Warning - Pro-Pilot Assist issues

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dtam83

Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2018
Messages
10
So I was in stop and go traffic and I was following a black Lincoln Navigator. When coming to a complete stop, once I got within 15 feet of the stopped Navigator, the car would accelerate like it couldn't see the Navigator any more. I stopped the first time and I tested it again and it happened a 2nd time.

So warning to everyone using the Pro-Pilot assist feature that if you're following a large, boxy vehicle, be extra careful when it's stop and go because the car might decide to accelerate
 
The adaptive cruise control is lousy at lower speeds. It decelerates way too quickly, then is reluctant and slow to re-accelerate. Unless, of course, you are behind a large boxy vehicle, apparently.
 
Also, it seems that e-Pedal gets turned off (even if it says it's on) when you have ProPilot engaged. I was using it in heavy traffic on a very steep hill in downtown Seattle, and after it brought my car to a stop it started rolling backwards! I tapped the brakes and it stopped right away, and after that e-Pedal held the car there just fine.
 
Wow that's very dangerous. Makes me wonder what the real world usage of ProPilot is. Makes me think that it's a gimmick versus really being able to make you less fatigued while driving.

If anything, it'd increase my heart rate just by not being able to 100% rely on it and not know if one moment it might decide to accelerate towards a black boxy vehicle.

I'm on the market for a 2018 Nissan Leaf and the unreliability of the ProPilot and the battery degradation (in sunny Southern California weather of 100F+) is really discouraging given I've test driven this car and love it...........
 
If you have legitimate concerns about a safety issue/defect, please file a formal complaint with Nissan corporate and NHTSA via safercar.gov. If you believe a dealer can resolve, take it there first.

For those who haven’t bought or leased yet, you can choose not to pay for feature.
 
boba7523 said:
Wow that's very dangerous. Makes me wonder what the real world usage of ProPilot is. Makes me think that it's a gimmick versus really being able to make you less fatigued while driving.

If anything, it'd increase my heart rate just by not being able to 100% rely on it and not know if one moment it might decide to accelerate towards a black boxy vehicle.

I'm on the market for a 2018 Nissan Leaf and the unreliability of the ProPilot and the battery degradation (in sunny Southern California weather of 100F+) is really discouraging given I've test driven this car and love it...........

I've learned to use mine as just an enhanced version of regular cruise control - at speed, on the highway or main streets only. I don't use it for stop and go driving because of the too-abrupt braking, too weak acceleration, and now because of the truck blindness issue.
 
LeftieBiker said:
boba7523 said:
Wow that's very dangerous. Makes me wonder what the real world usage of ProPilot is. Makes me think that it's a gimmick versus really being able to make you less fatigued while driving.

If anything, it'd increase my heart rate just by not being able to 100% rely on it and not know if one moment it might decide to accelerate towards a black boxy vehicle.

I'm on the market for a 2018 Nissan Leaf and the unreliability of the ProPilot and the battery degradation (in sunny Southern California weather of 100F+) is really discouraging given I've test driven this car and love it...........

I've learned to use mine as just an enhanced version of regular cruise control - at speed, on the highway or main streets only. I don't use it for stop and go driving because of the too-abrupt braking, too weak acceleration, and now because of the truck blindness issue.


I'm contemplating getting the SL just for the ProPilot... Did a brief test drive with it and found braking to be abrupt and slow acceleration as well. I guess the technology is still in its infancy... Kinda had high hopes for it :/
 
I'm contemplating getting the SL just for the ProPilot... Did a brief test drive with it and found braking to be abrupt and slow acceleration as well. I guess the technology is still in its infancy... Kinda had high hopes for it :/

I have encountered one situation in which the acceleration after braking for traffic is actually too hard: when a car turns at an intersection in front of you, your car will then try to blast through the intersection while accelerating quickly. Nice programming, Nissan!
 
I have ACC on my Grand Cherokee from 2015 and absolutely love it. I depend on it completely in all situations.

I test drove an 18 Leaf the other day and we took it out on the interstate to play with ProPilot. The ACC part wasn't bad in that situation, but I was amazed at how bad lane keeping was. It tried to veer out of its lane twice while it said it was in control. I had to pull it back both times from the next lane over. Maybe I'd get more comfortable over time but from that brief experience I think it would make me more stressed versus not using it.
 
The lane keeping isn't terrible on mine, but it has the rude habit of steering just over the white line, then vibrating the wheel to "warn" me about what it just did.
 
My dealings w/Pro-Pilot Assist: When there is a side road on my right and no white line, Pro-Pilot will keep steering to the right to find white line markings, after I have passed the side road intersection Pro-Pilot has gone to the extreme right looking for the white line, once it finds the white line and "sees" it's gone to far to the right Pro-Pilot will veer sharply to the left.
2nd thing I have noticed when Pro-pilot is on with Steering Assist, when turning off main road with markings, I use brake for my turn and Pro-Pilot will turn off, so I press resume and Pro-Pilot will come back up, now the road I'm on has NO markings so no Steering Assist, turn on my next road after using brake, press resume, Pro-Pilot will come back on but now I have good line markings but Steering Assist does not resume, but sometimes it does resume, Steering Assist, and other times not. :roll:
 
dtam83 said:
So I was in stop and go traffic and I was following a black Lincoln Navigator. When coming to a complete stop, once I got within 15 feet of the stopped Navigator, the car would accelerate like it couldn't see the Navigator any more. I stopped the first time and I tested it again and it happened a 2nd time.

So warning to everyone using the Pro-Pilot assist feature that if you're following a large, boxy vehicle, be extra careful when it's stop and go because the car might decide to accelerate
That sounds like other cases where cruise control radar has ignored a vehicle whose speed is zero, which has led, among other crashes, to a Telsa plowing into a stopped fire truck.

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/
Radar knows the speed of any object it sees, and is also simple, cheap, robust, and easy to build into a front bumper. But it also detects lots of things a car rolling down the highway needn't worry about, like overhead highway signs, loose hubcaps, or speed limit signs. So engineers make a choice, telling the car to ignore these things and keep its eyes on the other cars on the road: They program the system to focus on the stuff that's moving.
 
Here's another thing I discovered you have to watch out for: traffic lights. I was 'sperimenting with the adaptive cruise-control part of the car (2018SV + tech) on an undivided four-lane state highway. I had already determined that I don't want to risk turning on the steering assist, but I was kind of nodding in satisfaction with the cruise control. Then the car that mine had been following became the last one to stand a reasonable chance of getting through one of the highway's rare crossroads on a yellow light. With a computerish "Tally ho!", my car bounded forward to close the gap. Must've looked three kinds of fool to the traffic behind me for panic-braking. "Automatic T-bone Target", more like, in this situation, anyway.
 
In my two stints with PPA, I noticed the only way to make it somewhat acceptable was to change the follow distance to 1 in stop and go, then bump to 2 when traffic is flowing normally on streets with speed limit at 35 mph or less.

I tried leaving it at 1 and when traffic moved, my follow distance was uncomfortably close and speed was erratic. Leaving it at 2 allowed waaaay too much distance even when stopped. The big issue as I see it, is the system's weak or slow or complete inability to adjust the set parameters to the actual speed of the vehicle.
 
TheLostPetrol said:
dtam83 said:
So I was in stop and go traffic and I was following a black Lincoln Navigator. When coming to a complete stop, once I got within 15 feet of the stopped Navigator, the car would accelerate like it couldn't see the Navigator any more. I stopped the first time and I tested it again and it happened a 2nd time.

So warning to everyone using the Pro-Pilot assist feature that if you're following a large, boxy vehicle, be extra careful when it's stop and go because the car might decide to accelerate
That sounds like other cases where cruise control radar has ignored a vehicle whose speed is zero, which has led, among other crashes, to a Telsa plowing into a stopped fire truck.

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/
Radar knows the speed of any object it sees, and is also simple, cheap, robust, and easy to build into a front bumper. But it also detects lots of things a car rolling down the highway needn't worry about, like overhead highway signs, loose hubcaps, or speed limit signs. So engineers make a choice, telling the car to ignore these things and keep its eyes on the other cars on the road: They program the system to focus on the stuff that's moving.

Is PPA radar though? It looks like a camera system or is it multiple sensors?
 
dtam83 said:
Is PPA radar though? It looks like a camera system or is it multiple sensors?

The standard ACC on the new Leafs is radar based, but with ProPilot they add the camera next to the rearview mirror and a Mobileye chip to process the images. It should still use the radar, though, and I don't think the emergency braking uses the camera at all (there's an additional less powerful camera hidden in the front grill, but I forget what it is used for, or if it's in the base car). It is possible to turn all of these systems off individually. Is it possible that dtam83 turned AEB off?
 
I use pro-pilot assist on my commute to/from work every day. It's about 30 miles each way of interstate traffic (although I get the carpool lane in the Leaf, so at least traffic is moving at 50+ mph the whole way). The lane keep works great, although I have solid white lines to my right and a solid yellow line to my left, so it's pretty much the easiest use case imaginable. The cruise control works well at the 2 setting, although as others have mentioned, it's focused on moving objects, so if the car ahead of me is stopped and I'm going 50+ mph, the system doesn't realize it needs to stop until after it should've been applying the brakes.

However, keep in mind that the manual explicitly covers this. I don't have it in front of me, but I distinctly remember reading something to the effect of how the feature is intended to speed match a vehicle moving in front of you (including that vehicle stopping), but it's not intended to stop for you when a stopped car suddenly appears in front of you. If you think about it, the car icon is greyed out when there's no car in front of you, which I take to mean that system is currently "off" until it locks onto a moving vehicle in front of you. I mean, between that, the steering wheel sensor, and all the written warnings, I don't think Nissan could be more clear that the system is to make your driving experience easier by not having to constantly speed match the traffic in front of you or make small lane corrections, but it's not intended to allow you to stop paying attention to sudden changes in traffic conditions (like rolling up on a traffic jam when you're going 70mph).

When there's no cars in front of me, I treat the PPA as a normal cruise control. When there's a car in front of me, I let the PPA speed match for me. Ironically, in some ways this means that the system requires less attention when there's a moving car in front of me versus when there's no traffic at all, since adjusting to the car in front of me will allow the PPA to properly slow down in a timely manner if we run into major traffic.

Even though I am more or less satisfied with how the PPA works right now, there are some quirks I've experienced as well. About 20 miles into my 30-mile commute, there's a 1-mile stretch of interstate that's relatively flat and straight, with well painted lines, where the PPA beeps and shuts off every day as if it can't find the road for lane keeping. During this stretch, my cell phone coverage (I've had both AT&T and T-Mobile) drops off as well. I think there's some weird radio interference on that stretch that also screwing both with the PPA and cell coverage.

I do agree that the PPA does not resume speeds fast enough when cars ahead of you speed up, but you can always override that with the accelerator if it really matters. However, I will say this. While it doesn't resume speeds as fast as I would like, it does resume speeds just barely fast enough to keep people behind you from honking :D, so relying on it isn't a big deal, since once you get back up to speed you're going to close the gap back to the distance you've set anyways.
 
Astros said:
dtam83 said:
Is PPA radar though? It looks like a camera system or is it multiple sensors?

The standard ACC on the new Leafs is radar based, but with ProPilot they add the camera next to the rearview mirror and a Mobileye chip to process the images. It should still use the radar, though, and I don't think the emergency braking uses the camera at all (there's an additional less powerful camera hidden in the front grill, but I forget what it is used for, or if it's in the base car). It is possible to turn all of these systems off individually. Is it possible that dtam83 turned AEB off?

I keep FEB on. The system works in every other situation, just in this scenario where it acted weird
 
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