Punished by Autosteer for no reason!

[VanFriscia]

Sometimes the torque for me is not enough; so much that I ended up taking it off autopilot. It seems worse than what I’m used to lately.

This has happened to me on a few occasions as well, though admittedly it's been a while since the last occurrence. It definitely IS frustrating when it does happen though. It's like no amount of torque will satisfy the requirement.

It sounds like the new FSD beta uses the front camera to detect eyes on the road, and that's glorious news. While I think the current system is mostly sufficient for highway driving, hands on the wheel during turns for city driving is probably NOT a great solution.

 

[astrorob]

never hit 90. was using cruise control the whole time. traffic was light on I5 (saturday morning) and we never hit a situation we needed to get out of. but i get your point.

i think it's not so much that i "ignored" any warnings - i tried to steer out of all of them - but that after 10 or 15 warnings or so it must just give up and assumes you don't have your hands on the wheel.

anyway i guess the volume control is my new best friend.

 

[CyberGus]

... it's not hard to hit 90 MPH without realizing it with AP engaged. If you do, instant AP jail, no warning.

Is that "90 MPH" hard-coded? Because in TX that's not even considered speeding :-/

 

[rxlawdude]

i think it's not so much that i "ignored" any warnings - i tried to steer out of all of them - but that after 10 or 15 warnings or so it must just give up and assumes you don't have your hands on the wheel.

Yeah. So did you dismiss the warnings by actually torquing the wheel rather than just having your hands on the wheel? Your description above suggests you did not.

And it's after THREE warnings that it assumes you don't have your hands on the wheel: initial small dialog box, then flashing blue screen, then audible warning that counts as a strike. Three strikes and AP shuts off till the car is restarted.

 

[gearchruncher]

Is that "90 MPH" hard-coded? Because in TX that's not even considered speeding :-/

Yes, it's hard coded.
As you can see, 85 is the speed limit, so 90 is illegal, and self driving will never break the law, so this never needs to be updated. (/s)

 

[astrorob]

Yeah. So did you dismiss the warnings by actually torquing the wheel rather than just having your hands on the wheel? Your description above suggests you did not.

And it's after THREE warnings that it assumes you don't have your hands on the wheel: initial small dialog box, then flashing blue screen, then audible warning that counts as a strike. Three strikes and AP shuts off till the car is restarted.

yes i did try to steer my way out of each warning. i guess i never did enough to cancel the last one from progressing to the last stage. but the damn thing was warning and warning and warning for 2 hours and i had to cancel all of them.

on such straight, long highways it's hard (at least for me) to naturally steer enough to prevent this warning. i never have any trouble in the city when the lane width is always changing and there are turns, etc. the car wanders enough in the lane that i *want* to fix it. but here the "natural" amount of steering input that i was giving was apparently not enough.

anyway i still feel that they need a better driver attention system for highway driving.

 

[sperkin]

You can also tap down on the right stick like putting it into D or you can change the volume of your music to let AP know you're still there. You don't need torque on the wheel if you're not comfortable.

 

[astrorob]

You can also tap down on the right stick like putting it into D or you can change the volume of your music to let AP know you're still there. You don't need torque on the wheel if you're not comfortable.

right, i didn't know this. i guess it must be in the manual though. until this trip most of my auto steer driving had been on large city streets and i never had a problem there.

 

[Ruffles]

My experience is that if I rest my hands in my lap and hold the wheel at the 7, 6, or 5 o'clock position, the torque on the wheel is not enough and I get prompts. If I rest my left arm on the door and hold the wheel at the 9 or 10 o'clock position, its nice and comfortable and I can go hours without any prompts.

 

[rxlawdude]

right, i didn't know this. i guess it must be in the manual though. until this trip most of my auto steer driving had been on large city streets and i never had a problem there.

Or, as others mentioned, tweak the volume of your sound system on the left scroll wheel.

 

[gearchruncher]

We do all have to admit, it's pretty weird that we have to change the volume on our stereo, the speed of our cruise control, make a turn signal flash, apply turning force to the wheel, or other things we would rather not do and we just dismiss that as normal and OK. They are all clearly hacks that would never be designed in any kind of purposeful, forward thinking UI design.

What I don't understand is why Tesla doesn't ignore the speed/volume command while the alert warning is up. Why can't I just click the wheel one notch and have it do nothing but know I am there?

 

[arnolddeleon]

A few more thoughts after running some experiments today:

I think a lot of people think that they need to jerk the wheel around to demonstrate torque to the car. That's not the case. That way I do it is slowly and gently push or pull the wheel in one direction as if I'm trying to change the lane positioning. You should start feeling the resistance in the wheel, stop there. That should be enough. There is no rush, the car gives you plenty of time from the blue flashing to satisfy the request. I intentionally floated my hands over the wheel (my natural resting spot satisfies the the AP check the vast majority of the time) to trigger the warning and tested how much pressure it took to clear the alert, it really wasn't much. The car did not rock because I was just gently moving in one direction. I'm not even sure the car moved laterally at all. Imagine the force an orange on side of the steering will apply.

I also tested trying to wiggle the wheel while in Autosteer at freeway speeds without disengaging it. It is possible and I didn't like the sensation. I don't know if those wiggles were sufficient to satisfy hands on wheel, but if they were not, I can see how the OP was doing that, not enjoying it, and not getting the alert to go away.

Two hands resting on the wheel, counterintuitively, can be problematic for detection. If you are resting both hands, they will tend to counter balance each other.

It is also possible that the OP has a car that needs calibration/adjustment. We have a 3 and Y so sample size two says they behave more or less the same. I've read posts from people that have had adjustments made.

Another possible variable that I didn't test is the steering mode. I drive in "standard". I don't know if "comfort" or "sport" behave differently (i.e. change the amount of torque required to satisfy the detector)

I've driven to and from Southern CA on Interstate 5 and Highway 101 plenty of times. We've also taken road trips to AZ and Nevada so plenty of experience with specifically Navigate on Autopilot at high speeds and straight roads (101 isn't too straight). Just confirming again that it is possible.

For comparison, it took me several weeks to master the subtleties of one pedal driving. It was tough early on, I didn't think I would get it but I did. The way I've retrained myself works perfectly for cars with and without regen (which is good because sometimes the Tesla is forced to limit regen). I suspect mastering the amount of inputs to the wheel is similar to mastering how to modulate your foot on the accelerator.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

When an extra need for speed presents itself when already doing "70's to 80's", it's not hard to hit 90 MPH without realizing it with AP engaged. If you do, instant AP jail, no warning.

Been there, done that. Be sure to disengage AP first if approaching 90.

This happened to me once. Instead of driving over a hundred more miles manually, I pulled over at the next off ramp, put the car in park, back in drive and then got back on the interstate. Autopilot worked fine for the rest of the trip.

 

[ghawkjr]

I'm not sure if this will work on the Model 3 as it does on my S, but when I'm banned from FSD "until the end of the trip" I can pull off to the side, put it in Park, then start again. If you're on a highway with stoplights, you need not waste the 15 seconds. Just wait until the next stoplight, or until your favorite Interstate becomes a parking lot.

I've been "punished" several times with the three strikes because I was WATCHING THE ROAD. My speed is set, and I don't need to be checking oil pressure, etc., so I watch the road. I don't know how I missed the audible warning, but even if it's partly my fault, it's still annoying to be cut off from FSD.

 

[gearchruncher]

Perhaps you've never driven on those roads, but even the police regularly drive above 90 as does the rest of traffic. Seems cold and harsh to call it illegal when everyone is doing it, including the police.

Well, it is illegal by the words of the law and that is all that matters. But I did put a sarcasm tag in there too. We could get into a very interesting discussion in 2021 about what is legal and what is not if we say that because the cops did it, it is now legal...

I was referring to a previous discussion on this board where we talked about what a world of mixed autonomous and human drivers would be like, where the autonomous ones always followed the law to the letter, while humans were more fluid. The consensus here was that would be a utopia and there was nothing to worry about, and everyone was totally cool with it driving slower than other cars because they could just relax as it drove, Yet we already have a limit in the car higher than any legal speed limit in the USA and we don't like it. I still think the intermediate time when 5%-75% of cars are autonomous will lead to some very interesting situations.

One interesting side note is that many cruise control systems are limited to 90 MPH, no matter how simple/complex they are. It seems to almost be a standard for US centric cars.

 

[astrorob]

I also tested trying to wiggle the wheel while in Autosteer at freeway speeds without disengaging it. It is possible and I didn't like the sensation. I don't know if those wiggles were sufficient to satisfy hands on wheel, but if they were not, I can see how the OP was doing that, not enjoying it, and not getting the alert to go away.

Two hands resting on the wheel, counterintuitively, can be problematic for detection. If you are resting both hands, they will tend to counter balance each other.

It is also possible that the OP has a car that needs calibration/adjustment. We have a 3 and Y so sample size two says they behave more or less the same. I've read posts from people that have had adjustments made.

maybe it needs calibration. i guess my point is, and everyone knows this, the amount of turning force needed to make a car change lanes at 80mph is really, really low. for whatever reason. i feel that putting enough input in to satisfy the system would result in the car wandering in the lane. i certainly was not able to prevent the warning and was continuously reacting to it rather than preventing it. the car drives straight as an arrow and there's just no reason to be steering the car meaningfully, at least at the speed and wind conditions i was in.

For comparison, it took me several weeks to master the subtleties of one pedal driving. It was tough early on, I didn't think I would get it but I did. The way I've retrained myself works perfectly for cars with and without regen (which is good because sometimes the Tesla is forced to limit regen). I suspect mastering the amount of inputs to the wheel is similar to mastering how to modulate your foot on the accelerator.

i had a bolt before the M3 and i took to the one-pedal thing like water. probably because it's exactly like Autopia at Disneyland. i was worried that the M3 would not work the same but thankfully it does. and somehow i have zero confusion when switching to my plug-in prius which does not have this mode.

 

[rxlawdude]

They are all clearly hacks that would never be designed in any kind of purposeful, forward thinking UI design.

Your ridiculous assertions continue. You really should consider a mach-E.

 

[gearchruncher]

Your ridiculous assertions continue. You really should consider a mach-E.

Please, tell me, if you were designing a "are you there and are your hands on the wheel" system from scratch, you would design in "change the volume" as the primary detector?

Oh wait, no, they did torque, requiring you to *fight* the system in a way that doesn't work well for many of your customers, makes them uncomfortable, and requires training. Sounds right and well designed. And all of that worked so well they ended up with .. checks notes.... changing the volume as a backup. If it was designed from the beginning to use volume/speed as a backup, why did that feature take years for them to add and was never in release notes? Why does a well designed system need a backup that everyone on the internet tells people to use as better than the main system?

Why are you telling me to go to a Mach-E if the Tesla system is not ridiculous?

Seriously, as a law professor, I'd expect your arguments to be better considered, but I'd also expect you to go after the argument not the person. What is your data that the Tesla hands on wheel system was designed by someone with a serious focus on UI design?

 

[rxlawdude]

Please, tell me, if you were designing a "are you there and are your hands on the wheel" system from scratch, you would design in "change the volume" as the primary detector?

Seriously, as a law professor, I'd expect your arguments to be better considered, but I'd also expect you to go after the argument not the person. What is your data that the Tesla hands on wheel system was designed by someone with a serious focus on UI design?

As a law professor, I give you an A for zealotry and an F for content.

 

[gearchruncher]

As a law professor, I give you an A for zealotry and an F for content.

Thanks for explaining how my argument was a "ridiculous assertion" and focusing on the content not the messenger.

To upgrade your content, would you like to explain why the Tesla driver presence system is well designed in your opinion?