# Weird TACC Behavior in Construction Zone



## gary in NY (Dec 2, 2018)

On my road trip last week, there were several interstate highway construction zones where east bound traffic crossed over to one of the west bound lanes. This was on I84 in Pennsylvania. East and west bound lanes in this area were separated by a wide median, and sometimes you can not see the lanes going in the opposite direction (due to wooded areas, or the general terrain and distance of separation). On one such long crossover section, while in TACC, the car totally freaked out. This included braking and navigation errors. I was using navigation, but was not on autopilot. On screen nav did not know where to place the car, and sometime had us on parallel secondary roads. It braked heavily several times while nav tried to locate the car. It felt like TACC thought we were going past our exit, and was trying to correct for it. I've had that happen when I was in TACC and went by the exit nav thought I should take. I finally had to disengage TACC.

I was on 2019.16.2 at the time. I'm now on 2019.20.4.1 - 2 updates in the past 2 days.


----------



## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

This doesn't surprise me in the least. You were on lanes that weren't where the GPS expected them to be. I'm not able to use TACC on certain stretches of new but permanent highways in our area due to their not yet being properly mapped.


----------



## gary in NY (Dec 2, 2018)

Wouldn't you think understanding and reacting to construction zones and detours is essential to AP and FSD, not to mention the behavior of TACC? These zones I encountered have been in effect for quite some time now, and maps has undoubtedly encountered them innumerable times. While I believe in the tech, this illustrates just one more time how difficult a task this is. I know TACC is not AP, but more and more it is behaving as such, sans the steering control. I'm also in a V2.5 hardware car. 

I really think we need the advanced 3.0 hardware (and beyond) to begin to break through to the next level of autonomy. This is particularly true if the base level safety features are going to continue to rise and apply to features such as TACC and collision avoidance. These cars need to be thinking further ahead than they do right now. I've seen my car improve in my short 8 months of ownership, but there is steep curve ahead on the road to FSD (which I paid for before delivery).


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

gary in NY said:


> Wouldn't you think understanding and reacting to construction zones and detours is essential to AP and FSD, not to mention the behavior of TACC?


Yes, but the autopilot-based features are still just half-baked.

I do wish that TACC included a little *less* autopilot-based features. All I really want it to do is slow down as I approach a car. I don't like that Tesla tries to adjust the set speed based on changes in road conditions.


----------



## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

gary in NY said:


> Wouldn't you think understanding and reacting to construction zones and detours is essential to AP and FSD, not to mention the behavior of TACC? These zones I encountered have been in effect for quite some time now, and maps has undoubtedly encountered them innumerable times. While I believe in the tech, this illustrates just one more time how difficult a task this is. I know TACC is not AP, but more and more it is behaving as such, sans the steering control. I'm also in a V2.5 hardware car.
> 
> I really think we need the advanced 3.0 hardware (and beyond) to begin to break through to the next level of autonomy. This is particularly true if the base level safety features are going to continue to rise and apply to features such as TACC and collision avoidance. These cars need to be thinking further ahead than they do right now. I've seen my car improve in my short 8 months of ownership, but there is steep curve ahead on the road to FSD (which I paid for before delivery).


I don't think HW3 has much to do with the kind of problem you describe or with "thinking ahead." HW3 is about fast image processing. It should eventually be better at, e.g., distinguishing an overhead sign from a perpendicular big-rig. It might be better at taking in to account a car behind when deciding whether to brake. But understanding what happened when a construction zone forces a car in to a detour? That's a different kind of problem, and I'd imagine the fix will apply just as well to HW 2.5 as HW 3.0.


----------



## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

Construction zones are always going to be a problem, because they don't really follow the guidelines for highway construction. They'll continue to be a problem until autonomous cars are so common, that constructions crews are required to test the layout with an autonomous car to make sure it's not dangerous or disruptive.


----------



## Mr. Spacely (Feb 28, 2019)

My car tends to handle construction zones and re-routes quite well. In fact this is what seperates Tesla from other technologies-- the ability to "figure out" a road based on vision, rather than a Google Map/GPS...


----------



## MJJ (Aug 7, 2016)

My sense is that Tesla designs with the here-and-now in mind, meaning the car should primarily be guided by what it sees, rather than what it "knows" from a map. Seems valid to me as maps change (or are incorrect to start with, but that's a whole nother rant).

My usual offramp was coned off last week for landscaping, but the car tried its best to exit there anyway. I was surprised as in my experience and that of some youtubers, cones have been well detected.


----------



## gary in NY (Dec 2, 2018)

Mr. Spacely said:


> My car tends to handle construction zones and re-routes quite well. In fact this is what seperates Tesla from other technologies-- the ability to "figure out" a road based on vision, rather than a Google Map/GPS...


If I had been in AP, it may have reacted differently. I was having so much fun driving the car myself that I left that off. That's the problem with AP in the M3; I hate giving up all the fun to the computer.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Nothing to do with HW3.0 it just isn't programmed to handle that kind of situation at this point.


----------



## undergrove (Jan 17, 2018)

garsh said:


> Yes, but the autopilot-based features are still just half-baked.
> 
> I do wish that TACC included a little *less* autopilot-based features. All I really want it to do is slow down as I approach a car. I don't like that Tesla tries to adjust the set speed based on changes in road conditions.


You can eliminate the automatic speed adjust by setting the speed assist offset slider to -20. The set speed will stay at your speed when you engaged TACC or Autopilot. You can change this speed with the right thumb wheel, but it will not adjust automatically to speed limits. The disadvantage is that you have to continually adjust the max speed as speed limits or conditions change.


----------



## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

The construction zone problem will eventually (say, in five years), be an "easy" automation problem. Most of us are still thinking about automation as if all the advances have to come from the cars. But as high levels of autonomy become more common, stuff on the roads can start becoming "friendlier" to AIs. That will be a slow process in cases where there's a lot of infrastructure already--it will take a while to replace all traffic lights, for example, to make them easier for AIs to detect and understand. (A while, but not forever--we've switched most lights to LEDs, for example.)

I predict that in five years or so, construction zones will be programmed with information to tell autonomous cars what to do (speed limit, direction of traffic, etc.). It wouldn't have to be particularly high tech, it could just be color-coded striping or something like that. The expense would be pretty low, since it's just a temporary marking that needs to be applied to existing construction cones, and it wouldn't have to stand up to the elements and wear and tear for super long before it was removed and a new set of stripes applied for the next job.


----------



## Arktctr (Jan 11, 2017)

Interesting...when driving up the 405 here in SoCal through a construction zone last weekend I saw this message pop up about construction for the first time I can recall. No noticeable changes occurred but I was always ready to take over anyhow. The car manages lane shifts without any issue whatsoever.


----------



## gary in NY (Dec 2, 2018)

OK, so I actually read the entire TACC section of the owners manual. Almost all the situations I encountered are covered, and the manual clearly warns that TACC may not correctly respond. There are so many warnings, that one may choose not to use it for fear of their life. These include slowing down for highway exits, even if you don't take them, slowing for curves, and a number of other situations. 

I do disagree with those of you that feel the FSD computer may not improve TACC under these conditions. According to the manual, TACC uses both the front facing cameras and radar, and other sensors, pretty much the same as AP. An increase in processing speed may benefit all the automatous/semi-automatous functions based upon these built-in cameras and sensors. Personally, I'd gotta believe it can't hurt, even though Musk at one time in the last year or so said the new hardware was not necessary for TACC. I would agree with that if you like the way it functions today. His statement was made well before the current AP configuration of the car became standard.

Today I used both TACC and AP without incident. Also just got 2019.20.4.2; third update in four days.


----------



## RickO2018 (Mar 13, 2018)

On a related note, there is a patch of road near me that the GPS reports 15MPH causing the car to disengage auto steer. The posted speed limit in this area is 25MPH, not 15MPH. I've come across disconnects with posted speeds and GPS information on other roads as well. Does anyone know of a process to alert Google of the error?


----------



## Long Ranger (Jun 1, 2018)

RickO2018 said:


> On a related note, there is a patch of road near me that the GPS reports 15MPH causing the car to disengage auto steer. The posted speed limit in this area is 25MPH, not 15MPH. I've come across disconnects with posted speeds and GPS information on other roads as well. Does anyone know of a process to alert Google of the error?


This post listed the steps: Speed_limit


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

RickO2018 said:


> On a related note, there is a patch of road near me that the GPS reports 15MPH causing the car to disengage auto steer. The posted speed limit in this area is 25MPH, not 15MPH. I've come across disconnects with posted speeds and GPS information on other roads as well. Does anyone know of a process to alert Google of the error?


I followed the steps in the post @Long Ranger linked to for my section of 50MPH freeway that has been showing as 70MPH. It has been corrected on Google, but we've not yet gotten a map update, so there is a lag for sure on these getting back to the car's maps.
(current maps are 2019.6 - we are currently in week 25, so the current maps is at least 19 weeks out of date.)


----------



## RickO2018 (Mar 13, 2018)

Thanks Long Ranger and MeLindaV. I followed the steps as described this am and Google's auto response achnowledged. We'll see how long it takes for the map to update.


----------



## gary in NY (Dec 2, 2018)

RickO2018 said:


> Thanks Long Ranger and MeLindaV. I followed the steps as described this am and Google's auto response achnowledged. We'll see how long it takes for the map to update.


There are a few of those issues on my regular routes. I may give that a try. They aways screw up AP.


----------

