I am a fan of Autopilot/Autosteer, but there are two issues that have been around forever that (a) I'm surprised haven't been addressed yet and (b) I consider potentially dangerous (well, at least for one of them). It is annoying enough for my wife that she won't use it all, and she certainly feels uncomfortable when I use it, so that potentially limits my ability to use it. What do you think? Have you noticed this behavior in your area?
The first (and potentially more serious) issue occurs mainly at on-ramps where there is no lane markings towards the end of the merge area. This varies from state to state. In my state (NC) there are small dashed lines that pretty much go all the way to the end of the merge area. In VA and WV, however, this is definitely not the case. Here's an example from Virginia:
compared to this one from North Carolina (there is car/truck in the way, but I think you can see that the lane separator is well marked):
The problem is that in Virginia, autosteer sees the on-ramp in Virginia as being a super-wide lane and attempts to center the car in the lane. At some on-ramps, with specific geometeries (such as around a right bend), this results in the car getting uncomfortably far over to the right, and then suddenly pulling back towards the left. It's not that I don't trust AP to do the right thing and stay in the lane, but sometimes the maneuver is quite rapid/erratic and I have startled drivers around me (I would be startled too if I saw someone driving like that!) You can see similar behavior at some off-ramps that have an extended gradually expanding off-ramp lane before the actual lane markings begin.
What I think SHOULD happen is that the car should recognize a wider than normal lane, particularly in the context of knowing that it is at an on-ramp (or off-ramp) and not try to center itself within the lane, but rather imply the normal travel lane and stay to the left of that lane.
Do any of you notice this behavior in your area? I am really surprised that this still happens.
Problem number two is with Navigate on Autopilot. Again, I really love NoA on trips. But it seems like on highways with 2 travel lanes, NoA will change lanes "to follow route") from the right lane to the left lane at off-ramps/exits (I feel that it's about 50% of the time). Why? At first I thought maybe it was doing so merely to avoid merging traffic at the on-ramp, so I actually let it change lanes once, but it pulled back into the right lane just prior to the on-ramp, and just as slow cars were getting ready to pull into the travel lane, so I had to manually initiate a lane change (because I knew with the delay in automatic lane changes there would be no way it would make it time). So now the drivers behind me see my car pull into the left lane for no reason, pull back into the right lane 300 yards later, then back into the left lane.
It seems like what is going on here is that the car sees that it's in the right lane just prior to the exit, but it must think that it's already AT the exit because it doesn't see the off-ramp yet, so it thinks it needs to get out of that lane. Very annoying. I end up having to cancel the lane change each time this happens. It's annoying enough that I wind up turning off NoA for large parts of the trip. It's been doing this since NoA first came about. Maybe this one is not dangerous, but it really needs to be fixed as well.
The first (and potentially more serious) issue occurs mainly at on-ramps where there is no lane markings towards the end of the merge area. This varies from state to state. In my state (NC) there are small dashed lines that pretty much go all the way to the end of the merge area. In VA and WV, however, this is definitely not the case. Here's an example from Virginia:
compared to this one from North Carolina (there is car/truck in the way, but I think you can see that the lane separator is well marked):
The problem is that in Virginia, autosteer sees the on-ramp in Virginia as being a super-wide lane and attempts to center the car in the lane. At some on-ramps, with specific geometeries (such as around a right bend), this results in the car getting uncomfortably far over to the right, and then suddenly pulling back towards the left. It's not that I don't trust AP to do the right thing and stay in the lane, but sometimes the maneuver is quite rapid/erratic and I have startled drivers around me (I would be startled too if I saw someone driving like that!) You can see similar behavior at some off-ramps that have an extended gradually expanding off-ramp lane before the actual lane markings begin.
What I think SHOULD happen is that the car should recognize a wider than normal lane, particularly in the context of knowing that it is at an on-ramp (or off-ramp) and not try to center itself within the lane, but rather imply the normal travel lane and stay to the left of that lane.
Do any of you notice this behavior in your area? I am really surprised that this still happens.
Problem number two is with Navigate on Autopilot. Again, I really love NoA on trips. But it seems like on highways with 2 travel lanes, NoA will change lanes "to follow route") from the right lane to the left lane at off-ramps/exits (I feel that it's about 50% of the time). Why? At first I thought maybe it was doing so merely to avoid merging traffic at the on-ramp, so I actually let it change lanes once, but it pulled back into the right lane just prior to the on-ramp, and just as slow cars were getting ready to pull into the travel lane, so I had to manually initiate a lane change (because I knew with the delay in automatic lane changes there would be no way it would make it time). So now the drivers behind me see my car pull into the left lane for no reason, pull back into the right lane 300 yards later, then back into the left lane.
It seems like what is going on here is that the car sees that it's in the right lane just prior to the exit, but it must think that it's already AT the exit because it doesn't see the off-ramp yet, so it thinks it needs to get out of that lane. Very annoying. I end up having to cancel the lane change each time this happens. It's annoying enough that I wind up turning off NoA for large parts of the trip. It's been doing this since NoA first came about. Maybe this one is not dangerous, but it really needs to be fixed as well.
