My own Driver+ horror story

[jwanderson88]

It takes nerves of steel to let any car steer past the semis and other traffic on a winding freeway. Especially with the Rivian moving jerkily from one side of the lane to the other. In a separate incident, the Rivian seemed to lose the lane after an especially abrupt dip in the road. I might have imagined that one. Anyway it's always nerve-wracking. I don't have any experience at all with other lane-keeping systems. I've read the horror stories by other Rivian drivers, but thought they were mistaken or overblown. I had a lot of confidence in the Rivian system. At least I tried hard to let it steer and not overreact. Then this happened. I was northbound in I-15 in Utah county. To the right was a semi with a trailer. It was mostly ahead of me and just the last few feet were next to me. The freeway curved right. The truck curved and the Rivian curved. Then the road straightened out. They always do. The truck straightened out but the Rivian didn't. It kept turning. I didn't wait to see if the Rivian would get out of it by itself. It would have taken an abrupt swerve to the left that would have been dangerous itself. That scared me a lot. I've concluded Driver+ is only safe on straight sections without a lot of cars around it. It definitely needs more work. In fact it shouldn't even be characterized as self-steering unless it can steer safely all the time. We're talking about the safety of human beings, that's a big deal. It's that split second when it isn't safe that really matters. The R2's will have an improved system with more cameras. So the R1 doesn't have enough cameras so it can never have self-driving? What is really going on?

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[SwampNut]

Yes, the Rivian is a little drunk in some cases. We don't know whether your car would actually cross a line and/or hit something. I'm 99% sure it would not, but of course, who wants to wait and see?

 

[Dark-Fx]

Rivian's driver+ is a Level 2 system. Always pay attention and be ready to take over.

 

[TXR1SMD]

I drive 15 miles round trip on Dallas freeways and interchanges and use Driver+ every day at about 70mph. It performs exactly as expected. It prompts hands on the wheel pretty often and warns when you're coming up to a curve in the road. Nobody has ever said this is a "self-driving" system. The *other* EV company that released beta testing of semi-autonomous driving on public streets has repeatedly had to walk back their self-driving claims. It is also very widely known that Gen1 vs Gen2 have very different hardware and semi-autonomous capabilities. If you are looking for some way to fully disengage from being alert and able to control the vehicle, this ain't it

 

[Trandall]

Agreed with @Dark-Fx with L2 the human driver is always in control of the vehicle the autonomy is intended to assist with steering, maintaining speed, breaking etc. Level 3 is where you move in to conditional automation. I wish Rivians had L4 wich would be automated driving in most situations however it does not and I don't believe gen 1's or even likely gen 2 R1's will ever have L3-L4 autonomy. I'm hoping my future R2 has at least L3. Autonomous driving is proving a tough nut to crack. It's funny how humans can be so good at it and also so bad at the same time.

 

[CrazyOne]

There isn't a single camera based system you can trust 100%. Some give you warnings by working 90% of the time. Some give you a sense of security while working 99.9 % of the time. The more confident you are in the system, the more likely that it will end badly.

Even Lidar based dedicated autonomous vehicles with estimated $300k of hardware are involved in incidents, so we are far from autonomy.

 

[Rividiculous]

As a new owner, I am surprised by how much I like the Driver Assist functions. On past vehicles, I always found cruise control to be more annoying than helpful. That said, I use driver assist as a supplement to my driving, not as a replacement. I wouldn’t use it while passing a semi on a curved highway.

I find that the assist features allow me to look around a bit more and track traffic in my mirrors, on the screen in front of me, and in the cameras. I end up being a bit more aware of everything but it takes a little less work. (Also, since I am still getting used to such a big vehicle, I often use the cameras to look at my lane positioning which I can’t do if I’m not using the assist functions, so it’s helpful that way too.)

Further, it’s handy to have extra “eyes” on the road if I want to adjust the stereo or navigation—but I only do that when I’m in the clear traffic wise.

I don’t treat it like a self-driving technology. (And I wouldn’t even if it were called “full self driving” or something crazy like that, ahem.) Rivian doesn’t promote it as self driving and it isn’t. And sometimes I don’t like the lane positioning or other details.

For me, the hardest part with getting comfortable with driver assist was practicing taking control back. I want to be able to do that swiftly and instinctively so I practice and to make it part of my muscle memory. I don’t want to have to think “oh, which way do I push the stalk?”, I want to seamlessly take control in an instant. Basically, I want it to be as instinctive as shifting gears in a manual transmission ICE vehicle.

 

[beatle]

The R1 has plenty of cameras and sensors to work reliably on the highway.

R1T has:

• 10 exterior cameras help with day-to-day and higher-speed driving.
• 12 ultrasonic sensors provide 360° close-range coverage.
• 4 corner radars and 1 forward radar enable more complex maneuvers and monitoring, like lane changes and rear-cross traffic.

Tesla AP1 (from 2015) had:

• Front camera (single monochrome)
• Front radar with range of 525 feet / 160 meters (Bosch Mid-range radar sensor)
• 12 ultrasonic sensors with 16 ft range / 5 meters
• Rear camera for driver only (not used in Autopilot)

To keep the car in lane and not hit things, the single camera and single radar did a pretty good job on the highway in my 2015 Model S. Yeah, it wasn't perfect, but its mistakes were somewhat predictable in the sense that it might pick the wrong lane at a fork, or it might weave a bit when lane markings were not very visible. It had no problem following other vehicles, phantom braking, or staying centered in the lane. If Rivian can focus on the core importance of its ADAS on the highway, I think it can be more useful in the most popular use cases: highway cruising and stop and go. This also clearly requires a lot less equipment to get right.

 

[eskudo12791]

I really wish Rivian would validate its camera detection against the front radar. Overpass/ bridge shadows having been kicking my R1Ts butt lately and spiking the brakes going 70 down the highway.

 

[waitingonanr1s]

Yes, the Rivian is a little drunk in some cases. We don't know whether your car would actually cross a line and/or hit something. I'm 99% sure it would not, but of course, who wants to wait and see?

It will definitely go across the line. I've had it do that, and set off warning chimes about it at the same time. I'm like you did that - stop beeping at me about it, lol!

 

[jwanderson88]

Like I said, I had a lot of confidence in Driver+ until I didn't. Having the car veer toward the rear of a semi-truck trailer just feet away changes your mind. This was a flat trailer hailing metal, not one of the big boxy ones. I remember a lot of shadow between me and the trailer, it's no wonder it got confused and couldn't see a line on the road (or anything else). A previous poster said not to use it around semis. This isn't practical since I-15 is a major transportation route and a large percentage of the traffic is semis. I've enjoyed driver+ and I'd like to keep using it. I'm hoping they can make it safer by recognizing dangerous situations and steering away from them not toward them. I think that is possible. As far as I know, there haven't actually been any accidents or injuries because of driver+. I wouldn't want to be the first.

 

[SwampNut]

I have extremely high trust in Tesla AP. I've never been able to trust the Rivian. I use the D+ feature but pay very close attention to it. With the Tesla I'd pull out a laptop or eat lunch without a thought.

(Yes, go for it, please feel free to use any language to describe how stupid that is, I'm good with it.)

 

[Rizzian]

Changes in road conditions/surfaces (especially due to construction) are hard for Driver+. I have a divided highway that I take frequently and it's a coin toss whether the Driver+ stays active every time I transfer from the new (high contrast) black pavement and white lines to the older tan concrete stretch of highway with faded lines. I try to stay alert and aware... I know that the "virtual copilot" could choose to disappear at any time, leaving the cruise control engaged at highway speeds.

I'm a bit more concerned about how frequently the lane departure alerts and automated steering corrections happen on the winding road that is just outside of my neighborhood. Well-marked turning lanes for school entrances (especially if they are located close to a bend in the road) are particularly triggering. Also, while I never thought of it as a particularly narrow road, I have several places where the yellow warning stripes ( ///////// ) happen on BOTH sides of the road simultaneously. I'm not sure how my R1S expects me to move further away from both the left and right sides of my lane.
There are now just certain places where I am used to ignoring the on-screen warnings, vibrations, and manually overriding (or fighting against) the automated lane correction tugs on the wheel. Training drivers to ignore or actively fight AGAINST the automated safety features is probably not what the engineers were going for, but it works fine on straight roads so I don't want to completely turn it off (or need to think about whether it will be working to assist me or against me in every given situation). I feel like my wife's 2019 Chrysler minivan does a better job with lane assist.

 

[DD4ST]

My 21 eTron does a slightly better job navigating different types of conditions and more roads, but also seems to have a skosh more oscillation between lane lines. That being said, I always take over in dense or complicated driving because I don’t trust either fully. Especially with Rivian’s phantom braking all the time I get nervous. The only close call I’ve had in the Rivian when using Driver+ is when the car in front of me slowed to get in the left turn lane and the Rivian almost slammed on the brakes with moving traffic behind me. Caused my wife to criticize my driving that day. I find Driver+ best used on the open road where boredom and tedium of driving are more the issue.

 

[Dark-Fx]

I really wish Rivian would validate its camera detection against the front radar. Overpass/ bridge shadows having been kicking my R1Ts butt lately and spiking the brakes going 70 down the highway.

I think gen1 radar ends up picking bridges up from the radar being reflected off the ground. So when the phantom braking happens, it's because the data between the two systems actually does correlate. I'm not sure if gen2 fixes this, but it's definitely different equipment.

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