvo’s Pilot Assist system is much the same. The vehicles’ manual explains that not only will the car fail to brake for a sudden stationary object, it may actually race toward it to regain its set speed:&lt;p&gt;“Pilot Assist will ignore the stationary vehicle and instead accelerate to the stored speed. The driver must then intervene and apply the brakes.”&lt;p&gt;Cadillac Super Cruise - Page 252&lt;p&gt;Stationary or Very Slow-Moving Objects&lt;p&gt;ACC may not detect and react to stopped or slow-moving vehicles ahead of you. For example, the system may not brake for a vehicle it has never detected moving. This can occur in stop-and-go traffic or when a vehicle suddenly appears due to a vehicle ahead changing lanes. Your vehicle may not stop and could cause a crash. Use caution when using ACC. Your complete attention is always required while driving and you should be ready to take action and apply the brakes.&lt;p&gt;BMW Driving Assistant Plus - Page 124&lt;p&gt;A warning may not be issued when approaching a stationary or very slow-moving obstacle. You must react yourself; otherwise, there is the danger of an accident occurring.&lt;p&gt;If a vehicle ahead of you unexpectedly moves into another lane from behind a stopped vehicle, you yourself must react, as the system does not react to stopped vehicles.
&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>Right. As I&amp;#x27;ve pointed out previously, Tesla seems to be unable to detect sizable stationary obstacles that are partly blocking a lane, especially if they don&amp;#x27;t look like the rear end of a car. In addition to emergency vehicles, Teslas on autopilot have plowed into freeway barriers and a street sweeper. That&amp;#x27;s the usual situation for first responders, who usually try to block as little of the road as possible but often don&amp;#x27;t have enough shoulder space.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s clear what Tesla really has - a good lane follower and cruise control that slows down for cars ahead. That&amp;#x27;s a level 2 system. That&amp;#x27;s useful, but, despite all the hype about &amp;quot;full self driving&amp;quot;, it seems that&amp;#x27;s all they&amp;#x27;ve got.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Full self driving&amp;quot; just adds some lane-changing assistance and hints from the nav system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pkulak</author><text>I’ll believe it when I see it. From what I can tell, Tesla has made no progress at all in three years. I just drove my buddy’s 3, and it was still diving to the right when a lane merges and the line disappears. This drove me nuts when I test drove years ago. Other cars do lane keeping so much better than Tesla at this point.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-opens-formal-safety-probe-into-tesla-autopilot-crashes-2021-08-16/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>postmeta</author><text>As this reddit post pointed out, this appears to be a common problem with radar TACC.
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;teslamotors&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;p5ekci&amp;#x2F;us_agency_opens_formal_probe_into_tesla_autopilot&amp;#x2F;h95fpr9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;teslamotors&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;p5ekci&amp;#x2F;us_agen...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;
These events occur typically when a vehicle is partially in a lane and radar has to ignore a stationary object. This is pretty standard and inherent with TACC + radar.&lt;p&gt;The faster Tesla pushes the vision only stack to all cars after they’ve validated the data, the faster this topic becomes moot. Andrej Karpathy talks and shows examples of what that would do here. Minutes 23:00-28:00
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;a510m7s_SVI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;a510m7s_SVI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Older examples from manuals of other TACC systems which use radar:&lt;p&gt;Volvo’s Pilot Assist regarding AEB&amp;#x2F;TACC.&lt;p&gt;According to Wired, Volvo’s Pilot Assist system is much the same. The vehicles’ manual explains that not only will the car fail to brake for a sudden stationary object, it may actually race toward it to regain its set speed:&lt;p&gt;“Pilot Assist will ignore the stationary vehicle and instead accelerate to the stored speed. The driver must then intervene and apply the brakes.”&lt;p&gt;Cadillac Super Cruise - Page 252&lt;p&gt;Stationary or Very Slow-Moving Objects&lt;p&gt;ACC may not detect and react to stopped or slow-moving vehicles ahead of you. For example, the system may not brake for a vehicle it has never detected moving. This can occur in stop-and-go traffic or when a vehicle suddenly appears due to a vehicle ahead changing lanes. Your vehicle may not stop and could cause a crash. Use caution when using ACC. Your complete attention is always required while driving and you should be ready to take action and apply the brakes.&lt;p&gt;BMW Driving Assistant Plus - Page 124&lt;p&gt;A warning may not be issued when approaching a stationary or very slow-moving obstacle. You must react yourself; otherwise, there is the danger of an accident occurring.&lt;p&gt;If a vehicle ahead of you unexpectedly moves into another lane from behind a stopped vehicle, you yourself must react, as the system does not react to stopped vehicles.
&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>Right. As I&amp;#x27;ve pointed out previously, Tesla seems to be unable to detect sizable stationary obstacles that are partly blocking a lane, especially if they don&amp;#x27;t look like the rear end of a car. In addition to emergency vehicles, Teslas on autopilot have plowed into freeway barriers and a street sweeper. That&amp;#x27;s the usual situation for first responders, who usually try to block as little of the road as possible but often don&amp;#x27;t have enough shoulder space.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s clear what Tesla really has - a good lane follower and cruise control that slows down for cars ahead. That&amp;#x27;s a level 2 system. That&amp;#x27;s useful, but, despite all the hype about &amp;quot;full self driving&amp;quot;, it seems that&amp;#x27;s all they&amp;#x27;ve got.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Full self driving&amp;quot; just adds some lane-changing assistance and hints from the nav system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>btilly</author><text>These have different causes.&lt;p&gt;The problem with radar on the ground is that most of what comes to a radar detector is reflections from a stationary world, with relative delays so small as to be undetectable.  So the first step in processing is to filter out everything at the speed of that motionary world.  All fixed objects therefore disappear, and you are left sorting out moving objects.  Which means you now can&amp;#x27;t detect stationary objects at all.&lt;p&gt;Tesla has a different problem.  They probably don&amp;#x27;t have depth perception.  They therefore have to classify objects, and make educated guesses about where they are relative to the car.  Unexpected kinds of objects, or objects in unexpected configurations, fail to be classified and therefore fail to be analyzed.&lt;p&gt;In principle, Tesla can succeed.  After all we don&amp;#x27;t have binocular vision past 6 meters either.  Tesla is improving.&lt;p&gt;But they haven&amp;#x27;t yet.</text></comment>