My theory on truck lust...

[u00mem9]

I read discussion of "truck lust" constantly on this forum. So far I have felt really lucky that I have never suffered from this problem. There are many times I feel like the Tesla holds the center of the lane, despite a truck being at the edge or even beyond the edge of its lane, but I never feel the car steer toward the truck.

However, with all the recent discussion of AP nag behavior and holding the wheel more tightly, I have started to experiment more with my grip, or lack thereof.

I normally hold the wheel palm up at the bottom, with my hand on my lap. I let the wheel pass through my fingers without any resistance and AP steering is really impressive. When I try to hang onto the wheel, such that my fingers or hand are moved by the wheel, AP steering becomes a bit worse, with more overshoot and more mistakes. Since my resistance is less consistent, this makes sense to me.

What I have found now, is that when I go by a truck, and want to encourage AP to stay an extra 6" away, I get a resistance in the direction towards the truck as AP tries to stay centered in the lane. It seems like the car is trying to drive into the truck, but it's really just trying to stay centered and now has to fight my inputs to do so. So, my theory is that truck lust is really just the AP response to drivers getting nervous near trucks and beginning to try to drive further away, which causes the car to steer more toward the truck.

Thoughts?

 

[RDoc]

I always grip the wheel and let my hand and wrist move with it. When our car has lunged for a truck, the car definitely moved to the right and the display showed the car icon moving to the right of the lane.

 

[Nietschy]

I have been driving with collision detect on 7.1 for quite a few k miles.
I have been observing that with collision detect on the car tried to steer into the truck without me steering away from it, while overtaking the truck. I was basically just closely observing and not holding the wheel at all. If I was not reacting in a really short timeframe, my car would be totalled by autopilot now a few times already.
But with collision detect off, I never had this problem.
I am going ti try this with 8.0 and collision detect on now soon.

 

[rhumbliner]

I put 14,000 miles on my S90D this summer -- most of those with AP 7.1 in control -- and AP always edged closer to semi's. At first it was nerve wracking but I gradually came to accept that AP would never actually cross the lane divider and hit the semi. I typically kept my hands off the steering wheel and focused on the dash to watch my position within the lane so I'm confident making that statement.

I monitored whether or not I was locked onto a car in front of me and saw no difference, but I never considered factoring in Collision Detect. I wish I had heard about this sooner so I could have tried this with CD off.

 

[Max*]

So, my theory is that truck lust is really just the AP response to drivers getting nervous near trucks and beginning to try to drive further away, which causes the car to steer more toward the truck.

I don't agree. If that were the case, you'd keep the car in lane.

You can force AP to drive further away into a different lane, without disengaging AP by applying subtle pressure to the wheel.

 

[calisnow]

I like your theory OP except I witnessed truck lust in my own car multiple times (not on 8.0 - it has not done this on 8.0 at all yet) in one build of 7.1 - and it was definitely not what you described.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

The only problem with that theory is I've had it happen when I was really light about holding the wheel. Before I even knew about truck lust.

I still haven't been able to test my theory.

My theory is a combination of factors.

The car loses sight of the line because the truck obscures it.
The car goes towards the truck when it tries to find the line
The blind spot monitoring system doesn't detect the truck when it happens.
It happens WAY more right after a major because update because the update clears the AP tile cache from the SD card.

Not a single element of my theory has been proven true/false.