It seems to be my lot to play Cassandra. First it was autopark and today it is autosteer.
Luckily, I only almost got into a real bad accident today. I will upload videos later, but autosteer is nice - as long as you are not driving through a construction zone. When it hits one of those places where the lane markers have been temporarily changed to accommodate construction, autosteer is downright dangerous. It gets confused if it sees the lane marker branching off (as it happened in my case) and tries to follow the branch (or stay on course as the case may be).
Today, it saw an earlier lane marker branch off to the left (it seems that the construction crew painted a temporary marker in yellow...). It started tracking to it and almost cut into the path of a left merge into the highway. A poor lady in a lexus had the scare of her life as my model3 started to cut right in front of her. Luckily, I knew the location well and I kinda guessed that the car was going to get confused and was able to yank it back, just in time.
So, new lessons learned:
1. Dont use autosteer. And definitely dont use it in construction zones, even when there is no traffic. I would not be surprised if autosteer drove the car into a divider because some lane marker went there. At 65mph, there is zero margin for error.
2. If you must use auto steer, be extremely vigilant in areas where the lane markings are ambiguous or absent - the system relies completely - over relies, in my view - on those markings. At high speeds, the reaction time is fractions of a second.
3. I definitely would not trust auto navigate. Not a chance.
Overall, I am not impressed with the beta stuff. I am a system designer myself and the cardinal rule in programming is always to fail to safety. In the event of ambiguity - where the camera sees more than one path, for example, the car must instantly slow down and soft warn the user.
That the tesla does not do.
Luckily, I only almost got into a real bad accident today. I will upload videos later, but autosteer is nice - as long as you are not driving through a construction zone. When it hits one of those places where the lane markers have been temporarily changed to accommodate construction, autosteer is downright dangerous. It gets confused if it sees the lane marker branching off (as it happened in my case) and tries to follow the branch (or stay on course as the case may be).
Today, it saw an earlier lane marker branch off to the left (it seems that the construction crew painted a temporary marker in yellow...). It started tracking to it and almost cut into the path of a left merge into the highway. A poor lady in a lexus had the scare of her life as my model3 started to cut right in front of her. Luckily, I knew the location well and I kinda guessed that the car was going to get confused and was able to yank it back, just in time.
So, new lessons learned:
1. Dont use autosteer. And definitely dont use it in construction zones, even when there is no traffic. I would not be surprised if autosteer drove the car into a divider because some lane marker went there. At 65mph, there is zero margin for error.
2. If you must use auto steer, be extremely vigilant in areas where the lane markings are ambiguous or absent - the system relies completely - over relies, in my view - on those markings. At high speeds, the reaction time is fractions of a second.
3. I definitely would not trust auto navigate. Not a chance.
Overall, I am not impressed with the beta stuff. I am a system designer myself and the cardinal rule in programming is always to fail to safety. In the event of ambiguity - where the camera sees more than one path, for example, the car must instantly slow down and soft warn the user.
That the tesla does not do.