Autopilot 7.0: When to be most on your toes?

[kirkbauer]

It's hard to describe but basically it can't know what it can't see, and as humans we can predict. Take the image below and imagine it is a one-way road. You are driving down the right lane but the left lane is stop-and-go traffic. This means your view of the right lane is obstructed due to the turn, so neither you nor AP knows if there is a stopped car ahead in your lane nor how close they are.

Now if I let AP do its thing perhaps it would have stopped, but it was coming around the turn at a speed greater than I was comfortable with considering I assumed there would be a stopped car just ahead.

 

[garygid]

In my version 2.7.56, the botts dots are not recognized as a lane delimiter.
Thus, the AP does not see another lane available to turn into.

 

[Papafox]

I spent sometime this weekend with the 2.7.7 (I think) and it wouldn't change lanes on I-90 when the lane dividers were *only* botts dots (no lines, but just those round white bumps).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botts'_dots

Anyone have luck with auto lane changing with no lines, but just botts dots?

Discoducky, I checked with some autopilot users in Hawaii, where the botts dots are the norm as lane markers. Both of the two respondents said that they could get their Model S to change lanes with botts dots if they used the turn blinker, but one said that once the lane change takes place the Tesla sometimes has issues with remaining in the new lane and AutoSteer may shut off. One said that her Tesla does okay in the far right lane because it has a solid line marking the far right side of the lane to follow. Clearly, the botts_dots need to be addressed in a future release of the software, and let's hope they're addressed in the next release. Until then, recognize that this is something that you'll want to be careful with. I have already addressed this issue in the top post on this thread.

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[Papafox]

It's hard to describe but basically it can't know what it can't see, and as humans we can predict. Take the image below and imagine it is a one-way road. You are driving down the right lane but the left lane is stop-and-go traffic. This means your view of the right lane is obstructed due to the turn, so neither you nor AP knows if there is a stopped car ahead in your lane nor how close they are.

Now if I let AP do its thing perhaps it would have stopped, but it was coming around the turn at a speed greater than I was comfortable with considering I assumed there would be a stopped car just ahead.

Kirkbauer, I had heard that one component of autopilot was supposed to shoot a beam under the car in front of you to see what's going on beyond that car. In theory, such a beam could detect a car stopped in your lane. It'll be interesting as we gain more experience to see if that theory holds true or not.