My Rivian Driver+ almost killed me

[s4wrxttcs]

To ensure we are all using the same nomenclature: https://rivian.com/support/article/what-features-are-included-in-rivian-driver - now on to my contribution.

I think you are on to something with the "Lane Keep Assist" (LKA) function. I don't often get to try out "Highway Assist" because I live a long way from any freeways (i.e. several hours!); however, when I have had the chance to use it, I've tried it out quite a bit out of curiosity (so I probably have several hundred km now with it, everything from no traffic, bad rain, sun, overcast, lots of traffic, flowing traffic, stop & go traffic). In my experience, it takes very little wheel torque to have the system turn off.

But, I have used LKA quite a bit on my regular 2-lane highways around here (posted speed limits 80 - 100km/h [50 - 60ish mph]). As I read through these posts, I wondered about LKA. After having a few annoyances of having to 'wrestle' with the steering wheel to keep the vehicle on the line I want through a corner, I have lately been keeping it off (unless I'm a bit sleepy). This morning I turned it on again after reading your post yesterday, and it can be pretty aggressive at keeping you to the lane, or more accurately to what it thinks is the lane.

@rivianguy (the OP), do you recall if you were driving with LKA on?

I can't seem to find lane keep assist in the Driver+ menu.

I looked today and I simply don't see Lane Keep assist.

Edit: You have to turn on lane departure warning to get to a submenu that has the lane keep assist options. I've had lane departure warning off since delivery.

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[ChadS]

The crazy thing is...this just happened to me TODAY while returning from my first road trip in my R1S. It occurred while driving south on the 15 in Utah on my return trip back home to CA.

From my recollection, I had D+ engaged, with BOTH hands making contact on the wheel so as to comply with D+ rules, however, I do believe that I had just passed underneath a small overpass when D+ suddenly, and aggressively tried to steer the truck left and off the pavement...at highway speeds, which in Utah, was set at 80mph. The roads were clear at the time and this was early afternoon. Thankfully, as I mentioned, both hands were on the wheel and I was able to immediately fight D+ and disengage it with a significant amount of force in order to regain control and keep the truck on the pavement, tracking straight.

Needless to say, this was VERY concerning, but I chalked it up to "a glitch", but perhaps I should report it to Rivian as well. Thanks for posting this...

This same situation occurred to me, but on I-64 in Virginia. I passed under an overpass on a clear day and the truck tried to turn right, not left. It was large enough that the tires lost traction, but I had my hand on the wheel and was able to recover.

 

[Jeffh32]

It's definitely Rivian's fault.

 

[rivianguy]

I did want to provide a short update on this as it does illustrate the power of community. I shared some of the feedback that was provided on this thread with Rivian and did receive a call from a gentlemen who is in charge of service for the west coast today. I talked specifically about some of your experiences and pointed him to this discussion thread. He seemed genuinely concerned and promised to follow up to try to get to the bottom of this. Of particular interest was a common pattern (in some regards) to the issue that I reported both in terms of how it happened and in some cases geographically. I emphasized that the goal here was to make the vehicles safer for all of us. It may be that he (or Rivian) will follow up with a number of you who posted on this thread directly so again, thank you for sharing your stories.

 

[jwanderson88]

I've found that if I keep a couple of fingers lightly in contact with the steering wheel the system is happy. Taking my hands off and then back on the wheel over and over is exhausting. If there is a problem my hand is in position and I can just grip the wheel. I've used driver+ a lot and I feel like I trust it. I wonder if there was a problem with the steering itself rather than driver+. Maybe there was something in the road the the OP missed that he hit.

 

[PowerBugs]

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.

I had a similar incident that happened a few months back on a 4 lane highway. I’m not retelling my story here but I have posted videos of that near-collision incident at a different forum. I know what you mean by fighting with the steering wheel to regain control. On my experience, and for future scenarios that involves Driver+, the easiest way to regain control is just to tap on the break and it will immediately disengage the Driver+.
I now avoid using Driver + on that section of the freeway because of the lines and cracks can be confusing to the sensors.

 

[Rivian Head]

All automotive manufacturers have been using the lane keeping and adoptive cruise control algorithms based system until Tesla unveiled FSD 12.3 today which is hailed as the first version of AI based system. I drove today with model Y. Very impressive. There are tons of reviews in YouTube already. It already drives safter than I or my wife do especially at night. if it is the first version, what would be FSD like in a year or two with rapidly learning AI?
There will be many companies offering their own version like Microsoft etc, and price will fall as competition heats up. I predict FSD will be the standard in a few years as safety data emerges. Rivian may have to develope in house or license from Tesla or Microsoft etc. Its current system is rudimentary at best.

 

[rivianguy]

All automotive manufacturers have been using the lane keeping and adoptive cruise control algorithms based system until Tesla unveiled FSD 12.3 today which is hailed as the first version of AI based system. I drove today with model Y. Very impressive. There are tons of reviews in YouTube already. It already drives safter than I or my wife do especially at night. if it is the first version, what would be FSD like in a year or two with rapidly learning AI?
There will be many companies offering their own version like Microsoft etc, and price will fall as competition heats up. I predict FSD will be the standard in a few years as safety data emerges. Rivian may have to develope in house or license from Tesla or Microsoft etc. Its current system is rudimentary at best.

Even though I would consider myself an early adopter of tech in general after this incident I don't think I will ever trust FSD.

 

[Ape Latex]

I experienced the exact same behavior as OP. I had to wrestle control back from the truck while it swerved back and forth.

On a separate occasion the truck bumped into a concrete construction barrier at 85mph and bounced back into the lane. I stopped using the lane keeping function now since it keeps trying to crash. The truck did cot capture the incident on the dashcam.

 

[Feetdry]

After reading this entire thread, I must comment. First, I am an 80-year-old driver and up until 3 years ago was driving 60K a year on business here in the NW. I have been using Driver + on the local interstate, I-5 and I-90. Luckily, Driver + seems to be in its infancy, and turns off on places like under the convention center in Seattle. It does seem to have a hard time while traveling in the HOV lanes.

What is important to me is that my vehicle records everything going on around this R1T. For that reason, I have added a 2-terra byte storage unit in the console that is recording every time I am in the truck. But my go to camera is my Garmin DriveCam 76 attached to the windshield that records everything going on in front of my R1T. (By the way it does a much better job of navigating with real time traffic alerts, than the truck's main screen navigation).

 

[Robin]

It behaved as intended. AI is here to kill us,

 

[Robin]

Hi Hal

 

[bigsky]

What you experienced seems to be an outlier case. Not discrediting what you are saying by any means, it does sound scary. My experience with Tesla so-called FSD and now Rivian Driver+ is that either one is easily disabled and overridden with a slight torque applied to the steering wheel, or disabling it altogether with the stalk, or tapping on the brake pedal. Nothing of the sort you mentioned.
At any rate, Tesla did train me well to always be paying attention to the road when this feature is enabled and to be ready to intervene and take over at any time.

Personally, I do not quite trust Driver+ yet. I was on the interstate yesterday going 65 with it turned on, and it was a bit scary. It seemed to have a hard time staying centered in the lane. A few times, it would veer to the left, then to the right, hopelessly tring to stay centered, and I ended up disabling it altogether when it actually veered into the left lane. Had a car been in that lane at the time, who knows what might have happened.
It was so disconcerting to see this Drive+ behavior that a cop would have been justified to do a traffic stop and check for DUI.

Has anybody seen this? Have had my R1S for two months only.

 

[CodemanCMC]

I'm at 1,800 miles on my R1T and I use Highway Assist fairly regularly. I've also extensively used Ford's CoPilot Assist 360 on my Ford Explorer that this R1T replaced (not Blue Cruise), and Hyundai's Highway Driving Assist (HDA) on my mom's Palisade, as well as Tesla's FSD Beta 11.4.9 on my MS. Rivian's system is objectively inferior to all of these other systems and I've had similar sudden veering on at least two occasions with the R1T.

The disengagement pressure also does seem greater than the other vehicles at least during a dramatic steer event (perhaps the weight of the vehicle contributes to this difference?) though definitely not enough to make me feel like I or my wife wouldn't be able to overpower it in a pinch. But I could see that the pressure feedback makes you feel uneasy about getting control back especially if you overcorrect and start to fishtail.

TL;DR, I believe OP's experience and Rivian needs to fix.

 

[rapPayne]

Too late now, but the auto-captured 2 minute incidents are different than the DriveStream. If you have a drive connected and turn on the continuous recording, you'll get 15 min clips from all 4-5 cameras. Then you can plug the drive into your phone or a computer and pull the full clips and trim out the bits you want manually.

PSA: If you want to capture an incident, turn your hazards on. This triggers an incident that is saved.

(At least I seem to remember hearing one of you tell me to do this. Was I hallucinating?)

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