Corrective steering ruining everything

[warraqeen]

I want to say first that I don’t use autopilot, self-driving or (after a few bad experiences) adaptive cruise control. So I’m not talking about those things. I’ve also turned off as many forms of driver assistance as I can (though of course several turn themselves back on every drive cycle).

I don’t often use my S (bought new in August) for an hour without the car taking control for a moment which I really hate. Road departure detected, corrective steering applied is the most common one. Though I do sometimes get an alarm and a tug on the steering without seeing a message (so far as I can tell, though it’s not always convenient to look). The car also thinks it’s saved me from hitting pedestrians and other cars from time to time, but at least in those cases there ARE actually cars and pedestrians, though I’ve never felt there was any danger. But at least one could argue the point, whereas with the road departure alarms, I’ve never felt I was in an unusual road position; certainly never in danger of driving off the edge. I suppose you could make a case that overtaking involves driving on the wrong side of the road, so maybe it’s a little more justified that the corrective steering often kicks in, but don’t most Tesla owners manage to overtake others without intervention from the vehicle?

I hate this behaviour and so do my passengers. I’m always waiting for the car to grab the wheel and I’ve gone from (I would say) a careful driver to a downright timid one. Whenever I read about Teslas being fast or handling well, I always wonder what other people do about the alarms that sound if you drive with any enthusiasm. Do they not bother other people? No one in reviews ever seems to mention them. Or am I unique in just wanting to be able drive the car without loud beeping and a brief disagreement over who’s in control. I’d love a version of the software where you could turn off every single driver-assistance feature and just operate the vehicle like a traditional car, i.e. if I steer it into a ditch, then that’s my fault and I’d gladly sign something to that effect if it meant I could keep control of the vehicle at all times.

How do others deal with this issue? I’ve also had quite a number of faults and build problems with mine from new (which I think might be unusual), and some truly dreadful customer support, particularly around the buying process, and I have to say I was a much, much bigger Tesla fan before I got my hands on one. I really mean this unsarcastically: why does everyone else but me seem to love their cars?

 

[DerbyDave]

If you change lanes or try to pass someone without signalling your intentions by using the turn signal, the car will try to correct your steering to keep you in your lane.

 

[kavyboy]

I use my turn signals and otherwise stay in my lane. I don't think I've ever had corrective steering engaged.

 

[DerbyDave]

If you have disabled all of the features, perhaps your user profile is corrupt. Try creating a new user profile, ,and save your current settings. Check to see if that user profile has every driver assist feature you want disabled correct. Try driving using that profile to see if you get the results you want. If you save your current settings after creating a new driver profile, I don't think you will need to add that much added customization. Anyway, maybe you can determine if the profile corruption is the issue. If that isn't it, likely a software issue you can't easily correct. Your car is under warranty, so you can open a service ticket using the app to fix this if the new profile doesn't work. I don't think you would need to take the car in, as there is not much the service center can do that Tesla can't do over the air for this issue, or perhaps by dispatching mobile service.

 

[warraqeen]

If you have disabled all of the features, perhaps your user profile is corrupt. Try creating a new user profile, ,and save your current settings. Check to see if that user profile has every driver assist feature you want disabled correct. Try driving using that profile to see if you get the results you want. If you save your current settings after creating a new driver profile, I don't think you will need to add that much added customization. Anyway, maybe you can determine if the profile corruption is the issue. If that isn't it, likely a software issue you can't easily correct. Your car is under warranty, so you can open a service ticket using the app to fix this if the new profile doesn't work. I don't think you would need to take the car in, as there is not much the service center can do that Tesla can't do over the air for this issue, or perhaps by dispatching mobile service.

Wow, thanks for that. I’ve also never been able to unlock the car just by walking up to it with the key, plus auto present door handles doesn’t work. The service centre have been puzzled by that, but perhaps a corrupted driver profile could explain both. Will try that tomorrow. Thanks!

 

[warraqeen]

If you change lanes or try to pass someone without signalling your intentions by using the turn signal, the car will try to correct your steering to keep you in your lane.

Thanks for the reminder. I’m pretty well trained to indicate when changing lanes, with the possible exception of being on a completely empty road. The thing is, when I’ve been able to read a message following an alarm it usually mentions “road departure” not “lane departure”.

 

[warraqeen]

Thanks for the comments!

I’d be really interested to know how often users of this forum get alarms sounding in their cars. And of those, how many were useful. As you can imagine, an alarm going off convinces my passengers (and me, really) that something serious is happening, so I don’t think they‘re appropriate as reminders. They seem like something best reserved for emergencies - particularly as they give you a shot of adrenaline and really break your concentration. I’ve yet to have any sort of genuine emergency with my S, but I’ve had a ton of alarms. Or put another way, the only potential emergencies I’ve had are *because* of the alarms and the corrective steering being applied in the middle of overtaking. (And my previous driving career has been more or less without incident for more than three decades, including a lot of city driving, so I like to think I’m a pretty sensible driver. I’m rarely in a rush and always concerned about alarming my passengers.)

At a wild guess, I’d say I’ve had maybe 50 alarms in the last 5,000 miles and perhaps one of them might have been useful if I hadn’t been paying attention. But last week, for instance, I had two alarms while driving along a straight two-lane road with no other cars present. I was well under the speed limit on a dry, clear day and I was driving straight rather than at an angle to the edge of the road. But I got two road departure warnings within a minute of each other and have no clue why. And this is not a rare occurrence. Do other Tesla owners just ignore these? Or do you not experience them? I’d really love to know as it could be key to whether I try to get this car fixed or just try to sell it (while disclosing the problems, of course). Thanks!

 

[kavyboy]

It looks like you're in the UK, and the responses on this thread are from the USA. I wonder if you're getting warnings due to the narrowness of the roads in the US versus the UK. It wouldn't matter on the motorways, but other roads might. (I'm assuming that UK roads are similar to the New Zealand roads I'm familiar with, and not like the over-wide US roads the Tesla cars were programmed on.)
I've literally never felt corrective steering or heard an alarm - just the wheel vibration occasionally - since 2015.
I've haunted these forums for years, and your complaint isn't one I remember reading.
PS: Our friends in NZ had a new car, non-Tesla, with collision and lane-departure warnings. Driving around Wellington, the alarms drove them crazy.

 

[warraqeen]

It looks like you're in the UK, and the responses on this thread are from the USA. I wonder if you're getting warnings due to the narrowness of the roads in the US versus the UK. It wouldn't matter on the motorways, but other roads might. (I'm assuming that UK roads are similar to the New Zealand roads I'm familiar with, and not like the over-wide US roads the Tesla cars were programmed on.)
I've literally never felt corrective steering or heard an alarm - just the wheel vibration occasionally - since 2015.
I've haunted these forums for years, and your complaint isn't one I remember reading.
PS: Our friends in NZ had a new car, non-Tesla, with collision and lane-departure warnings. Driving around Wellington, the alarms drove them crazy.

Thanks so much for that! This is exactly the kind of info that I’m desperate for. Until I can understand whether the problems I’m complaining about are things that everyone else is fine with - or whether they’re things no one else is experiencing - then I can’t really plot my next move.

I am indeed in the UK and I’m in the north of Scotland in a rural area where there are a lot of narrow roads - narrower than what I’ve typically driven on in the US. So perhaps that accounts for some of my difficulties. But I’ve also never read in a review by a Brit that Teslas don’t do well here. And when I get alarms during overtaking, that’s always on wider roads (or I wouldn’t be overtaking), more like the size of a typical two-lane highway in the States, I’d say. You surely must have driven on plenty of those, so if you’ve never had an alarm then it’s more evidence that the fault must lie with my car not Teslas in general. I reckon I must just have been really unlucky with my particular Model S, but my local Service Centre are so guarded on the subject it’s been difficult to be sure. Anyway, thanks again!

 

[BigNick]

Camera and/or radar calibration needed, possibly?

 

[warraqeen]

Camera and/or radar calibration needed, possibly?

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve got it booked into the Service Centre for next week so I’ll ask them to look into that. Can I ask how often you get alarms when driving? And does it happen more on narrow roads?

 

[warraqeen]

If you have disabled all of the features, perhaps your user profile is corrupt. Try creating a new user profile, ,and save your current settings. Check to see if that user profile has every driver assist feature you want disabled correct. Try driving using that profile to see if you get the results you want. If you save your current settings after creating a new driver profile, I don't think you will need to add that much added customization. Anyway, maybe you can determine if the profile corruption is the issue. If that isn't it, likely a software issue you can't easily correct. Your car is under warranty, so you can open a service ticket using the app to fix this if the new profile doesn't work. I don't think you would need to take the car in, as there is not much the service center can do that Tesla can't do over the air for this issue, or perhaps by dispatching mobile service.

No luck with the driver profile, but it seemed like a great idea, thanks. I deleted the profile associated with my keyfob and created a new one. I was at least hoping it might fix my inability to get the car to unlock and auto-present handles just by walking up to it, but alas, I still need to double-click. It also hasn’t allowed me to disable more features. I was hoping to permanently turn off forward collision warnings and lane departure warnings, but to be honest they do give a pop-up message that says they’ll turn themselves back on after each drive cycle, so perhaps I was hoping for too much. Then again, from what I can tell most people don’t *need* them to be turned off in order to enjoy driving the car. As I mentioned in a different comment, I’ve got the car booked into the local Service Centre for next week so perhaps they’ll find something.

Can I ask if you get alarms when you’re driving? And does it happen more often on narrow roads?

 

[BigNick]

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve got it booked into the Service Centre for next week so I’ll ask them to look into that. Can I ask how often you get alarms when driving? And does it happen more on narrow roads?

I'm on AP1, so I only have the single camera at the top-center of the windshield, and the radar in the grille. But with the multitude of cameras on AP2+, I figured one of them may be out of calibration causing the car to "think" it is being driven off the road when in fact it is not.

 

[cypho]

No luck with the driver profile, but it seemed like a great idea, thanks. I deleted the profile associated with my keyfob and created a new one. I was at least hoping it might fix my inability to get the car to unlock and auto-present handles just by walking up to it, but alas, I still need to double-click. It also hasn’t allowed me to disable more features. I was hoping to permanently turn off forward collision warnings and lane departure warnings, but to be honest they do give a pop-up message that says they’ll turn themselves back on after each drive cycle, so perhaps I was hoping for too much. Then again, from what I can tell most people don’t *need* them to be turned off in order to enjoy driving the car. As I mentioned in a different comment, I’ve got the car booked into the local Service Centre for next week so perhaps they’ll find something.

Can I ask if you get alarms when you’re driving? And does it happen more often on narrow roads?

Since you don't use any of the autopilot features, you could put a small piece of black tape over the front camera. That would very effectively deactivate all autopilot features.

 

[warraqeen]

Since you don't use any of the autopilot features, you could put a small piece of black tape over the front camera. That would very effectively deactivate all autopilot features.

Oh, that’s excellent! If that works, I could drive the car any way I want, without worrying about upsetting the software. I could imagine owning a Tesla might be pretty good fun under those circumstances!

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but can I ask if you get many alarms and do they happen more on narrow roads?

 

[DerbyDave]

You will get constant errors on both screens if you tape over the front cameras. They also provide information for the rain sensing wipers and auto dimming headlights, among other safety features.

 

[cypho]

I live in a city - rather than narrow roads, my roads are mostly 2-6 lanes in each direction (4-12 lanes total).

However, my car does like to fight me sometimes.

The one that comes up the most is when I turn right and then immediately need to turn left at the next intersection on a multi-lane road. The maneuver requires merging multiple times in quick succession. I think car wants me to deactivate the turn signal wait a bit and then reactivate the turn signal again before the next lane change instead of just leaving the turn signal on through the entire maneuver.

It also fights me when turning onto a new road when one or both roads are curving at the intersection. It seems to not understand what is going on and thinks I am just randomly veering off the road instead taking a turn. Even with the turn signal on it freaks out.

I do not find either error particularly bothersome, but I do wish there was a way to lower the volume of the alert. I have not attempted to disable any of the alarms.

 

[warraqeen]

I live in a city - rather than narrow roads, my roads are mostly 2-6 lanes in each direction (4-12 lanes total).

However, my car does like to fight me sometimes.

The one that comes up the most is when I turn right and then immediately need to turn left at the next intersection on a multi-lane road. The maneuver requires merging multiple times in quick succession. I think car wants me to deactivate the turn signal wait a bit and then reactivate the turn signal again before the next lane change instead of just leaving the turn signal on through the entire maneuver.

It also fights me when turning onto a new road when one or both roads are curving at the intersection. It seems to not understand what is going on and thinks I am just randomly veering off the road instead taking a turn. Even with the turn signal on it freaks out.

I do not find either error particularly bothersome, but I do wish there was a way to lower the volume of the alert. I have not attempted to disable any of the alarms.

Thanks so much for the info! I was beginning to think that no one else’s car threw alarms at them, but I think your experience goes in the “The car sometimes beeps and wriggles; don’t much care” column rather than the “Never beeps and wriggles” column. Not doubting your word for a second, but I think I’m just a lot more highly strun,g and alarms and shimmies freak me out - especially when I’m overtaking. When the steering stops obeying me, even for a second, it gives me flashbacks to a couple of car crashes from the early days of my misspent youth. After 50 alarms or so from my S I’m a nervous wreck. Even when the car’s behaving, I’m waiting for it to do something unexpected. But I suppose it’s possible that the car’s not the problem; perhaps I’ve just become old and I want my horseless buggies the way they used to make them.

 

[Tiger]

I do not find either error particularly bothersome, but I do wish there was a way to lower the volume of the alert. I have not attempted to disable any of the alarms.

Joe mode lowers the volume, but as I have been using it ever since I got the car, I'm afraid to even think how loud the jingles would be without joe mode

At least they should be directed to driver ears only and acoustically cancelled elsewhere as it's not like I need the jingles while sitting on the backseat.

 

[Kerry Blue]

Approximately 1000 miles 2021 M3P. Driven very enthusiastically on canyon roads, many overtakes, not one alarm.