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Car suddenly jumped out of lane in autopilot

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Last night my MYLR was driving on autopilot with autosteer on a busy multilane secondary road. It was tracking the middle lane and traffic speed perfectly at about 50mph until suddenly the car lurched sideways out of its lane in the middle of an intersection. It was the bizarrest feeling and scared me to death. It felt like the rear of the car skidded into the next lane, while the front of the car was in the original lane and I was sliding at about a 30 degree angle. It seemed as if in the middle of the intersection the car could not decide which lane to go to on the other side of the intersection, even though the right path was to continue straight on. At the same time, the car speeded up suddenly. I quickly cancelled autopilot and straightened out. Fortunately, no one was directly beside me in the next lane. About 10 seconds later the car started screaming at me to take control, which I had already done. This was at night on a well lit city street with no rain or otherwise unusual driving conditions. I have driven this road many times on autopilot without incident.

My 2021 MYLR recently updated to 2021.36.5 firmware. I don't know if this has anything to do with it. Since the update, I have had to reboot the screen twice -- once because some features disappeared (such as a immersive sound) and another time, because it would not respond to voice commands or calculate a route.

My question is, in such a situation once I recover my composure and control of the vehicle, is there a way I could report this autopilot miscalculation on the fly and save the incident to a log? Has anyone else ever experienced something like this? I do not have FSD -- I was using autopilot with autosteer.
 
Last night my MYLR was driving on autopilot with autosteer on a busy multilane secondary road. It was tracking the middle lane and traffic speed perfectly at about 50mph until suddenly the car lurched sideways out of its lane in the middle of an intersection. It was the bizarrest feeling and scared me to death. It felt like the rear of the car skidded into the next lane, while the front of the car was in the original lane and I was sliding at about a 30 degree angle. It seemed as if in the middle of the intersection the car could not decide which lane to go to on the other side of the intersection, even though the right path was to continue straight on. At the same time, the car speeded up suddenly. I quickly cancelled autopilot and straightened out. Fortunately, no one was directly beside me in the next lane. About 10 seconds later the car started screaming at me to take control, which I had already done. This was at night on a well lit city street with no rain or otherwise unusual driving conditions. I have driven this road many times on autopilot without incident.

My 2021 MYLR recently updated to 2021.36.5 firmware. I don't know if this has anything to do with it. Since the update, I have had to reboot the screen twice -- once because some features disappeared (such as a immersive sound) and another time, because it would not respond to voice commands or calculate a route.

My question is, in such a situation once I recover my composure and control of the vehicle, is there a way I could report this autopilot miscalculation on the fly and save the incident to a log? Has anyone else ever experienced something like this? I do not have FSD -- I was using autopilot with autosteer.
Press the icon that looks like a video camera at the top of the screen.
 
Autosteer is only supported on closed highways, not city streets, it doesn't stop you from turning it on anywhere but it says this stuff in the manual. The car crosses intersections basically on inertia, it doesn't have any notion as to what lane to go into like FSD beta does. It just works by dumb luck.
 
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Autosteer is only supported on closed highways, not city streets, it doesn't stop you from turning it on anywhere but it says this stuff in the manual. The car crosses intersections basically on inertia, it doesn't have any notion as to what lane to go into like FSD beta does. It just works by dumb luck.

All I would expect is that when the car crosses an intersection, Autosteer would maintain its path into the lane continuing on the other side. Usually Autosteer does this brilliantly, but this one time the car freaked out and did not know where to go. It felt like the rear end had a different idea of what to do than the front end, like 2 people in a donkey costume.

The manual says that Autosteer is intended for highways. But there are lots of high speed highways that have cross roads with 2 way stops. US 93 from Phoenix to Las Vegas would be a perfect application of Autopilot with Autosteer. It is a highway often with a 75 mph speed limit, but at times the speed limit suddenly drops as the road goes through small towns. There are traffic circles in some towns and at times there are entrances from side streets, even though it is has a high speed limit. Parts of it are hilly and winding. Transport trucks come barreling down the hills at 75 in the opposite direction on an undivided highway. It is always an adventure to drive at night. I hope FSD beta will handle this type of road well and not just use the existing Autopilot capabilities.
 
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...The manual says that Autosteer is intended for highways...

Agreed: Not all highways are controlled-access or limited-access (entrance ramps and exit ramps with no intersections).


All I would expect is that when the car crosses an intersection, Autosteer would maintain its path into the lane continuing on the other side. Usually Autosteer does this brilliantly, but this one time the car freaked out and did not know where to go. It felt like the rear end had a different idea of what to do than the front end, like 2 people in a donkey costume.

Early versions of Autosteer were not great with intersections that don't have lane lines continuing through the middle of intersections, especially if they are big intersections.

Now Autosteer works pretty well with most intersections even when there are no lane lines to lead it through but as you demonstrated in your case, it's still not perfect.

Autosteer has been unveiled since 2014 or only 7 years so far, so you might want to give it some more time to get better even though some enthusiasts would portrait that the progress is so much improved in leaps and bounds and Self Driving is here soon with the advance of Pure Vision.
 
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Clear lane lines are key; the car tries to stay in the middle of the lane. Next time you are near the same location, slow down & look closely to see what/where lane lines go, and you will probably understand why the car did what it did. That way you'll be mentally prepared when you experience a similar road/intersection elsewhere.
 
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Clear lane lines are key; the car tries to stay in the middle of the lane. Next time you are near the same location, slow down & look closely to see what/where lane lines go, and you will probably understand why the car did what it did. That way you'll be mentally prepared when you experience a similar road/intersection elsewhere.
Agreed, and thanks to the OP for posting this experience: it's a good word to the wise. I love AP and use it whenever I can, but we have to be careful with it.

I've never had it do anything surprising like the incident that started this thread, but I've also only had my Tesla since June. The worst thing that has happened to me is momentarily forgetting I'm NOT in AP and having the car start to drift out of the lane: but that's what you call user error. :)
 
The car dropping out of Auto steer too easily has been the terror of the torque sensing blue nag. Keep an eye on the little blue steering wheel! It's one of the many things that took me weeks in getting good at using NOA.
Yes. I wish that it would just require contact with the wheel, not slightly turning it. It has broken free several times, when I hit a rough spot in the road.

The way I wish Autopilot worked was that it would consider you attentive if either of the following happened: (1) driver has eyes on the road (shown by the cabin camera) or (2) hands on wheel (without torque). This would allow a driver to go hands free while watching the road (like Ford BlueCruise) or have a hand on the wheel. Perfect would be a setting that lets you choose one or both of these.