Car will not allow reengagement of Autosteer until parked if user ignores repeated warnings

[4SUPER9]

Sorry to start a another new thread out of many regarding v8.0, but I thought that this could be deserving of it's own discussion.

The title says it all: per the bullet point in Elon's blog "Car will not allow reengagement of Autosteer until parked if user ignores repeated warnings." I would like to know more about this. From what I have read from a news briefing, the alert will be much more noticeable, with a flashing white outline around the IC. Good. I'm all for that. So, when does this come up, and how many times will this new nag occur before shutting down AP entirely? Is this the first nag, or the second or third?

Personally, I believe that we should always be alert and ready to take over. What if I am relaxing, watching the road, and a nag comes up. I make sure the car know I am there and in control, relax for a bit, only to get a nag several minutes later. On the third occasion, am I out? Or, is it for the more serious nags only?

I believe more information might have been given at the actual press conference, but I am not privy to that. Perhaps somebody has more details, or perhaps we just have to wait a few weeks to find out ourselves.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Here is this bit from

Transcript: Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update [Part 2]

"There also a large number of important improvements. Something I think will be quite significant is that if the user ignores repeated warning to keep their hands on the wheel, if it ignores the audible alarm more than 3 times in an hour then the driver will have to park and restart in order to enable Autosteer."

I'm assuming that I have to ignore it, but what counts as ignoring? If I had a wife and she kept having to nag me she would accuse me of ignoring her. Even if I always did what she wanted on the first nag. The fact that she had to nag me would annoy her.

Thankfully I live in Seattle so going above 8mph would be a rare occasion anyways. It won't nag till above 8mph.

 

[thecloud]

One thing that I find annoying about the current AP implementation is the loud "ding-dong" tone when I deactivate it. Several times I've had sleepy passengers in the car on a road trip, and when I went to manually switch autopilot off in preparation for taking a freeway exit or just wanting to take back control, the loud tones woke them up and had them asking, "what was that noise? is anything wrong?"

A flashing outline around the IC instead of beeping when manually deactivating AP would be preferable.

 

[4SUPER9]

Here is this bit from

Transcript: Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update [Part 2]

"There also a large number of important improvements. Something I think will be quite significant is that if the user ignores repeated warning to keep their hands on the wheel, if it ignores the audible alarm more than 3 times in an hour then the driver will have to park and restart in order to enable Autosteer."

I'm assuming that I have to ignore it, but what counts as ignoring? If I had a wife and she kept having to nag me she would accuse me of ignoring her. Even if I always did what she wanted on the first nag. The fact that she had to nag me would annoy her.

Thankfully I live in Seattle so going above 8mph would be a rare occasion anyways. It won't nag till above 8mph.

I think you are correct. A driver would have to repeatedly (3x) ignore the warnings. Therefore, a driver can get an unlimited numbers warnings, and as long as he or she addresses them, autopilot should not shut down completely. So, I still would like to know what defines ignore. Is it the second warning that triggers it? Hmmm

 

[Az_Rael]

Full Elon quote below. The last paragraph is the interesting bit.

There also a large number of important improvements. Something I think will be quite significant is that if the user ignores repeated warning to keep their hands on the wheel, if it ignores the audible alarm more than 3 times in an hour then the driver will have to park and restart in order to enable Autosteer.

One of the ironies that we’ve seen is counter intuitive and a lot of people on the consumer watchdog sites and in some cases on regulatory sites have assumed that Autopilot accidents are more likely for new users. In fact, it is the opposite. Autopilot accidents are far more likely for expert users. It is not the neophytes. It’s the experts.

They get very comfortable with it and repeatedly ignore the car’s warnings. It’s like a reflex. The car will beep at them, they tug the wheel, the car will beep at them, they tug the wheel, and it becomes an unconscious reflex action. So we will see half a dozen or more, sometimes as many as 10 warning in one hour continuously ignored by the driver. We really want to avoid that situation.

 

[4SUPER9]

So is Elon saying that the warning is to keep your hands on the wheel at all times, and by not doing so, ANY alert that comes up is by definition "ignoring" a warning?

 

[pchilds]

They get very comfortable with it and repeatedly ignore the car’s warnings. It’s like a reflex. The car will beep at them, they tug the wheel, the car will beep at them, they tug the wheel, and it becomes an unconscious reflex action. So we will see half a dozen or more, sometimes as many as 10 warning in one hour continuously ignored by the driver. We really want to avoid that situation.

Are you saying that tugging on the wheel to cancel the warning is ignoring the warning? I would think that ignoring the warning, would be to do nothing and get the next warning and after the next warning, the emergency flashers come on and the car slows and comes to a stop. Tugging the wheel is not ignoring the warning. The question is, is it three audible warnings an hour or three ignored audible warnings an hour? The only time I have ignored an audible warning, is when I wanted to see what would happen if I ignored them.

 

[Az_Rael]

Are you saying that tugging on the wheel to cancel the warning is ignoring the warning?

That is an Elon quote, but I think he is implying that.

 

[sorka]

I think you are correct. A driver would have to repeatedly (3x) ignore the warnings. Therefore, a driver can get an unlimited numbers warnings, and as long as he or she addresses them, autopilot should not shut down completely. So, I still would like to know what defines ignore. Is it the second warning that triggers it? Hmmm

This doesn't make sense though. By that criteria, the car would already decide to slow down and halt on the road with the emergency blinkers.

I suspect "ignoring" means that you put your hands on the wheel for just long enough silence the warning and then take your hands right back off. Didn't Teslas release something about users getting into the habit of nudging the wheel automatically to silence the "put hands back on wheel" message? If so, then 8.0 will change this by requiring you to keep your hands on the wheel most of the time which will pretty much ruin the feature. If this is the case I won't be upgrading.

 

[sorka]

So is Elon saying that the warning is to keep your hands on the wheel at all times, and by not doing so, ANY alert that comes up is by definition "ignoring" a warning?

Exactly!

 

[sorka]

Are you saying that tugging on the wheel to cancel the warning is ignoring the warning?

No but taking your hands right back off the wheel a second later would be ignoring the warning.

 

[andrewket]

There is the first visual warning (or reminder), and then the beep. If Elon is saying if car beeps at you 3 times in an hour AP is going to disable, I think I'm ok with that. If he is saying 3 visual warnings or reminders, then I'm going to be annoyed.

 

[Az_Rael]

Transcript: Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update [Part 7]

The limitation of only 3 audible warnings per hour [laughing] which is a fair number of warnings, but we see people engaging in reflex actions where they will hear a warning every 3 minutes and they will just touch the steering wheel but not actually pay attention to the road. I think that will be most effective in addressing the instinctive “I want the beep to go away” and touch the steering wheel, it will only allow people to do that 3 times in an hour.

We are also going to provide a visual indicator where the perimeter of the instrument panel lights up with an increasing pulse rate before giving you the audible warning. So that the visual warning is a reminder to pay attention to the road before you get the audible warning. I beta tested – true beta test, alpha test really – the software personally. I feel strongly in using myself and make sure it’s good before anyone else uses it. I used it on an alpha basis to confirm and it’s good.

I really feel like we’ve struck a great balance between both improving the safety and the usefulness – and the comfort level of the system, and it’s very difficult to do both.

Obviously, you could hamstring the whole system and therefore reduce the action on Autopilot, and it becomes useless and painful to use. Or you can loosen all those limits and have more accidents. So it’s a very difficult thing to both improve the safety and improve the utility of the system which I think we have achieved.

 

[Lex]

Whew, thank you for posting this. Here's the good stuff for me:

the visual warning is a reminder to pay attention to the road before you get the audible warning

This sounds absolutely fine with me. I don't plan to rack up any audible warnings then.

The current steering wheels don't seem to have touch sensors, but a torque sensor. That's a whole world of different. The system would be more than useless if you had to show your force constantly on the wheel.

 

[aaron0k]

The current steering wheels don't seem to have touch sensors, but a torque sensor. That's a whole world of different. The system would be more than useless if you had to show your force constantly on the wheel.

While I wouldn't do it myself, it seems the warning system can be easily defeated by simply hanging a weight (such as a bean bag) off the steering wheel; as it applies a slight torque.

 

[Model S M.D.]

@Az_Rael Thanks for the post.

I am totally fine with this too. Sounds like it will be a visual warning with a white border and increasing pulse rate before you get the audible warning. It shouldn't affect the way most of us drive and the utility of AP can still be preserved.

 

[4SUPER9]

@Az_Rael , yes, thank you. I read through some of the transcript and saw the stuff about visual alerts and beeps, but did not sync them together. So it does look like a visual warning followed by a audible and 3 of those audibles will turn off AP until a stop. I think I can live with that. I guess the big question I have then is how often the visual alert triggers.

 

[Hengist]

Personally, I get warnings rather often when my hands are on the wheel. The wheel is not nearly sensitive enough detecting that there is a live body attached to it. Some sort of capacitative sensor would be a good improvement. I think 8.0 is going to cause a lot of screaming from false alerting followed by inappropriately locking us out of autopilot.

 

[mikeash]

One thing that I find annoying about the current AP implementation is the loud "ding-dong" tone when I deactivate it. Several times I've had sleepy passengers in the car on a road trip, and when I went to manually switch autopilot off in preparation for taking a freeway exit or just wanting to take back control, the loud tones woke them up and had them asking, "what was that noise? is anything wrong?"

Totally agreed. The trouble is that the car can't tell whether you disengaged Autopilot on purpose or whether you just bumped the stalk by accident. A loud disengagement sound is a safety feature to ensure that you're aware that it has disengaged. If the car could reliably know when you did it on purpose then it could omit the sound, but I don't think it can ever know that. So while it would be great if we could make it be quiet, I don't think that'll happen.

 

[aaron0k]

I think Tesla should offer an Online Safety Training program, which is registered to the Car and Driver profile.

Upon completion of the course and sign-off of liability/waivers, etc - an "Advanced Auto Pilot" mode can be activated (OTA, Token PIN or Car Web Browser), which overrides or reduces some of these new risk controls being introduced.

Sort of like the Segway App; which requires you to go through several training exercises before it will unlock the speed limiter, etc...

I truly believe Tesla would like to treat Responsible Adults like Responsible Adults.. I hope they continue in that spirit.