Bluecruise Tesla accident

Blackpony

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On CNN today there was a link to a video of a Tesla involved in an accident on the west coast where it said that the Tesla was being driven in its hands free mode and it went into hard break mode and was hit by the trailing car which was also ran into by its trailing car with others doing the same. My question is can this happen in Bluecruise where hard braking is applied by the system and, if so, can the driver overcome that by rapid throttle application?
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Awmustang

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Yes, the gas and brake will always override cruise, adaptive cruise and blue cruise (assuming massive failures have not occurred). We had occasional phantom braking in our 2011 Explorer and jamming on the gas instantly accelerated the car. The 17 Mustang and 19 Edge have been rock stars with the adaptive cruise.
 

awp0

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I use BC a lot and have never experienced unexpected hard braking, but I do know that one or two other people have shared stories where BC was tricked by the shadow of a truck that's in the process of being passed. BC mistook the shadow for an object and applied hard braking. (at least that's how I understood it)

I also think it's safe to say that Tesla has a very real and very common "phantom braking" problem with Autopilot. Based on what I've read, it's significantly more frequent compared to what I described above in BC.
 

SprManKalEl

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I use BCHF 5 out of 7 days in a week since July 4, 2022. I have not experienced unexpected hard breaking braking. It has never just applied the breaks brakes when there wasn't another vehicle in front of me. What I HAVE experienced is my vehicle following at the appropriate distance as traffic starts to slow and while my car slows and keeps the distance the car in front of me coming to almost a complete stop suddenly and BCHF not being able to react in time. I have had to apply the breaks brakes manually a number of times. Hence, the warning of be ready to resume control.

Edit for silly misspelling

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RickMachE

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I hope that none of you have experienced hard breaking, or had your car break at all. Breaking is bad.

Now, if the car's collision avoidance technology brakes, that's a whole different story.
 


Rabidsquirrel22

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Our cars don’t suffer from the infamous phantom braking problem that has plagued Tesla Autopilot for years and was probably the culprit of that crash.
 

Jimbo

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I've only had phantom breaking in hands-on "Blue Cruise", but yes, applying throttle overrode it.
 

Pells11

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My 2015 Ford F-150, to this day, will phantom break when in the left lane and a large truck is in the right lane. Tends to happen when the truck is shiney or its sunny. The F-150 will just crush the breaks but hitting the gas stops it and disengages cruise control.

Have never had this happen in my mach-e, but i haven't had it that long.

I saw the video of that Tesla. It was in a tunnel and it just slowed right down as everyone behind it piled on. The driver probably could have reacted but likely wasn't paying attention. was a weird place to stop and the car behind it wasn't expecting it at all.
 

benk016

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My First Edition had a pretty hard phantom brake as I was coming up to an overpass with a big shaddow on the road. This was before BC was available, so was just using lane centering.

These systems are still just driver assist, so you can take back over at any time and override any decision that it makes, as you are always in control of the car.
 

sotek2345

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Never had any issues with phantom braking in ~6,000 miles over bluecruise handsfree driving. As others have mentioned, I have had a to manually apply the brakes a few times when it wasn't showing down fast enough for my comfort.
 

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I hope that none of you have experienced hard breaking, or had your car break at all. Breaking is bad.

Now, if the car's collision avoidance technology brakes, that's a whole different story.
What if the collision avoidance technology braking breaks?
 

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My understanding is even in Tesla the braking could be overcome by driver input. But people are lazy and don’t pay attention when the car is in a hands free mode. So the Tesla driver just didn’t react at all. Whether it was because he was under the impression that the car was “full self driving” or because Tesla doesn’t have eye nanny cams, I won’t speculate. But that “driver” definitely didn’t bother to drive.
 

ab13

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Tesla doesn't have hands free mode, so maybe the driver wasn't even looking at anything.
 

jkovacs

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My understanding is even in Tesla the braking could be overcome by driver input. But people are lazy and don’t pay attention when the car is in a hands free mode. So the Tesla driver just didn’t react at all. Whether it was because he was under the impression that the car was “full self driving” or because Tesla doesn’t have eye nanny cams, I won’t speculate. But that “driver” definitely didn’t bother to drive.
It can. I rented a Model 3 when I was visiting family last October. It phantom braked on me twice. The second time was on an open highway when it decided it needed to go from 110km/h to 0. I had my hands on the wheel and was paying attention, but it was shocking and took at least a second for me to recover and respond. If there HAD been a car behind me, they likely would have hit me.
 

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On CNN today there was a link to a video of a Tesla involved in an accident on the west coast where it said that the Tesla was being driven in its hands free mode and it went into hard break mode and was hit by the trailing car which was also ran into by its trailing car with others doing the same. My question is can this happen in Bluecruise where hard braking is applied by the system and, if so, can the driver overcome that by rapid throttle application?
BTW it’s my opinion the driver caused that crash, not the autopilot. He was changing lanes while a car was coming up fast, and autopilot may have warned him or took evasive action. The driver freaked out and pressed the brake hard, perhaps by accident mistaking it for the accelerator pedal. Autopilot does not pull over and brake aggressively like that, that had to be partially or fully commanded by the driver.

Unlike Tesla, BlueCruise doesn’t seem to phantom brake. I wouldn’t worry about that.
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