Things my wife said about Navigate on Autopilot tonight

[Msjulie]

I sadly agree with your wife and my family as well.. they think AP is a neat trick until it's left on "too long". Even TACC is cause for surprise and anti-delight when it brakes for a car entering on the right 2 lanes over... Caution I get, but if AP is to really be safer it can't discourage it's use through discomfort or downright fear from folks in the car, driver and passenger alike

Flames to /dev/null <- how old is that!?

 

[ecarfan]

I’ve been using AP and now NOA in my 3 for the past year. In that time I have seen significant improvements. I use it almost all the time on freeways, even on short trips. It is not perfect, and I keep at least one hand on the steering wheel and my eyes on the road, but I find that in general it works remarkably well. My wonderful spouse is usually okay with it though sometimes it alarms her.

In my opinion, passengers may be less comfortable with AP than drivers who are experienced with it because the passenger of course has no way to control the car and AP can sometimes make steering corrections that feel different to the passenger than corrections made by a human driver. That does not necessarily mean such corrections are unsafe; they are just different.

Humans resist change, and sometimes their perception of the change leads them to conclude that the change is a problem even when in reality it is simply different from what they are used to.

Those who expect AP to drive exactly like they would drive in every situation are operating under a mistaken assumption. There are plenty of lousy human drivers on the road who drift around in their lane and even cross the lane line, don’t signal, speed, tailgate, cut across multiple lanes, change lanes into other cars, and drive while talking/eating/fixing their hair. Yet a strong majority of drivers will, when asked, tell you that their driving skills are “above average”. They are operating under a delusion.

AP when used properly on controlled-access roads (e.g. freeways) is likely safer than most human drivers.

I welcome reasoned criticism of my point of view on this issue.

 

[tvad]

My wife and I agree with your wife.

In fact, NOA is so jerky...particularly abrupt braking...that we both feel it a car following too closely might rear end us. Anyone who drives on So Cal freeways knows following too closely is common. It's common for some people to follow one car length at 70 mph. Our constant concern makes riding in the M3 on NOA a stressful experience. So, we've stopped using NOA all together.

Interestingly, I posted a new thread yesterday asking for NOA settings used by M3 owners on So Cal freeways in typical high volume traffic conditions. The thread has received no responses with NOA settings from M3 drivers in So Cal.
Settings for Navigation on Autopilot on Southern California Freeways

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

That does not necessarily mean such corrections are unsafe; they are just different.

Specifically, it is much less smooth. As someone else also mentioned, in the end my wife is used to me driving, and my metric when driving is to be smooth enough that I do not wake or alarm a sleeping passenger with brake or accelerator application, or steering inputs - except in an emergency of course. So she’s gotten used to that.

Sadly AP is nowhere near that level with brake and accelerator, and even the steering can be a bit odd at times.

There are plenty of lousy human drivers on the road who drift around in their lane and even cross the lane line, don’t signal, speed, tailgate, cut across multiple lanes, change lanes into other cars,

I have ridden with some of these people, and it is super unpleasant - definitely worse than Autopilot. But hoping that we don’t have to settle for making the lowest common denominator the bar for Autopilot.

The video above makes me worried that this is something they may never address, but we’ll see!

 

[OCR1]

I’m with your wife. I don’t like being a passenger in the car with AP engaged.

Perhaps if I was a passenger in a car with a really bad human driver I would feel differently.

 

[cleveland97]

My observation is that the "jerkiness" and "unexpected behavior" has actually gotten worse over the last several releases of software. Something is different for sure and a step backward. I'm on 2019.32.1 now, but the last few have been the same. WAY more phantom breaking than I had seen for many months, and I can't even find an excuse for it sometimes. And it seems to act VERY flaky around any exit ramps OR entrance ramps, no matter what lane i'm in or if there are any other cars around me, entering or leaving the highway.

I wonder if they have added a bunch of new stuff for Advanced Summon that is causing a lot of false-positives on freeway?

Anyway - I'm confident it will get better but progress seems VERY slow lately, and more steps back than steps forward.

 

[DrDabbles]

My fiancé said last weekend, "I'd never buy one of these. You couldn't make me. It's so jerky and it's always making noise. I hate it."

So I disabled all the collision alerts, I had already disabled all the lane departure alerts a month ago, and I disabled all of the parking sensor warnings too. She absolutely can not stand to be in the car with AP enabled. It makes her motion sick almost immediately, and she complained it's too "jerky" as well. I don't disagree with her, I'm just used to it and know when to expect it to fail or misbehave.

Adding hysteresis to the system would go a long way to making it more human-like. Just to smooth the output to the controls a bit.

 

[StellarRat]

I use NOA for auto passing feature, but I've never let it try to do a freeway switch. Basically, AP in all forms is just a stay on the same freeway feature for me. For what I'm using it for I have only one complaint and that is that AP is very hesitant about switching lanes in any kind of traffic.

 

[RayK]

Flames to /dev/null <- how old is that!?

I'd say circa mid to late '80s? My first exposure was on Usenet in rastb5 around 1993. "Plonk" is another good one.

Getting back to the topic...

My wife also does not like me using EAP or NoA when she's in the car. TACC I can get away with as it's similar to her Ridgeline. I've gotten used to the minor "phantom braking" events with EAP and keep my foot hovering over the go pedal but it is slightly embarrassing to have to explain to first-time Tesla passengers that the car sometime thinks shadows on the road are something to slow down for.

 

[PhaseWhite]

I think the problem is Autopilot does what it is designed to do, but the other drivers don't do what they are supposed to do. Humans know this, and drive for it, knowing what dodgy moves the other humans are likely to make, because they've seen crap driving before. Tesla don't get it.

This is the most difficult thing about self driving cars: they have to coexist with humans...

 

[PhaseWhite]

My fiancé said last weekend, "I'd never buy one of these. You couldn't make me. It's so jerky and it's always making noise. I hate it."

So I disabled all the collision alerts, I had already disabled all the lane departure alerts a month ago, and I disabled all of the parking sensor warnings too. She absolutely can not stand to be in the car with AP enabled. It makes her motion sick almost immediately, and she complained it's too "jerky" as well. I don't disagree with her, I'm just used to it and know when to expect it to fail or misbehave.

Adding hysteresis to the system would go a long way to making it more human-like. Just to smooth the output to the controls a bit.

I don’t think it’s that bad, in my family I feel just as much jerkiness when my wife drives. She doesn’t use TACC and tends to cycle in and out of regen.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

So I disabled all the collision alerts, I had already disabled all the lane departure alerts a month ago, and I disabled all of the parking sensor warnings too.

I don't think any of those are that bad, nor does my wife. The tones are generally quite pleasing. I just use LDA Assist, and that never beeps at me, unless I am deliberately being completely negligent. The only alarming tone that my wife doesn't like is the forward collision warning, which I have set to the most sensitive. But it rarely triggers and when it does it is always appropriate (though often overly conservative due to the sensitivity setting).

Compared to the Highlander (our other vehicle with these features), the warning tones are all quite appropriate. It's just the acceleration, and to a lesser extent, the steering, that are the problems.

I'm surprised at how many people are pointing to phantom braking here...that's not what my wife is complaining about at all - it's the general jerkiness and lack of appropriate accelerator control that she doesn't like. Phantom braking has never been a problem for me, really. It's just really bad at adjusting speed. Even in response to manual speed adjustments I make, it is pretty bad. It's actually pretty surprising - it probably adjusts to the new speed slower than it would if I were doing it myself. Yet, somehow, it manages to make it jerky.


Speaking of jerkiness: has anyone noticed in stop-and-go traffic how bad it is at coming to a complete stop? It is always accompanied by a little head jerk at the very end. Of all the things automation should be able to do - a proper perfect chauffeur stop every time is one of them...

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Andrej specifically discusses this in this video around 26:30. He says it makes your models incredibly complicated and also difficult to reproduce the models when you re-train in the future.

Thanks for the link. I finally got around to watching it. I got the impression from this video that for this fine tuning that this was more of a problem of version control/reproducibility. To be honest, I didn't really understand exactly what the issue was with this fine tuning as he explained it. I got the impression he was just saying that this fine tuning had to be done along with all the other fine tuning of the network. But maybe I just wasn't following!

Anyway, it's not clear to me exactly how they would train the neural net to be smooth. It's not even clear to me they are using the neural net to produce the accelerator/brake inputs directly. They do have a program to perform the driving task, which is separate from the neural net, I thought.

Anyway, it seems like if they are relying entirely on the NN to actually produce the responses, that sounds like a difficult problem, or at least it would require some sort of trick to get it to provide the correct desired responses. I have some understanding of how NNs work for identification of objects with machine vision, but using them in control systems (where you might want to have smoothing) seems like quite a different problem.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I don’t think it’s that bad, in my family I feel just as much jerkiness when my wife drives. She doesn’t use TACC and tends to cycle in and out of regen.

This seem like the solution to OP's problem. If he always drove spastically then there would be no difference when using TACC.
I have all the same complaints about TACC but I find Autosteer to be quite smooth unless I'm in the right hand lane near exits.

 

[Plastic6]

I absolutely love auto pilot and my X! There is the risk that excites me. I like waiting to see what is going to do you just never know what experience it will give you! As for my wife and kids they get sick in the car when using autopilot. My wife hates the car and it’s my favorite.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I absolutely love auto pilot and my X! There is the risk that excites me. I like waiting to see what is going to do you just never know what experience it will give you! As for my wife and kids they get sick in the car when using autopilot. My wife hates the car and it’s my favorite.

Based on your avatar, looks like Autopilot has given you some exciting experiences.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

If he always drove spastically then there would be [no] difference when using TACC.

Lots of good suggestions here.

 

[Dr. J]

that's not what my wife is complaining about at all - it's the general jerkiness and lack of appropriate accelerator control that she doesn't like. Phantom braking has never been a problem for me, really. It's just really bad at adjusting speed. Even in response to manual speed adjustments I make, it is pretty bad. It's actually pretty surprising - it probably adjusts to the new speed slower than it would if I were doing it myself. Yet, somehow, it manages to make it jerky.

+1
I hate, when passing, my car slows down as it tries to see what's in the other lane, then speeds up. So annoying, I can't put up with it. Maybe someday it will be great.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Chill mode is the passenger pacifier.

Pretty sure that will do absolutely nothing to change the behavior. The acceleration (actually jerk) issues here are far below the limits of chill mode. In other words, chill mode can be plenty jerky.

 

[Phlier]

I hate, when passing, my car slows down as it tries to see what's in the other lane, then speeds up.

That is my number one pet peeve with the system. It always slows down when entering the other lane. Annoying to both me and other drivers. Ah well, I'm sure they'll get it right.... eventually.