Wondering if others have experienced spontaneous braking while using adaptive cruise. Was in the center lane on the interstate at about 60mph, with no other traffic ahead or behind for at least 1/4 mile, when the car suddenly decelerated briskly for no obvious reason. My wife observed that there had been some debris on the shoulder about where the car slowed--pieces of tire, perhaps. Since there was one full lane between us and the shoulder, it seems surprising that the radar would see that as an obstruction. The road was straight at that location, so we were never headed toward the debris, as might have occurred on a windy road. Anyone else observe this behavior?
Not that specifically, but I no longer use adaptive cruise because of unexpected/un-needed heavy braking. The software programming is way too cautious, IMO.
I seem to recall some Tesla drivers reporting similar incidents. Not sure "overly cautious" captures this behavior. Maybe poor discrimination of lateral targets, or something like that. Early ACC systems seem to have depended on laser sensors, but these don't fare so well in poor visibility conditions. I started to put one together for another car, before getting the Clarity. One of my chief concerns was the angular limitations of the laser rangefinder I was using. I understood that the radar-based system had a wider field of view, but maybe it's too wide? Or, more likely, the software failed to discriminate between a stationary, off-road target and one in, or about to be in, my lane. This seems like a bug. (That's when the developer turns to me and says, "That's not a bug, that's a feature! You test guys just don't understand how these things work!")
What is your follow distance setting? For perhaps-not-obvious reasons, anything above 1 bar will often trigger braking where a human thinks it isn't necessary.
Not like that but if there is a right hand curve up ahead and cars are coming the other direction the Clarity starts warning and breaking. Seems reasonable for the low level of sensing hardware in the Clarity. A much smarter system would see the curve and do the right thing. Sometimes I think having 1/4 of the needed capability is a liability. Just today my wife said having the Clarity then switching to drive our 2005 Toyota 4Runner can be dangerous because of the differences.
Actually I do think the forward collision thing can see curves -- if lines are clearly painted. I rarely get a brake warning on a curve as long as my steering wheel is following the curve around. The occasional problem is if you enter a curve tight to the inner curve and then are on a course to the outer curve as you're going through it, for a brief moment if you continued that trajectory you'd go into the other lane and possibly in front of another car. But we don't do that, we naturally turn the wheel a little more to stay in the lane. So when I get a brake warning I just turn my wheel a little more into the curve to counter it.
