Congrats on the Subaru and welcome to the forums. Can you confirm that the windshield, specially in front of the EyeSight camera is clean and free of marks/fog etc? While I never had this happen during the day, the EyeSight going "offline" at night in either extreme dark and/or bad visibility (snow / rain / fog / dust / frost) is normal. The icons that light up is an intentional indicator to let the driver know that eyesight is having visibility issues. If you have issues seeing, so does EyeSight. In colder weather, run the defroster as when you breath frost can build up before you notice it at your eye-level and interfere with the EyeSight.

If the EyeSight keeps going offline during normal/clean visibility, then pay your dealer a visit. But before you do, ensure that there is no fog/forst/dirt in front of the cameras as that is the biggest factor in these EyeSight indicators going off.

 

Mine has turned off when windshield fogged inside. Normal per manual.

 

Same here and didn't seem to be fogged much at all.

 

Direct sunlight will turn mine off

 

I've had this, too. Driving west late in the afternoon with the sun about 5-10 degrees above the horizon.

 

Keep in mind if you can't see very well because of external conditions neither can Eyesight. Take a few minutes out of your busy schedule and read the Eyesight Manual it has all the possible reasons for temporary failures.?

Laughter is the key to happiness

 

I would bring it to the dealer -

 

Gravel roads can also cause EyeSight to shut down even during the day if they are wide and featureless. If it doesn't have any object or paint mark that it can range stereoscopically it assumes it is malfunctioning. That being said just take it to the dealer, they should be able to diagnose whats happening.

 

Sounds like the system behaved as designed. If the Eyesight system doesn't have enough visual clues, it turns itself off (and lets you know both audibly and visibly). That may occur on a dark road with no white lines (such as a dirt road or a featureless driveway); also when there's fog, heavy rain, blinding sun, etc. When you have limited visibility, Eyesight does too. Even when you have excellent visibility, the Outback may not, as "your" part of the windshield may be clear but there may be temporary condensation around ES's part, when you've only just started the car.

It "failed" the very first time you drove the car? More likely, what failed was your understanding of what Eyesight does and what its limitations are. The manual is helpful, and made for new owners to read...

 

Just like everyone else, mine shuts down for the usual causes. Fogged windshield. Heavy rain. Snow. Fog. Any time it can't pick up visual cues on the road ahead.

 

Now I have noticed and have video of a fail at start up that after an intial failure begins to work.

Gerry, did you by chance check the information screen to see what extra information was displayed about the eyesight condition? If not sure how to do this, momentarily pull the ‘i/set’ button which is the centre button of three between the steering wheel left & bottom spokes. Any information will then be displayed between the speedo & tacho. Notice the ‘i’ icon to the left of the transmission ‘D’ indicator in your photo which indicates that there is information on the information screen to be viewed. The info on that screen may be helpful when diagnosing.

I suspect as others have mentioned you probably had an eyesight temporary stop (going by the white eyesight temporary stop indicator) & the info screen may have displayed 'Eyesight disabled - no camera view' which I have had now & again. I find when the condition that caused the eyesight temporary stop has improved, eyesight will switch on again.


Hope this will help.

 

not sure why everyone is saying it's working as intended when it sounds like it fails at startup and then starts working after repeatedly turning the car off and on while in similar conditions. at least that's how I'm reading it.

 

I agree. Mine seldom shuts down. I can drive into bright sun, drive in heavy rain even at night and it will still stay on most of the time. I realize it will shut down if it gets worse, but I'm surprised how seldom it does.

 

This calls for a trip to the dealer. It's could be as simple as a bad connection or a bad camera. Whatever it is, make them fix it.

 

The ES on my car has shut down only during cloudburst rain events we get down here sometimes. Other than that even the bright sun hasn't shut down the eyesight, so I'd bring the car to the dealer and let them run a diagnostic on it. Maybe the camera's need a recalibration? ....YMMV

 

Own both Subarus with Eyesight temporary outages from heavy fog, direct sun from sunrise/sunset, fogging the windshield, heavy rain, night time two lane country hilly roads ... Lost from a few minutes to long time.

Laughter is the key to happiness

 

Great info. It can be very easy to become reliant on these systems, especially when the weather is bad. It will be important to remember to ensure it is active. Thanks


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Mine turned off once there was too much rain on the windshield. When I turn on the windshield wipers it came back on.

17 3.6R

Gilbert, AZ

 

I did read the Subaru Eyesight supplement it is kinda my thing.

 

Thanks I will give that a try. The eyesight system has now failed on 2 consecutive nights Thursday 0400 hrs Friday 0400 1/29/2017. The past 2 failures have been while driving. Thursday morning it cleared while driving a few miles later and Friday morning it cleared only after stopping and restarting.

 

So if those two ‘failures’ were since the ones you reported in your opening post, did you see what information was displayed when you pulled the ‘i/set’ button as per my first post, & could you see a reason for eyesight to stop as posted by other members?

You shouldn’t have to restart the engine to re-start eyesight after a temporary stop, to me that sounds more like an intermittent failure/fault with eyesight than a temporary stop condition (two different conditions), which needs to be looked at by the dealer.

 

Mine very rarely fails. But I keep the windshield clean--you know, the wiper/washer system, which I use most times when I start the car. I have to top off the washer tank every three or four weeks with distilled water and a Sonax windshield detergent. I do this not only for Eyesight, but for my vision too.

 

When I had my 2015 Outback the only time I would loose eye sight was when you would expect to....stormy weather-rain or snow. Never for no reason and NEVER at night. With my 2017 Legacy I loose it a lot for no reason. I have lost it on a clear day on the expressway so my cruise wouldn't work. I have lost it at night and then my brights don't work. I find it dangerous and plan on taking to dealership after reading comments here.

 

My 2017 eye sight will work in light rain and snow.

It's only turned off in heavy rain, heavy snow, and heavy fog. The only other times I've seen it turn off is when the windshield fogs up heavily (defroster fixes that quickly) and even repeatedly engaging the emergency automatic braking.

 

... repeatedly engaging the emergency automatic braking.

Yep. That's even in the manual: EyeSight will turn itself off after three Pre-Collision Braking events in the same driving session. Turning the engine off and restarting will also reset/restart EyeSight.

 

Add me to the heavy fog list. Even then ... that has only happened to me once.

 

I see, I misunderstood Brucey's post. The comment about repeated braking disabling EyeSight I misunderstood as the fog causing automatic braking, my mistake!

I did find a thread on Reddit about a Foz XT driver that was trying to navigate a traffic circle, and due to geometry and forward-facing angle of the lanes, the ES auto-braked on him several times and caused an accident. I could see, technically speaking, why this could happen: your car is pointed at an angle because of the nature of a circle and you're pointed at the car in an adjacent lane, so when you give it some throttle to get out into your lane when you deem it safe, the ES isn't aware of your steering wheel input and therefore predicts you driving forward into the person next to you.... I guess....

Then again, I think if roundabouts and circles were a regular issue, I think we'd have thousands of posts about them by this point.

 

I did find a thread on Reddit about a Foz XT driver that was trying to navigate a traffic circle, and due to geometry and forward-facing angle of the lanes, the ES auto-braked on him several times and caused an accident. I could see, technically speaking, why this could happen: your car is pointed at an angle because of the nature of a circle and you're pointed at the car in an adjacent lane, so when you give it some throttle to get out into your lane when you deem it safe, the ES isn't aware of your steering wheel input and therefore predicts you driving forward into the person next to you.... I guess....

Then again, I think if roundabouts and circles were a regular issue, I think we'd have thousands of posts about them by this point.

I think I found the Reddit post you're referring to. The driver didn't have an accident, just nearly had one. And he included diagrams to show his intended path, and where he had the issues. I'd go mostly here with driver impatience and error. Two lane roundabout, with four two lane roads entering it. He tried to cut across the outside lane of the roundabout to the center lane and was then wanting to go to the inside lane of the highway directly opposite him. So based upon his own diagram, it was driver impatience that set the situation up. He cut across both lanes of traffic on the roundabout then ended up right behind a car with his accelerator pushed down at a high closing rate. Eyesight calculated that without driver interference - since he had shoved his gas down and wasn't hitting the brake - that he was going to hit the slower moving car ahead of him - and did what it's programmed to do. THEN once he got going, due to the geometry of the roundabout, there was another car that he was headed for that was in the outside lane and again, the system looked at the parameters and thought he was going to be in an accident.

Oh, and here's the images he posted, showing his intended path, and both times when eyesight kicked in.

http://i.imgur.com/KBA1ALH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/O7yU79q.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/aN8Ey2T.jpg

In the owners manual for eyesight on page 27 (2017 version) it even SHOWS that in these kind of situations that the Eyesight system may activate. Complete with illustrations, which look VERY close to what was going on in the roundabout...

The Pre-Collision Braking System may activate in the following situations.
Therefore concentrate on safe driving.
- When passing through an automatic gate (opening and shutting)
- When driving close to the vehicle in front
- When driving in a location where the grade of the road changes rapidly
- When visibility is poor due to sand, smoke or water vapor in the air, or when the vehicle in front or oncoming traffic causes water, snow, dirt or other substances to obscure the view
- When passing through clouds of steam or smoke, etc
- When the exhaust gas emitted by the vehicle in front is clearly visible in cold weather, etc
- When there is an obstacle on a curve or intersection
- When narrowly passing a vehicle or an object
- When stopping very close to a wall or a vehicle in front

I can't copy the picture from the PDF file of the owners manual I have access to, to post here, sorry.

 

I'm sharing a thread I wrote from a few months ago when I had recurrent ES issues in my 2017 OB Touring and found one of the foam surrounds from the camera had dislodged and was partially blocking the camera.

http://www.subaruoutback.org/forums...-gen-5-2015-present/443506-weird-eyesight-issue-resolved-but-worth-sharing.html