Car trying to avoid a phantom on back road - which feature should I disable?

[bangtidy]

Hi,

I've had my M3P for a couple of weeks now and so far am generally loving it.

In that period though I've had two seperate instances on minor back roads where the car appears to have tried to avoid something and I've had to intervene quickly at the wheel to stop it doing something that could be quite dangerous. In both situations I've had to briefly overcome the automatically applied torque at the steering wheel to keep it going where it should be. The second instance this morning was more significantly shocking as it could quite easily have caused a crash.

Is this likely to be 'emergency lane departure' or 'lane departure avoidance'? Both are currently enabled but as far as I can understand from the manual neither should have triggered in the situations the car was in.

This morning's one was on this road in this approximate location:-

Google Maps

It was dark, I was behind another couple of cars and there was another car coming past us in the opposite direction. My guess is that one of the safety features decided I was about to collide with the car coming from the other direction (which obviously wasn't the case).

Unfortunately, at the time I forgot to save the dash cam footage which would have been useful.

I'd really just like to know which 'safety' feature I should disable to avoid this happening again.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[MacPaul]

I’ve had one similar incident. The pressure applied to overcome was very light but it was unnerving as it felt like the car was trying to push me in to the path of an oncoming vehicle.

I captured it on dash cam but you can’t tell by watching the footage as the car didn’t actually deviate as I was in control all the time.

Alarming though!

Neither cruise control or lane assist were active.

 

[bangtidy]

Do you have either of the safety features ('emergency lane departure' or 'lane departure avoidance') enabled though?

I wasn't using either of the AP features at the time so I think its just one of those safety features doing its best to kill me. I had to apply quite a bit of torque quite quickly and once the car 'gave-in' I had to correct again slightly as I'd over-corrected the first time as it was a bit of sudden panic situation being a very tight road and in close proximity to other cars.

 

[xdcthedoc]

Has happened to me on a single track back road 3 times now. No AP on obviously. Each time it said the car had tried to save me from something... it was in fact trying to kill me.

Would like to know which feature this is as well.

 

[bangtidy]

I'll have to check to see if the Dashcam automatically saves a clip when it does something like this. You'd think it would but I suspect it doesn't.

 

[tess19]

I have never had to counter steer but the car beeped at me a few times thinking i was going to crash into the car in front when it was far enough and i am totally aware of my surroundings. The beeping woke everyone in the car for no reason. Maybe it is too sensitive but i am resisting switching the prewarning off. Be better if we dont get false warnings. If something seriously happen in the future and tesla looks at my "record" , it would say i am a bad driver with all the warnings. Anyone gets that too?

 

[bangtidy]

Yeah, I've had that happen once as I was approaching a car parked at the road side, but at least that kind of made sense and its intervention that time wasn't quite so scary.

 

[tess19]

It is supposed to be better if you are following another car.

 

[davidmc]

Not related to steering or phantom breaking. I slowly over took a lorry on the M1 and went passed a lorry, I then indicated and pulled back in to the slow lane. The Lorry decided to speed up and I did not notice this but the car did and it accelerated (beeping red on the screen at the same time) to pull away from the lorry! I was not using AP or TACC at the time.

 

[MrBadger]

I think this has changed recently. Last week I had warning and wheel turn coming up to this* central refuge island. I was not on TACC or AP and no pedestrian was on it.

Just viewed footage and car pulled slightly to the left. Not sure if that was the car correcting or my instinctive reaction to correct.

Never had it before, and I've driven that road a dozen times or more.

[updated after viewing footage]

Original trajectory - gentle left curve

Final trajectory

​

 

[nightowl]

I've had my car make loud beeps and highlight a car on the screen when someone coming the other direction has pulled in to give way on a road with cars parked all down their side of the road. The car didn't seem to do take any action itself though.

Also had it warn me about the car in front braking quite far ahead on a couple of occasions.

I have lane departure warning/avoidance turned off but have the emergency options enabled.

 

[TomD]

I have never had to counter steer but the car beeped at me a few times thinking i was going to crash into the car in front when it was far enough and i am totally aware of my surroundings. The beeping woke everyone in the car for no reason. Maybe it is too sensitive but i am resisting switching the prewarning off. Be better if we dont get false warnings. If something seriously happen in the future and tesla looks at my "record" , it would say i am a bad driver with all the warnings. Anyone gets that too?

When driving with a car full of sleeping passengers you can turn on "Joe Mode" which reduces the alarm sounds.

 

[nightowl]

Original trajectory - gentle left curve

View attachment 497469​

A bit of a long-shot but I wonder if, given the lighting, the car saw the back of the other "keep left" bollard and thought it was a pedestrian for some reason? Could be a combination of that and something else (shape of a tree behind it for example).

I mean, the car often sees things as traffic cones when they are not, so it wouldn't surprise me if it suddenly thought something was a pedestrian.

 

[interbear]

I’ve had this 3 times now. Loud beeps and a message comes up on the screen “Corrective Steering applied for your safety”. And it does indeed tug the steering wheel. This when driving on A or B roads with no Autopilot or TACC active and no sign of a potential collision or road departure. Scared the life out of me.

Seems it’s the “Emergency Lane Departure Feature”. Currently unsure as to whether I should turn it off completely, if I can.

 

[MrBadger]

A bit of a long-shot but I wonder if, given the lighting, the car saw the back of the other "keep left" bollard and thought it was a pedestrian for some reason?

Not a long shot at all imho. I think that and the curve, layby and brow of hill all contributed. The fact its never happened before for what was a typical weekly drive, makes me think its a change in behaviour with 2019.40.50.x.

Thankfully for me it was a minor episode, but I'm use to AP disengagement which it felt very similar to even though it all over and done with very quickly. But no so great if you are not use to that, or its a more serious correction, especially if its a dangerous alteration.

 

[nightowl]

Not a long shot at all imho. I think that and the curve, layby and brow of hill all contributed. The fact its never happened before for what was a typical weekly drive, makes me think its a change in behaviour with 2019.40.50.x.

Thankfully for me it was a minor episode, but I'm use to AP disengagement which it felt very similar to even though it all over and done with very quickly. But no so great if you are not use to that, or its a more serious correction, especially if its a dangerous alteration.

Alternatively, the lane narrowing before the island - maybe the car simply thought you were about to drift out of the lane or based on your current trajectory at the time it concluded that you were heading for the island or out of the lane. Who knows!

I'm curious as to what exactly the car would do if left to its own devices in these situations. Admittedly I too would be instinctively forcing it back to heading where I want it to go (I'm always paranoid when trying auto-steer on A-roads with narrow lanes as it is), but I'd hope that the emergency collision avoidance would be smarter than to simply pull the car to the side. Presumably it must also be aware of how much space is available to safely pull into etc. Would be really silly if it just drove into a bush at the side of the road because it wanted to give something a wide berth!

 

[Adopado]

When driving with a car full of sleeping passengers you can turn on "Joe Mode" which reduces the alarm sounds.

... but not by very much unfortunately ...

 

[Adopado]

Would be really silly if it just drove into a bush at the side of the road because it wanted to give something a wide berth!

I would think it may well take you into a bush ... my experiments with AP on narrow roads is that it doesn't allow for vegetation encroaching onto the road. I therefore assume that the car does not know the bush is there so in the scenario of protecting you from some other assumed threat, in what it perceives to be an emergency, it will steer into the bush. Of course, if this really is a life or death collision avoidance situation, that may well be the lesser of the evils.

 

[Rooster6655]

'emergency lane departure' is just a pain for motorways when you want to return to the slow lane and you don't necessarily need to indicate it will often beep and try to take over which is just annoying

 

[ewoodrick]

Nothing that you can do except manually drive the car.
Since you know of a problem spot, just be ready to overcome. Your hands should be on the wheel no matter what
If possible, you may want to slow the car a little and see what it actually does do, sometimes it swerves, but then makes the right decision.

Whatever it is doing now will probably change in future software updates. Sometimes it gets better, sometimes it gets worse.