[Waterluvian]

I have a 2020 Forester and I've come to describing it as "I no-longer drive on the highway, I manage the car." Sometimes I'll get nervous and take over. But even in stop-and-go traffic, it has behaved perfectly.

My only complaint is that there's an over-eager PID loop with lane keeping. If I want to pass a transport truck and want to kind of edge to the left of my lane when doing so, it will keep trying to compensate, which I can feel in the wheel, so I compensate for as well. And if I let go of the wheel and let it win, it suddenly flings me towards the right side of the lane.

I suspect this is because it isn't programmed to think that I'm making adjustments, it probably just thinks there's some weirdness in the vehicle dynamics/road characteristics that requires extra compensation.

[shade]

I have a 2023 Crosstrek, my wife has a '21 Ascent. I have the same habit you do - edging away from large trucks slightly - and both of them do the same thing you described to me.

It's essentially that Subaru's lane system actually has two levels: it has lane keeping where it's just trying to keep you inside the lines, and then on top of that it also has lane centering which is pretty much what it says.

Just a note for you or anyone reading who has a recent Subaru and doesn't know already: if you find the centering really bothersome, you should be able to be able to go into the settings on the instrument cluster display (up/down arrows at the lower left behind the wheel, toggle it until you get to the "hold for settings" option), find the Eyesight settings, and turn off lane centering. It will still try to keep you inside the lane markers but won't try to park you right in the center of the lane. In that mode, it's more like the Honda Sensing system I had on my 2016 Civic.

I go back and forth a bit on it but mostly keep it in lane centering mode now - I've gotten used to how it positions the car in the lane, and it lets me focus more on what's going on around me than micromanaging lane position and such.

[tzs]

> It's essentially that Subaru's lane system actually has two levels: it has lane keeping where it's just trying to keep you inside the lines, and then on top of that it also has lane centering which is pretty much what it says.

Same with Hyundai except they call them "Lane Keeping Assist" (LKA) and "Lane Following Assist" (LFA) and I have trouble remembering which one centers you and which one just keeps you from leaving the lane.

To me just based on the names I'd have expected keeping to be the one that actively positions you (it keeps you centered) and following to the one that just reacts when you are going to depart the lane (it keeps you following the lane).

Mostly now I just remember that the one that comes on automatically any time I'm going 40+ mph is the reactive one, and the one that I have to explicitly turn on is the centering one (although both come on automatically on certain highways based on data from the navigation system).

[rraihansaputra]

idk whether subaru is exact the same as hyundai but i basically turned lane centering off on my hyundai. when possible i only use radar cruise control, and lane follow. if i want to overtake, turn on my signal and it'll automatically safely increase speed to set cc speed and let the lane follow off. it's pretty seamless.

lane centering is a bit too annoying for me, i need to keep my hands on the wheels anyway.

[fragmede]

> i need to keep my hands on the wheels anyway.

Alignments off. Not as bad as it used to be to get it done.

[grep_name]

> I have a 2020 Forester and I've come to describing it as "I no-longer drive on the highway, I manage the car." Sometimes I'll get nervous and take over. But even in stop-and-go traffic, it has behaved perfectly.

I drive an old beater from 2001, but... I really don't think I understand why people want these in-between not-quite-autopilot features? To me it's like, it would be one thing if you could completely turn your brain off, or look at your phone, or rest. But since you can't, it seems like this stuff makes it more difficult to pay the appropriate amount of attention? For me, if I'm already driving somewhere, and have to pay enough attention to know if an emergency is about to happen, I might as well just do the driving.

[flowerthoughts]

As a technologist, I like lane-keep assist because it feels fundamentally more right that my car by default follows the road than keeps going with the turn radius I had previously input.

Cruise control with minimum distance helps me keep a sound distance even as other cars keep packing up and reducing distances on a busy highway. My previous car (Mercedes) was great at detecting if a new car coming in front of me was accelerating, if so it didn't adjust the distance as aggressively. Much better behavior than my current Kia.

Auto-break features are sweet as they react really fast. If that can avoid deploying an airbag in my face, I'm all for it.

I agree it's a lot like managing, with six buttons just to do the above, but from a bottom-up approach, each feature has value in its own right.

> For me, if I'm already driving somewhere, and have to pay enough attention to know if an emergency is about to happen, I might as well just do the driving.

Where do you draw the line? Would you prefer not having a steering and brake servo? Would you prefer sticking out your arms instead of having flashing lights? Would you prefer feeling every bump in the road to having suspension?

To me these systems just feel like natural evolution of the car concept, something that's been going on for 120 years. What Tesla failed at was putting their heads in the clouds and hoping something awesome would eventually pop out the other end. While the established car makers did incremental improvements.

[seszett]

> it feels fundamentally more right that my car by default follows the road than keeps going with the turn radius I had previously input.

A car shouldn't "keep the turn radius", they normally drive straight by default. The forces acting on the wheels do that automatically.

It doesn't seem like a wrong thing, to me.

> Where do you draw the line?

I think the line is quite obvious between the physical comfort features and the mentally disengaging features.

[flowerthoughts]

GP said s/he didn't understand why anyone would want these in-betweens. I gave an explanation as to why.

Based on what you're saying, it seems the divide arises from some drivers classifying these features as physical comfort, and some as mentally disengaging.

[hdjdndbdj]

The cognitive load is greatly reduced when using these features. Honestly, adaptive cruise control in the city is a godsend. Not having to deal with watching speed . start and stop traffic is also automated for me. Driving on a highway is also great .. You can drive much further without needing a break.

[seec]

Same. Even cruise control is kind of useless because people in front of you don't necessarily use it and are very inconsistent in their speed. So you end up constantly having to engage/disengage, rendering the whole thing moot.

I think something like autopilot could be implemented at the infrastructure level (sensors and emitters along the road), but people wouldn't like that because it would mean being unable to set your speed or overtake. The car exists for "freedom," but it is really an inefficient mode of transportation from both a time-use and energy-use perspective.

What we really need is a mix between rail/train and car/road.

[lbreakjai]

To your first point, that's what adaptive cruise control does. It will slow you down to maintain a gap with the car in front of you.

[scruple]

ACC generally has a 3-4 second time interval that it permits between you and the car in front of you. I live in SoCal, so a lot of my driving is on very aggressive routes. The 4-second gap is mechanically safe but it's practically unusable because it creates a void large enough to invite other cars to lane change in front of me. So when that car merges in, the ACC detects a violation of the safe braking distance and decelerates to reestablish the gap. I call it the "cut me off" loop when we're on trips.

And before anyone suggests that I start tinkering around with the settings, I have adjusted it and the damned thing just resets itself constantly.

[fragmede]

The beauty of ACC is it lets your disengage mentally. You can be aggro if you want to with it on, but I found it's just not emotionally worth it to get mad at being cut off anymore in a car with ACC. ACC just handles going forwards and I'm not having to touch gas nor brake. If I'm not touching either, I don't have to panic react to getting cut-off, just make sure the ACC is handling it, and if that's all I need to check, vs slam on the brakes, then eh.

[seec]

Ah yes, I never used that. My car isn't very recent (about 10 years old now), and I drive very little (about 2-3k per year; I take the train to go anywhere far) because I hate it. But the adaptive part would make it much more useful indeed.

However, something that is extremely annoying in France is that speed limits tend to change very often and abruptly. I just think that trying to solve the problem solely at the car level is always going to have too many limitations...

[Waterluvian]

The base 2020 Forester has adaptive cruise control.

[closeparen]

I prefer to steer, but radar cruise control takes a lot of the frustration out of minor speed fluctuations in front of me on the highway. I don’t feel as much need to pass all the time.

[nwienert]

Have a EX90 I got on a really great deal, we drove it cross-country and it was mind-blowing how little I had to do. If it didn't make you touch the wheel / pay attention we could have basically done the entire trip without incident minus off-ramps.

But there was one thing that was quite bad, similar to yours. While passing a semi I pulled it to the left side and it actually yanked us right so hard and then over-corrected once again. Super scary moment, the only issue of the whole trip, but basically never passed with it on again.

[fartfaceMcgee]

How you like that car? I test drove an early model that was really a pre-release dealer demo. It was a great ride but I also didnt get to do a whole lot with the sales guy next to me and a tight deadline to get back home.

[nwienert]

Made me want to invest in Volvo. They fixed most of the software issues, what's left is a shockingly nice experience. Touch screen can be a bit annoying is all, but Google integration and design of the UX in the touchscreen is really good.

[Chilinot]

My volvo also has a "not perfectly tuned" PID loop. With "autopilot" engaged it keeps weaving constantly left and right inside the lane im in. Have gotten used to keeping a firm-ish pressure on the steering wheel at all times to compensate. But drivers behind me must have thought me drunk before i got the hang of it.

[sizzle]

This is lane keep assist not lane centering and dangerous to use as a lane centering feature as it’s not designed to do that hence the ping ponging behavior

[Chilinot]

Lane keep assist is always enabled, this "copilot" or whatever it's called is an extra feature i can manually enable over the default lane assist. And it will steer and follow the road quite well in most conditions. But sometimes it starts the ping pong behaviour.

Should also be noted that i never take my hands of the wheel. And the volvo is quite fast at beeping at me if it detects that i dont hang onto the wheel.

[therealpygon]

Don’t most of these systems release the lane-keeping when you turn on the turn signal? Does yours not, or do you not signal until you are trying to exit the lane? (Genuinely asking.)

[Waterluvian]

I’m not trying to exit the lane. I’m hugging the left side of my lane as I drive past a transport truck.