Have you noticed errors or misjudgements with your car's lane keeping system?
Asked by
LuckyGuy (
43867
)
September 18th, 2021
I’m asking about Automotive Lane Guidance systems, sometimes called Lane Keeping Aids, Lane Keeping Systems, EyeSight, etc., that are designed to prevent or warn the driver of lane departure. Some have a buzzer or steering wheel vibration to alert the driver while some apply a torque to actually steer the vehicle back into the center of the lane.
I recently noticed an error that scared me. I was driving on a newly repaved and painted asphalt road when suddenly my car began to alarm telling me to cross over into the oncoming lane! Apparently someone had pulled out of their driveway and made a shallow right turn to merge onto the road just after it was painted. The line was still wet so their tires made a 50 ft long white shadow line on the pavement a few feet from the true marking. The lane guidance system on my 2019 Subaru saw that line and alerted me that I had drifted out of my land and suggested I steer left.
Of course, I do not let the car steer. I have that option disabled. I leave the alerts on so I can see what the car thinks it sees, and learn about its reliability. It is either not functional at all, due to heavy rain, snow, or no road markings. Or it is 99.99+% correct. But it is that small <0.01% that really scares me.
I mostly drive on smaller, 2 land roads, one lane in either direction. It alerts when I swing a little to the left to avoid joggers, garbage trucks, US mail, Amazon, Fedex, UPS delivery trucks, bicyclists, or dog walkers. But that is ok.
Have you noticed anything similar in your car? Do you trust it?
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18 Answers
I usually turn mine off. I’ve recently heard of some self driving accidents so I would say the lane detection systems are not perfect yet.
Do you think it is some sort of update problem? Do those systems get software updates? It was working ok before and now there is a glitch?
I turned mine off when I was on a trip with my brother, who was driving, and kept going over the lines on purpose to prevent me from sleeping. I never turned it back on.
But it’s good to know how sensitive they are.
Mine fights me on a specific part of my drive home from work. It’s a highway, the lane I need to be in splits, and I need to take the fork to the right. It tries to guide me to the left. As I go around the curve to merge to the next road, it continues to try to pull me to the left. I try to remember this and turn it off for that part of my drive.
It also doesn’t like when I change lanes without a turn signal. I only do that if I’m in a situation where there is no traffic around me that needs to know.
I understand why it made the “suggestion.” It was simply following the line the impatient resident made by running over the painted strip. The paint dries in 5 minutes. The road crew could not have been far away. But, hey, “You gotta go when you gotta go.” I’m sure they have no idea their action could have caused an accident.
Anyway, I drove past there yesterday and the line is gone. Maybe it wore off already?
The driving around here is very polite and friendly. Really. If someone is jogging we swing way into the other lane and wave at each other. There are no cars coming. The newspaper delivery guy drives on the wrong side of the road facing us so he can easily reach mailboxes. We just swing into the oncoming lane and wave. The heating oil delivery trucks completely block the road when they make a delivery. No problem. We just go around without making a fuss.
However, the Lane Keeping System gets all nervous and sets off alarms, crash avoidance alarms, the steering wheel vibrates – very annoying. Fortunately I can turn it all off.
My point is that the Lane Control System is not perfect and I am not sure it will ever be. It will no doubt get better and better and eventually be better than humans. It’s not there yet.
Do you have other examples of errors?
I don’t have such a system, don’t want one, and would disable it if I had one, because no, I would not trust it. Even when a human accurately and reasonably alerts me to something they think I might not have noticed yet, it often startles and confuses me more than it helps.
@Zaku Yes! Exactly!
We get snow here. Sometimes it falls at such a heavy rate it affects visibility.
When that happens we need to concentrate. It is at that exact moment when the EyeSight System alerts, chimes a bell, turns on a warning light and displays a message on the dash display saying it is disengaging due to poor visibility. Really?! I’m going 60 mph and there is suddenly a whiteout from snow blowing across Lake Ontario. I need to focus on the road not look down to my dash to see what the hell all the lights mean!
My car has a lane departure system that “gently” steers you back into your lane (but can be overridden with a strong turn of the wheel). I disabled it on the second or third day of owning the vehicle because it cannot parse sharp curves very well, and there are two very curvy roads between my home and just about anywhere I want to go. Since one of those roads is usually pretty busy, the risk of it steering me into oncoming traffic was just too great.
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to disable the automatic brake that slows me down when it thinks I’m about to rear end someone. Again, curvy roads make it think that traffic in the other lane is actually someone right in front of me. This means it has twice almost caused someone to rear end me.
I have Tesla’s advanced autopilot. I drive more miles with it than without it. It has limitations and after getting used to how it “thinks” I’m able to anticipate when it’s going to have issues. It’s much better than me at reacting to problems (like a sudden slowdown in traffic on the interstate), keeping me dead center in my lane, and maintaining the exact speed and spacing between the car in front of me. It’s incapable of “reading the road” in the sense of seeing the guy in the tricked-out Camero racing down the on-ramp that you just “know” is going to cut off the minivan in the right lane. By working together as a team, I feel much safer than not having it, but it’s simply a tool that is great at some things and not others. It is not a replacement for a driver, and I don’t expect it will become that for many years.
@JeSuisRickSpringfield My autobraking system also engages when it sees the oil delivery truck or mail truck stopped in the road. Humans here know to just go around, if there is a clear view of the road of course. There is no need to slow down at all.
@gorillapaws Thanks for showing how it can be a positive thing, I do not let my car do anything with the info. I can’t imagine trusting it to keep my car in the lane. I’ve tried but it scares me too often. If I had allowed it to follow the mispainted line things could have been ugly.
And you people Wonder why I am not a lover of new tech.
Until it’s proven trustworthy and reliable I want nothing to do with it.
I opted out of buying the new Honda Ridgeline because I couldn’t get it without the semi autonomous feature.
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From what I understand Florida already has driverless trucks on our highways.
Is it correct that these driverless systems are being developed separately by competing companies? It’s not in collaboration? I assume lane keeping, assisted parking, and full driverless is all part of the same type of technology in varying degrees.
For example does Dodge and Lexus buy the lane keeping technology from the same company? Or, is each car manufacturer developing their own?
Companies are making/buying their own systems. Some use cameras mounted near the rear-view mirror. Some use radar mounted in the grill or lower bumper fascia. Some have ultrasonic sensors. There is no coordinated consistent effort.
For the time being I will continue to drive with the system on and monitoring but not allow it to make corrections. Maybe it will get smarter in a few years.
I have driven cars with these features. I do notice they have issues in certain situations.
I personally turn the lane detection and auto steering controls off as they take the enjoyment out of driving for me.
I was testing the Lane Keeping system on my wife’s Honda yesterday. It seems to kick on around 37 mph and gives me a steering wheel shake as I get close to the lane divider. If I don’t do anything, it self steers away from those dashed lines. But it doesn’t straighten out afterwards! It just keeps heading away, past the solid white line and into the emergency lane. Yay, avoids one hazard and crashes itself further down the road. So we get one save – good to know.
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