My Rivian Driver+ almost killed me

[azbill]

I have had D+ turn really hard into another lane twice, but not recently. We have some highways in AZ where there are seams filled with tar, and the truck will always try to follow those seams, ignoring the lane lines, it just did that to me yesterday in two different spots. I do not find it trustworthy and would never take my hands of the wheel.

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[hgpayne]

I had a similar hard left on Driver+ once when I was on a straight road, clear weather day. In my case the road had recently been patched and they hadn’t repainted the lines yet. While my Tesla FSD beta can handle this no problem, my R1T Driver+ does not. I would think when in doubt go straight, not dive for the guardrail. Fortunately I keep my hand on the wheel and just pulled it slightly right to disengage Driver+ and continued on my way.

 

[SDH]

I know this is easy said in hindsight but I have never trusted these systems. Perhaps I'm old school and like to be in control. I get their use case, but for me you should never take your concentration off the road.

Thanks for sharing though. Hopefully it'll make the system safer.

 

[sdemeester]

I had my R1T suddenly veer right on highway trying to mistakenly go off emergency truck stop but I easily corrected the situation since my hands were on the wheel while auto drive on. Another time it aggressively deaccelerated approaching an overpass, likely a shadow. Fortunately no one right behind me but might have been rear ended if there had been. Definitely bugs to fix but I do think it is better now than a year ago. Bottom line, stay focused while auto drive on and not sure I would use in busy traffic. It seems it should focus on lines to left of truck not the right, and while in the left lane should hug the left lane line more than be in the center. Passing large semis that sometimes crowd the middle lane marker doesn’t leave much of a gap. A smart truck would move left when passing traffic on the right rather then camp dead center in the lane. AI will fix all this eventually!!

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

"Alexa, play YYZ on repeat"

This Bright Flash by M83 gets me EVERY. DAMN. TIME.

Driving with M83 playing could almost be considered an occupational hazard

 

[SANZC02]

I have never had a scenario with my Tesla (AP1) or my Rivian where there was enough torque from the system to overpower my grip on the wheel. A simple tug always has promptly disabled the auto steer and a tap on the brake has always disabled the entire system.

I only use the systems on longer stretches of open highway and have used both on cross country trips. In this scenario they seem to work well, at least for me.

 

[defcon888]

Several months ago I had an incident with Driver's Plus that came very close to taking my life. I have been working with Rivian since that time to try to get to the bottom of the issue and figure out why it happened. I would have posted about this earlier but I wanted to some answers before sharing my experience with the community. I have been a staunch advocate of the Rivian brand so this isn't a 'hate on Rivian' post but rather a fact based (at least as I recall the events) warning to those who own Rivian's and use the Drivers+ feature.

Here's the facts...

• Driving at highway speeds in southern Wyoming
• Road was straight as an arrow (no obstructions etc.) and dry pavement (not slippery etc.), weather conditions fair (no rain etc.)
• Using Drivers+
• Occasionally would take both hands off the wheel (will never do this again) until the car 'chirped' and then would put hands on wheel again

On one of these occasions Drivers+ lurched the steering wheel to the left violently (at highway speed) as if it had detected some sort of obstruction on the road (there was none, bare flat as far as the eye could see). I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and fought as hard as I could against Driver's+ to prevent it taking me off the road at highway speed (it was trying to take me off the left side of the highway). This was not a 'passive hands off loss of control' type incident, this was absolutely fighting the fully engaged automatic steering for control. I managed through brute force to overcome Drivers+ and proceed to fishtail on dry pavement for quite some time as I fought to correct the initial engagement (which was now disengaged after I overpowered it). I can honestly say this is the closest I have ever come to dying in a vehicle.

I reported the incident to Rivian immediately and asked them to pull the telemetry on the vehicle to try to figure out what happened. I won't go into the 10 hours of calls, failed follow ups, outright lies etc. with the call center as that in itself is another sad (and quite frankly surprising) story. I will tell you however that the determination of the engineering team (after 4 months) was that it was caused by the driver (apparently according to them I initiated a sharp left turn at highway speed into the ditch as I had a death wish) All I can tell you is that factually that isn't what happened and while I understand their desire to absolve themselves of liability due to the seriousness of the incident that doesn't protect other drivers who may face the same issue. Though I remain a Rivian fan I can't in good conscience not share this experience with the community knowing what happened and that it could happen to someone else, I certainly hope it doesn't.

Should I have taken both hands off the steering wheel at any point? Absolutely not, stupid, risky and will never do so again. Does that in itself change that this system catastrophically failed and almost killed me and may kill others? Nope, not a bit.

TLDR all of it.

This is why I have only played with Driver+ a couple of times, I don't trust it.

When I am flying down the highway in my $100,000 vehicle, the last thing I want to do is put the driving in the hands of a computer that isn't a human and can't react like a human,.

When I got my license back in 1980, the thing the instructor said over and over again...."Keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times".

To me, Driver+ is more of a novelty at best and while it is getting better over time, I will never trust it with my life, my family's lives, and my $100k purchase.

I do love and use cruise control.

 

[Perplexed]

Several months ago I had an incident with Driver's Plus that came very close to taking my life. I have been working with Rivian since that time to try to get to the bottom of the issue and figure out why it happened. I would have posted about this earlier but I wanted to some answers before sharing my experience with the community. I have been a staunch advocate of the Rivian brand so this isn't a 'hate on Rivian' post but rather a fact based (at least as I recall the events) warning to those who own Rivian's and use the Drivers+ feature.

Here's the facts...

• Driving at highway speeds in southern Wyoming
• Road was straight as an arrow (no obstructions etc.) and dry pavement (not slippery etc.), weather conditions fair (no rain etc.)
• Using Drivers+
• Occasionally would take both hands off the wheel (will never do this again) until the car 'chirped' and then would put hands on wheel again

On one of these occasions Drivers+ lurched the steering wheel to the left violently (at highway speed) as if it had detected some sort of obstruction on the road (there was none, bare flat as far as the eye could see). I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and fought as hard as I could against Driver's+ to prevent it taking me off the road at highway speed (it was trying to take me off the left side of the highway). This was not a 'passive hands off loss of control' type incident, this was absolutely fighting the fully engaged automatic steering for control. I managed through brute force to overcome Drivers+ and proceed to fishtail on dry pavement for quite some time as I fought to correct the initial engagement (which was now disengaged after I overpowered it). I can honestly say this is the closest I have ever come to dying in a vehicle.

I reported the incident to Rivian immediately and asked them to pull the telemetry on the vehicle to try to figure out what happened. I won't go into the 10 hours of calls, failed follow ups, outright lies etc. with the call center as that in itself is another sad (and quite frankly surprising) story. I will tell you however that the determination of the engineering team (after 4 months) was that it was caused by the driver (apparently according to them I initiated a sharp left turn at highway speed into the ditch as I had a death wish) All I can tell you is that factually that isn't what happened and while I understand their desire to absolve themselves of liability due to the seriousness of the incident that doesn't protect other drivers who may face the same issue. Though I remain a Rivian fan I can't in good conscience not share this experience with the community knowing what happened and that it could happen to someone else, I certainly hope it doesn't.

Should I have taken both hands off the steering wheel at any point? Absolutely not, stupid, risky and will never do so again. Does that in itself change that this system catastrophically failed and almost killed me and may kill others? Nope, not a bit.

R1S owner since Jan here ….
I have experienced some odd behaviour such as, some twitching of steering unnecessarily and also coming way too close to other lane.

I dont fully trust the R1S HDA and so have to keep an eye when it is on.

I was kore comfortable with the HDA in my Palisade tbh.
Hopefully software improves over time??!!

regards

 

[derekmw]

It can do some wierd things at times, but I do believe the wording is a bit overly dramatic. The car did not VIOLENTLY veer, or as others have mentioned, you would have rolled it. It frightened you and you felt it was violently veering. And you can always overpower the steering, there is no way you couldn't overpower the steering...even if it somehow didn't disengage, your steering force applied will easily overpower it.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

The part I'm confused about is multiple posters have reported having to fight the lane steering feature to regain control.

In my experience it disengages lane steering really easily without any significant force.

Now I do have lane departure prevention (or whatever its called) turned off. Maybe that's playing a role?

If I was the OP I would definitely report the incident to the NHTSA. Where they include all the settings they recall using.

The NHTSA is collecting data on all L2, and above driver assist systems in an effort at improving the safety of these systems. They've realized that maybe its not such a good idea for customers to be beta testing these systems.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

Other guy reporting this kind of a thing was in the middle of trying to unbuckle his seat belt.

I've never experienced my Rivian doing anything aggressive with the steering wheel, but I have had my Polestar try to steer me into oncoming traffic with a collision avoidance bug. If a system isn't hands free, don't ever treat it as one.

Especially not on a system that was supposed to be hands free, but never became hands free.

Also not on a system where the designers went "OOPS!" and disabled the functionality of the driver monitoring camera because it didn't work.

 

[eRacer]

The part I'm confused about is multiple posters have reported having to fight the lane steering feature to regain control.

In my experience it disengages lane steering really easily without any significant force.

Now I do have lane departure prevention (or whatever its called) turned off. Maybe that's playing a role?

If I was the OP I would definitely report the incident to the NHTSA. Where they include all the settings they recall using.

The NHTSA is collecting data on all L2, and above driver assist systems in an effort at improving the safety of these systems. They've realized that maybe its not such a good idea for customers to be beta testing these systems.

I was about to post the exact same response. My challenge is keeping D+ engaged as I often feel the need to center the vehicle in my lane. Most of the time D+ feels like it likes to stradle the side of a lane when the road curves.

Never has it felt like I had to wrestle the steeringwheel to get D+ to disengage.

Have any of you tried driving over the same routes over again to recreate your experiences? Maybe the second time around record the event?

 

[djsider2]

Haven't reached 1k on my R1S yet, but I'm perfectly happy just using adaptive cruise and controlling the steering personally. Might as well since I have to keep my hands on the wheel anyways.

 

[gregtay]

What is kind of amazing to me is that GM (of all companies) seems to have done a really good job at nailing hands free driving with SuperCruise. I have used it on my Escalade for the last three years and it is pretty amazing. Long road trips (like 1500 miles long) and even pulling my 23' trailer... and it does exactly what it is designed to do... hands free driving. You just sit there and watch the road. Stop and go traffic? No problem. 80mpg with curves? no problem. I am always paying attention while driving (and it watches you to make sure focused on the road), but it is often nice to not have my hands on the wheel. The system does a good job of warning you that it is going to disengage (for one of many reasons... like lane lines can't be seen clearly, etc). This is my first GM vehicle and I sort of figured it was just going to end up in the shop and be a dumb truck... but GM nailed the tech part of things. I have tried to use Driver+ on our R1S a few times and it just isn't worth the effort... not compared to how flawless and low-stress Supercruise is.

 

[Tahoe Man]

Not sure why those that are in tech all of sudden are experts at driver assistance gadgetry. I planted a tomato plant, hey that makes me a farmer! Not sure why op has to state he's a Rivian fan either, if my car almost killed me due to some programming bug, oops I meant feature, I could see myself taking a baseball bat to it.

A sudden swerve at 70mph will definitely feel like a sharp, violent turn. Op, glad you or anyone else didn't get hurt. Frankly these assistant systems are just a joke, a whiz bang feature to promote sales, but in reality gets used so driver's can text and whatnot. But it's tech gadget, so it's gotta be good, right.

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