Truck Lust is a real thing...

[BerTX]

Surely someone experiencing truck lust has a dashcam? Can someone post a video?

Maybe this is something that indicates that it is more "perceived" than real? Surely someone would have posted a video if it was possible to get a video. Or, maybe it really isn't demonstrative unless there is a shot of the dash/steering wheel at the same time and the dashcam wouldn't show that.

There is a Youtube video supposedly showing truck lust, but that is not what I have experienced. It shows a dip towards the truck as the car is coming up behind -- mine is right as you are next to the truck.

 

[EinSV]

Maybe this is something that indicates that it is more "perceived" than real? Surely someone would have posted a video if it was possible to get a video. Or, maybe it really isn't demonstrative unless there is a shot of the dash/steering wheel at the same time and the dashcam wouldn't show that.

There is a Youtube video supposedly showing truck lust, but that is not what I have experienced. It shows a dip towards the truck as the car is coming up behind -- mine is right as you are next to the truck.

I don't see anything out of the ordinary on that video.

 

[BerTX]

I don't see anything out of the ordinary on that video.

Agree. I just put it up as an example of a bad example.

 

[Electroman]

Someone should film from a chase car behind or a car from front to see it clearly.

 

[Maximapolak]

I had a loaner P85D with AP1.0 and as soon as I got next to a truck with autopilot on, I experienced truck lust. As the car began pulling toward the truck I laughed loudly (alone in the car) and said "that's truck lust".

 

[Electroman]

My theory - it will not happen with a truck that has side skirts.

 

[NikeWings]

Someone should film from a chase car behind or a car from front to see it clearly.

That's exactly what I did last year (along with running the dash cam - back/front) to prove to myself that there was no truck lust. It was clearly my non-AP driving style to drive left of center, and not the car veering right. It was merely centering itself and upon viewing miles and miles of video I gained confidence.

That said both hands hit the wheeel when I pass trucks more so because they are frequent lane drifters and given their size/bulk it doesn't take much. If trucks had AP, we'd all be safer.

Edit: >18k AP miles

 

[davidc18]

Its real on 7.1. The kids are all trained to warn us to hold the wheel as we approach 16 wheelers. They quite enjoy it.

About 40k combined AP 1.0 miles

 

[Dax279]

I concur that it is real. It happened to me once in a trip through the mountains when the car start to pull towards the truck as I passed by. It's the only time I experienced this and was with my first version of 8.

 

[mrElbe]

Never experienced this in my over 100k km on the car. Today I passed many trucks on AP both on the left and on the right and she drove true and steady.

 

[Nietschy]

just a random wobble in Autosteer while passing a truck

In version 8 the car uses the ultrasonics to stay as far away from trucks as possible while passing them. This was implemented as a feature to gain confidence for the drivers in the system. (you can find it in the 8.0 release notes

• Car offsets in lane when overtaking a slower vehicle driving close to its lane edge

taken from: Tesla v8.0 software update is being pushed right now, all the details and full release notes

I still haven't seen video footage that clearly shows "truck lust" as distinct from normal lane movement.

Surely someone experiencing truck lust has a dashcam? Can someone post a video?

I don't see anything out of the ordinary on that video.

That video is from me. I can assure you, that this is nothing ordinary! Watch closely, at second 4 you can see that the car decides to steer right. If I did not steer away from it the car would have driven into the truck for sure. You hear immediately the disable sound of the AP because I did overrule it with my steering to the left. It looks quite unspectacular, but it feels really scary if you do not expect it!
I had a few occurences of this in the past before I got the dashcam. Luckily it has not happened in the last 1000 miles. So I keep fingers crossed that 8.0.2.52.22 fixed it for good!
I will post another video if it happens again...

 

[SomeJoe7777]

I still haven't seen video footage that clearly shows "truck lust" as distinct from normal lane movement.

Ask and ye shall receive.

On 10/1/2016, I was driving eastbound on Interstate 40 approximately 45 miles east of Albuquerque, NM, in the left lane, passing slower traffic in the right lane. Upon approaching a semi-trailer carrying passenger vehicles, autosteer drifted out of the left lane and towards the semi-trailer on 3 separate occasions. On each occasion, I turned the steering wheel to prevent the vehicle from leaving the left lane, resulting in autosteer disengagement (you will hear the autosteer disengagement tone 3 times). I reengaged autosteer after each disengagement (you will hear the autosteer engagement tone and see the blue steering wheel show in the instrument cluster.)

It's only my speculation, but this behavior seems to be the result of anomalous radar returns from this particular vehicle, perhaps combined with less than ideal camera conditions due to the angle of the sun (shining towards the autopilot camera).

Note that this incident was the only incident I had occur in 3 days of cross-country driving where I passed hundreds of semi-trailers. Thus, this behavior appears to be quite rare.

This footage was shot using a BlackVue DR650GW-2CH dashcam (forward view), and a GoPro Hero Session (instrument cluster). The car is correctly on Mountain Daylight Time (9:30AM), the dashcam is on Central Daylight Time (10:30AM).

The Tesla was running firmware 8.0 (2.36.108), the very first wide release of the 8.0 software, at the time.

 

[Nietschy]

Ask and ye shall receive.

This is a perfect video that shows how much the steering is! You can see the wheel in the reflection on the dash. The little knob in the wheel can be used to measure the way it moves. It is the same amount I felt in these occasions.

Interestingly you can also see clearly that AP looses the lane mark every time a short time before it tries to "correct".
I can be wrong, but I think in my occasions the lanes did not disappear, but surely I can be wrong about that.
Would be best if AP would not steer anywhere but straight ahead if it can not see clearly. Or at least do not steer into anything the camera should be able to see clearly, no matter what radar tells at the same time.

Lets just hope that Elons improvements for AP1 cars in the last update fixed this already!
I am still hopeful.

 

[TrafficEng]

Ask and ye shall receive.

Nice! Perfect video of the 'truck lust' phenomenon. I watched the video several times. Look carefully at the behavior of the blue lane lines on the dash camera while coming up behind the truck. The blue lane indicators disappear, and wobble, as the truck (and it's very strong shadow) come up to the point where the camera is using the lines to determine the line/lane position. For whatever reason, the lane/line detection gives up; the lane markers on the dash disappear; and the car simply drifts over as it no longer has lane indicators.

My speculation is the large longitudinal shadow from the truck has the most distinctive contrast at the shadow/road line, and no longer at the line/road. So the line detection algorithm gets confused as to where the lines are, and temporarily gives up. It then regains the lines when you recenter the car, and the event repeats three times.

So let's hope it is improved in 8.0.2.52.22, which downloaded into my car this afternoon. I'll give it a test tomorrow when I have some freeway driving during low sun conditions. But at the moment I'd vote for the strong longitudinal shadow of the long truck (compared to the shadow from a short car which it always ignores) being the culprit.

Thanks again for the great video of the event!

 

[EinSV]

Ask and ye shall receive.

On 10/1/2016, I was driving eastbound on Interstate 40 approximately 45 miles east of Albuquerque, NM, in the left lane, passing slower traffic in the right lane. Upon approaching a semi-trailer carrying passenger vehicles, autosteer drifted out of the left lane and towards the semi-trailer on 3 separate occasions. On each occasion, I turned the steering wheel to prevent the vehicle from leaving the left lane, resulting in autosteer disengagement (you will hear the autosteer disengagement tone 3 times). I reengaged autosteer after each disengagement (you will hear the autosteer engagement tone and see the blue steering wheel show in the instrument cluster.)

It's only my speculation, but this behavior seems to be the result of anomalous radar returns from this particular vehicle, perhaps combined with less than ideal camera conditions due to the angle of the sun (shining towards the autopilot camera).

Note that this incident was the only incident I had occur in 3 days of cross-country driving where I passed hundreds of semi-trailers. Thus, this behavior appears to be quite rare.

This footage was shot using a BlackVue DR650GW-2CH dashcam (forward view), and a GoPro Hero Session (instrument cluster). The car is correctly on Mountain Daylight Time (9:30AM), the dashcam is on Central Daylight Time (10:30AM).

The Tesla was running firmware 8.0 (2.36.108), the very first wide release of the 8.0 software, at the time.

There are three instances in the video that are attributed to truck lust. The second and third clearly appear to involve the phenomenon described by @NikeWings above, not truck lust:

That's exactly what I did last year (along with running the dash cam - back/front) to prove to myself that there was no truck lust. It was clearly my non-AP driving style to drive left of center, and not the car veering right. It was merely centering itself and upon viewing miles and miles of video I gained confidence. <snip>

By focusing on the blue lines you can see clearly that in each instance the car is moved to the far left side of the lane just before Autopilot is turned on. You can see this clearly if you stop the video just after Autopilot is engaged, at 0:17, 0:28 and 0:43.

After AP is engaged when the car is on the far left side of the lane, Autopilot moved the vehicle to the right, toward the center of the lane. Autopilot was then disengaged, presumably because it "felt" like the car was being moved to the right, which it was, because the vehicle was on the left side of the lane, not the center.

The first of the three is interesting. At 0:10 Autopilot loses the lane lines while passing the camper and doesn't pick them up again until 0:14, which is when AP is disengaged. I don't know why AP lost the lane lines but I don't think the video shows the car being "attracted" to a truck.

 

[BerTX]

OK, this is not AT ALL what I have experienced before. I think it turns out we are talking about two completely different issues.

What I have experienced occurs while right next to the truck, as you are passing. The car moves over toward the truck, and I feel in real peril since the truck is right there. I have never seen anything like what is shown in the video.

I think we have two different manifestations.

 

[Todd Burch]

Thanks for the videos. My car was one of the first AP1 cars built (build started Oct 1 2014) and I have never experienced that in my car.

This tells me it's clearly not a software thing that everyone experiences (because many like myself don't experience it) but more likely something specific to certain cars, like a calibration or alignment issue.

 

[Dax279]

Thanks for the videos. My car was one of the first AP1 cars built (build started Oct 1 2014) and I have never experienced that in my car.

This tells me it's clearly not a software thing that everyone experiences (because many like myself don't experience it) but more likely something specific to certain cars, like a calibration or alignment issue.

I can guarantee it was not a calibration or alignment issue that I felt. As I noted in my post it has only happened once and I have passed a large number of trucks with AP engaged. The car pulled towards the trucks trailer axle and I needed to take over when I experienced the phenomenon.

 

[Electroman]

This video is very interesting that it shows this problem in a different light that what I had imagined. The lust happens even before you reach the edge of the trailer. All along I was under the impression this happens while crossing the truck and especially when the front of the car is somewhere close to the middle of the truck.

But this is completely different.. and so my theory that this won't happen with trucks that side skirt is now out of the window !

 

[BerTX]

This video is very interesting that it shows this problem in a different light that what I had imagined. The lust happens even before you reach the edge of the trailer. All along I was under the impression this happens while crossing the truck and especially when the front of the car is somewhere close to the middle of the truck.

But this is completely different.. and so my theory that this won't happen with trucks that side skirt is now out of the window !

But I HAVE experienced what you thought truck lust was -- I still say there are two different phenomena.