EV general discussion

[SKILL]

To be fair, if your only experience of modern safety features like lane keep assist is from an MG4, it’s no wonder you don’t like them.

The ADAS features on the MG4 are renown for being utter trash.

That's a fair point really, especially for the first 2 years the LKA was so bad it just had to be turned off immediately when I got in the car. They did a second update at that service though which made it much better, to the point I actually leave it on, but it's still more annoying/false positives than actually useful or anything related to safety. But like you say that is the MG4.

I have driven multiple other new cars for short periods and been a passenger in more, not a full experience but something and they all seemed pretty trash tbh. You generally see pretty similar complaints from pretty much all brands about them as well I feel.

 

[Rroff]

Yup you'll be hard pressed to buy a new car of any type of fuel without them (at least higher trim levels - I've not had much experience of new cars with more basic trims - even the bog standard new vans at work have a plethora of them but that is another story to a regular car) and sadly harder and harder to turn them off properly - several new vehicles will let you turn them off but it has to be done every time you start the car and it will automatically re-enable them at will i.e. if you go over a bit of a bump/pothole or go in a bit hot on a roundabout and the vehicle will randomly decide it is going to turn safety features back on! (in a wider context, not just vehicles, one of the most moronic developments of modern life is authoritative, or at least intrusive, systems which do not have real world context awareness).

Not experienced an implementation of active lane assist I like yet - warning is fine but a lot of the roads I drive so far any variant I've had experience of which actually has steering input I would say it actually dangerous even though most of them you can easily override, on the flip side though I've not had a false positive with forward collision assistance type systems and always leave them on - in a couple of instances where other people have done stupid things they've kicked in appropriately and while I think I'd have managed OK without them they certainly made sure it didn't turn into an incident.

 

[SKILL]

Yup you'll be hard pressed to buy a new car of any type of fuel without them (at least higher trim levels - I've not had much experience of new cars with more basic trims - even the bog standard new vans at work have a plethora of them but that is another story to a regular car) and sadly harder and harder to turn them off properly - several new vehicles will let you turn them off but it has to be done every time you start the car and it will automatically re-enable them at will i.e. if you go over a bit of a bump/pothole or go in a bit hot on a roundabout and the vehicle will randomly decide it is going to turn safety features back on! (in a wider context, not just vehicles, one of the most moronic developments of modern life is authoritative, or at least intrusive, systems which do not have real world context awareness).

Not experienced an implementation of active lane assist I like yet - warning is fine but a lot of the roads I drive so far any variant I've had experience of which actually has steering input I would say it actually dangerous even though most of them you can easily override, on the flip side though I've not had a false positive with forward collision assistance type systems and always leave them on - in a couple of instances where other people have done stupid things they've kicked in appropriately and while I think I'd have managed OK without them they certainly made sure it didn't turn into an incident.

The turning back on is an NCAP thing I think, the car should start up in a 'safe state' or something like that...

I have had one false positive/'phantom braking' from the forward collision side, and several times it's beeped at me (but not actually done anything), but it's also legit saved me from crashing once so not too unhappy with that one The phantom braking was mildly terrifying though as it just slammed on the brakes out of nowhere.

 

[Rroff]

The turning back on is an NCAP thing I think, the car should start up in a 'safe state' or something like that...

I have had one false positive/'phantom braking' from the forward collision side, and several times it's beeped at me (but not actually done anything), but it's also legit saved me from crashing once so not too unhappy with that one The phantom braking was mildly terrifying though as it just slammed on the brakes out of nowhere.

Fortunately not had phantom braking yet - had the odd instance of it giving warning tones under situations where it was probably understandable but nowhere near an actual collision - I've noticed instances where a specific car will seem to fool it into thinking the other vehicle is closer than it is though which will also trigger the parking/proximity sensors when passing those vehicles on the motorway, etc. not sure what is going on there whether a specific colour/paint type or something or whether there are emissions from that vehicle it thinks are returns.

Mentioned them before but I've had a couple of instances where other people have done stupid things where the forward collision system has kicked in instantly and while I'm 99% confident I'd have avoided an incident the system definitely made sure it wasn't, so I leave that enabled personally.

 

[bigmike20vt]

To be fair, if your only experience of modern safety features like lane keep assist is from an MG4, it’s no wonder you don’t like them.

The ADAS features on the MG4 are renown for being utter trash.

the lane keep assist on mine sometimes gets it wrong. there is a section of road which has been altered and a part where the old markings are still slightly visible always gets it. it used to put the .....s up me every time as the car always decides it wants to move for me.

but in general it's not bad and is usually unobtrusive. I don't have a problem with it on mine.

the braking on mine is also decent and for the most part I never see it. sometimes on my street which is single lane often due to people parking on the road it can flip out when it thinks I am playing chicken with on coming cars but it's very rare
and to end on a definite positive it has potentially saved me an accident when , be it not concentrating or what ever I for what ever reason didn't check my blind spot and went to pull out (this is very unlike me). the car alarmed and stopped me.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

The lane keep assist / lane departure warning is also pretty unintuitive in my Tesla.

If you are making positive steering inputs it will not kick off at all and the automatic emergency braking deals with parked cars without an issue generally.

Where it drops behind is the traffic aware cruise control and auto steer. It’s ‘fine’ but it’s still very 2019 in terms of its functionality in the U.K. Phantom braking seems to be largely sorted, I’ve not had an instance in quite some time but it’s just not very polished because it’s running an accent version of it, not the version they have in the states.

That said, they just expanded the latest version of supervised ‘FSD’ (aka not actually self driving) to Australia so I expect it’s very much a regulatory thing now.

 

[Simon]

Its usually the case of unsafe drivers get upset when the car calls them out via ADAS. Ghost overtakes etc when they wait till last minute to pull out and then get upset the car thought they were having a crash. Or people who hold the steering wheel with their little finger and wonder why the lane assist is 'throwing them off the road'

 

[bigmike20vt]

Or people who hold the steering wheel with their little finger and wonder why the lane assist is 'throwing them off the road'

I dunno..... I hold the wheel properly but it would be dishonest of me to say that it isnt a little disconcerting when my car tries to take control due to some only partially covered old road markings.

you can blame the driver all you want but however you slice it, that is an example of the technology doing something which is technically more dangerous than not having the tech at all.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Latest version of my IPACE after 22MY when they added steering assist is much better now. Literally drives itself and a something i would want.

 

[bigmike20vt]

Latest version of my IPACE after 22MY when they added steering assist is much better now. Literally drives itself and a something i would want.

mine is a covid car, made just before production halted due to the chip shortage. i believe my car is less capable in that department than both the older models and the newer ones.... generally i dont mind, i bought the car to drive it not have it drive me, and the adaptive cruise for when i am lazy I trust almost entirely (well as much as i trust any gizmo anyway, its not done anything stupid yet at least.)

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Yeah that was more of a Bosch screw up at 21MY so the 3D camera was added to the cars for free whilst steering assist was re-engineered for the single camera. The way it took effort away when doing France a few years ago was impressive.

 

[SKILL]

Its usually the case of unsafe drivers get upset when the car calls them out via ADAS. Ghost overtakes etc when they wait till last minute to pull out and then get upset the car thought they were having a crash. Or people who hold the steering wheel with their little finger and wonder why the lane assist is 'throwing them off the road'

I assume that was aimed at me? Nice assumption about my driving along with making up some irrelevant BS for added goodness, great post!

 

[Simon]

I assume that was aimed at me? Nice assumption about my driving along with making up some irrelevant BS for added goodness, great post!

Didnt aim at anyone. Sorry if you thought I meant you.

 

[Kenai]

Its usually the case of unsafe drivers get upset when the car calls them out via ADAS.

Did always make me smile that people on the Octavia owners groups when I had my vRS would throw a strop that lane assist would go mad around town and residential roads, seemingly unaware it didn't operate below nearly 40mph - perhaps if they weren't blatting around residential roads at 40mph+ they wouldn't have had so many issues with it

 

[Mekrel]

I've never understood the frustration with driving assists. My car has Lvl 2 ADAS and any unintended consequences are minor. I'll feel a slight resistance on the steering wheel if I'm far over in the lane to go around an obstacle - but people will tell you they're fighting the steering wheel. The only other 'issue' is it warning me there's a pedestrian in the road when actually they're on a pavement ahead of me because I'm approaching a bend - just a warning tone and no braking.

I guess it does depend on the car though. The S-Class I had for ~4 weeks would slam the brakes on if it thought I was getting too close to something when parking - the first time it happened I thought I had hit something it jolted so hard, even though I was reversing down a road so nothing to reverse into. It was some bins to the side of the road that I wasn't anywhere close to hitting that triggered it. I only learned this happened about a week later when parking in an end bay that was lined by a small fence and again, it slammed the anchors on (the pedal disappears from under my foot as I was reversing back under the idle turn of the engine).

 

[bigmike20vt]

surely you answered your own question in your 2nd paragraph?

 

[lordrobs]

surely you answered your own question in your 2nd paragraph?

Exactly. LKA on my Poxhall will jerk the wheel towards oncoming traffic to avoid a tar line on the road. It may be totally fine for 99% of the miles that I do but the 1% is enough for me to say it is a **** system. I'm far from the best driver in the world but I managed 25 years of keeping myself in lane without flawed ADAS intervention.

 

[Haggisman]

Mine is mostly fine, but a couple of roads near me which split into 2 lanes where the car will invariably try to swerve me into the right hand lane when I'm trying to actually stick to the left, but the worst is on narrow twisty NSL roads where it's a coin toss as to whether it will try to put me into a hedge or an oncoming vehicle

 

[Mekrel]

surely you answered your own question in your 2nd paragraph?

Which I alluded to buy saying I guess it depends on the car. Although in Mercedes example, that seems more a ridiculous manufacturer specific "feature", rather than being part of a typical ADAS Level requirement.

Automatic braking to avoid a collision with what's in front of you makes sense, automatic braking when reverse parking at low speeds doesn't imo.

 

[m4rmite]

Which I alluded to buy saying I guess it depends on the car. Although in Mercedes example, that seems more a ridiculous manufacturer specific "feature", rather than being part of a typical ADAS Level requirement.

Automatic braking to avoid a collision with what's in front of you makes sense, automatic braking when reverse parking at low speeds doesn't imo.

Have you ever noticed how many cars have a lump in their bumpers, right next to a reversing sensor?
It always makes me wonder how.