Are you OK with AutoPilot jail?

[Archduke]

I've been put in AP jail twice. Both times, it was because I was doing about 85 MPH in the left lane on the freeway when I noticed a car rapidly approaching from behind in an attempt to pass. And both times, there were semi trucks in the right lane preventing me from pulling into the right lane immediately. So both times, I sped up in order to pass the trucks and clear the passing lane for the car behind me. It's what a courteous driver would do. And both times, my Tesla locked me out of AP, forcing me to exit the freeway, put the car in park, leave the car until it 'went to sleep', and then restart the car to clear the prohibition on using AP. And both times, it frustrated me greatly.

I can totally understand why AP becomes unavailable for a driver who ignores prompts to put his/her hands back on the steering wheel. But a driver who increases their speed past 90 MPH may be doing it for any number of reasons, some of which might be justified. Wouldn't it be best in this scenario to simply have AP disable itself once the speed passed 90 MPH? I seem to remember that is what happened until recently.

 

[Vlad16]

Do you guys think it is acceptable not being able to engage the AP whenever it is safe to do so?

Requiring to park the car and open/close the door to re-engage it is plain stupid.

It is a safty issue as well. The driver might get into an accident because of not being able to turn it back on.

If lack of AP is the ‘cause’ of the accident, you probably shouldn’t be driving to begin with.. if you require AP to drive safe, start using Uber please.

 

[Wooloomooloo]

You're clearly quoting this post: Are you OK with AutoPilot jail?
But for some reason you changed it so it looks like it's quoted from one of my posts?

That's so strange, it's a multiquote gone wrong!

 

[dlsspy]

I think I've had three jail events:

1. Seeing what would happen.
2. Passing a car and hitting over 90.
3. Spurious.

#3 is the worst... It went immediately from "everything's fine" to one beep and jail. I had to pull over and deal with that to get back to my previous level of safe driving. This didn't benefit anyone.

 

[2much3time]

I got put in jail on a road trip when accelerating to allow a truck to merge in behind me.

While I appreciate the need for auto-pilot jail, its just way too easy to hit on a road that already has an 80 mph speed limit. I wish they would just put in a speed limiter where you physically can not go beyond 90 mph with autopilot engaged and have to manually disengage to go faster rather than being immediately put in jail unintentionally.

 

[AnesDragon]

I would agree automatic disengagement of AP is not always the safest. It does actively deter people that abuse AP but in situations that the driver has a temporary emergency situation such as brief seizure activity automatically disengaging AP will lead to fatality whereas it might have given a temporary reprieve and save a person's life when it was not intentional. I'm sure there will be people in the forum that would argue that those people should not drive but sometimes the medical situation just happens and was not expected. Of course, I do understand that EAP is not FAP. It is just too easy to disengage AP too easily even if you are paying attention with good intentions. It is a fine balance between abuse and safety. Abuses of few penalize benefits for everyone who is trying to follow the rule.

 

[bpjod]

I once got put in AP jail. No idea why, just a loud alarm as EAP disengaged and that was it. I couldn't re-engage. No prior audible warnings. I didn't know how to re-engage so I drove another 3 or so hours with no EAP.

Based on that experience, I don't know why AP jail doesn't simply disable Auto-Steer. Clearly if I were to re-engage TACC (or even dumb cruise control) I'd have to have my hands on the wheel and eyes on the road to continue driving.

In this case it was really difficult as I was trying to maintain a speed 5 kph below the posted speed limit on a highway I usually drive 15-20 kph over the limit (and everyone else is even faster than that). I had to drive this slow because I had a canoe on the roof and had carefully calculated what Wh/km I needed to maintain to get to my destination without draining the battery. I had determined that 95 kph would work, but 100 kph was using too much energy. It was REALLY difficult maintaining that SLOW speed without the help of cruise control.

Now, thanks to this posting, I've learned how to re-enable EAP and I'll simply pull over and do that, but I can still see a situation on divided highway with few exits where that might be difficult to do for quite some time and a simple Auto-Steer timeout would be more appropriate.

 

[Charliek]

for east coast driving a jail at 90 works under nearly all conditions . I had the car in AP and forgot I was in AP since I had my hand on the wheel when a left lane disappeared and I had to pass quickly . I have a MS 2017 and I would love it if the white flashing nag went back to full IC border versus the sliver of light you see at the top I could see the full border nag better out of the corner of my eye and get the torque rightbefore it went to beep . the flashing and beep works, but if you are on a long drive it is too easy to get 3 warnings. it might make more sense to have a " "time out" of x minutes with out a warning doesn't penalize you for the next one. but I am happy to live with the 3 strike to jail at the moment. im training myself to apply just a hair more pressure with one hand resting and then no nags/no jail,

 

[iSpyLife]

Do you guys think it is acceptable not being able to engage the AP whenever it is safe to do so?

Requiring to park the car and open/close the door to re-engage it is plain stupid.

It is a safty issue as well. The driver might get into an accident because of not being able to turn it back on.

Means you aren’t paying attention. It’s your own fault. I’ve never once been in AP jail since I’ve owned my car.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Do you guys think it is acceptable not being able to engage the AP whenever it is safe to do so?

Requiring to park the car and open/close the door to re-engage it is plain stupid.

It is a safty issue as well. The driver might get into an accident because of not being able to turn it back on.

I think its hilarious that the post got so many disagrees when IT'S A POLL!!!

They had to doubledown their vote?

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Means you aren’t paying attention. It’s your own fault. I’ve never once been in AP jail since I’ve owned my car.

Yes, it means you aren't paying attention to what the computer is telling you.

So obviously the thing to do is to throw them into AP jail.

The other way to get into AP jail is to push the throttle to pass someone, and to accidentally exceed 90mph.

These are great things to punish a person for paying attention to the road, and actively doing something to deal with a road situation.

We need to punish these people until they come into compliance with what our computer tells them to do. They should be paying attention to it, and not the road.

We even flash red at them to get them to notice, but no they're too busy staring ahead at traffic.

 

[whatthe2]

I think its hilarious that the post got so many disagrees when IT'S A POLL!!!

They had to doubledown their vote?

Re-read the post you quoted. Pretty obvious what the disagrees are for. And it’s not the poll people are disagreeing with.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Re-read the post you quoted. Pretty obvious what the disagrees are for. And it’s not the poll people are disagreeing with.

I disagreed with the safety aspect of the OP's post as well, but to me he's clearly stating his own position.

But, he created a poll to get other peoples feedback.

It wasn't that he got disagrees that was suprirrisng, but the amount.

I think we all know AP jail is a very imperfect solution, but it's the only thing Tesla could do. We also know it impacts some people more than others.

My Model 3's torque sensor is way more prone to not sensing my hands than my Model S torque sensor.

It doesn't bug me too much because I'm not a strong AP user. But, I could certainly understand frustration.

 

[AnesDragon]

The thing about model 3 AP is that to comply I have to pay attention more to the computer screen then the road ahead while driving. I am constantly glancing at the computer screen to make sure there is no blue warning while driving because the wheel torq sensor is not sensitive enough. Sometime I will put enough torq and end up canceling AP by too much torq being applied as if I am trying to take over. I will use AP while then when I get tired, I will just take over fully. Seems like to me the whole purpose of AP should be if I happen to be tired it should assist me in a meaningful way so I can arrive at my destination in a safer manner.

 

[smatthew]

The thing about model 3 AP is that to comply I have to pay attention more to the computer screen then the road ahead while driving. I am constantly glancing at the computer screen to make sure there is no blue warning while driving because the wheel torq sensor is not sensitive enough. Sometime I will put enough torq and end up canceling AP by too much torq being applied as if I am trying to take over. I will use AP while then when I get tired, I will just take over fully. Seems like to me the whole purpose of AP should be if I happen to be tired it should assist me in a meaningful way so I can arrive at my destination in a safer manner.

It's spelled torque. AP can sense your mis-spelling and that's why it cancels so easily.

 

[eprosenx]

I had a Loaner S recently while my M3 was in the shop.

Took it on a longer trip to a friends vacation home. Got the chimes several times as I just don’t see the notification as well on the MS dashboard. It put me in “Jail” which was extremely annoying as it was a perfect drive for using auto pilot and not having it made the drive more taxing.

Note that I *never* get to the audible warning level in my M3. The pulsing is as far as I get and it is very obvious out of the corner of my eye. Maybe my M3 has trained me to no longer look at dashboards?

It makes me mad that I have to jiggle the steering wheel constantly to keep it off my back. I keep my hands on the wheel while using it, but with a very light grip. I constantly am manually shaking the wheel. This solution sucks. I wish at a minimum that other control inputs would reset the attentiveness timer. An example is changes in autopilot speed. Clearly if I am messing with the thumb wheels my hands are on the wheel.

It also seems that the M3 needs more force on the steering wheel to get it to recognize my hands on the wheel than the S does.

There has got to be a better way...

(also, if you get the chime and you instantly provide feedback on the wheel then it should not count against you since you obviously have your hands on the wheel already)

 

[RKBA]

I wish at a minimum that other control inputs would reset the attentiveness timer. An example is changes in autopilot speed. Clearly if I am messing with the thumb wheels my hands are on the wheel.

The computer does recognize the thumb wheel inputs to reset the timer. I only discovered it a couple weeks ago, so I don't know if earlier versions of the software did, but the V9 certainly does.

 

[whatthe2]

The computer does recognize the thumb wheel inputs to reset the timer. I only discovered it a couple weeks ago, so I don't know if earlier versions of the software did, but the V9 certainly does.

Not only the right thumb wheel, but the left volume control also satisfies the nag.

 

[Pkmmte]

I recently went over 90 mph last night while driving at the flow of traffic on the freeway with AutoPilot (+Nav on AP).

The moment I saw 93 on my speedometer, I thought "Oh crap, I'll need to pull over soon", but it didn't actually put me in AP Jail. Not sure if this recently changed or if it's special for Navigate on AutoPilot. I'm just glad it didn't force me to pull over.

 

[RKBA]

Not only the right thumb wheel, but the left volume control also satisfies the nag.

I call both the left and the right "thumb wheels". I usually use the left volume control to satisfy the nag. I wonder if it also takes stalk input, say, if you initiated an AP lane change. I'll have to try that next time I get a chance.