Discuss: Tesla to Remove Steering Wheel Nag This Month

[Not a Tesla App]

Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla vehicles will no longer require the driver to apply force to the wheel when using FSD beta.… Read More

Tesla to Remove Steering Wheel Nag This Month

Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla vehicles will no longer require the driver to apply force to the wheel when using FSD beta.

www.notateslaapp.com

 

[Kiwi]

It may come in January, but who knows the year

 

[Ekendahl]

I think this is what the radar leak is about. Possible upgrade to track attentiveness of driver and with high res internal radar you don’t get nag as long as you are attentive.

 

[ameal]

I sincerely hope this is true. I can never keep the nag silenced or over-apply torque and cancel out FSD. I just have an older model Tesla and hope the featured update will include my car as well.

 

[CJL]

Why not for any level of Autopilot if you have Tesla Vision??

 

[PrescottAZRichard]

I sincerely hope this is true. I can never keep the nag silenced or over-apply torque and cancel out FSD. I just have an older model Tesla and hope the featured update will include my car as well.

Depending on where you steering wheel is you might try this- With my foot in front of the accel pedal I can lightly touch my thigh to the steering wheel to register without disengaging FSD or AP. My foot is ready to stomp on the pedal if needed . That works well in my Y, but it does take some practice I guess.

 

[Hagg6]

"Since Autopilot was first introduced in 2014, it has relied on the application of force as a sign of driver attentiveness."

Not quite true. Autopilot was released in 2014 but autosteer didn't come until the next year. The messages to hold the steering wheel were not nags, and were not there to see if a driver was paying attention (even now, it's possible to hold the wheel while not paying attention) but were designed to appear in situations such as curves where the car was less certain of the road ahead and where there was more likelihood that a driver would need to take over.

Shortly after that, all sorts of videos started to appear with drivers intentionally not paying attention and not holding the wheel as their startled passengers looked on. Tesla changed the system and abandoned the promise of "hands free driving from on ramp to off ramp" and started putting up messages to hold the wheel at random times every few minutes, even though nothing on the road triggered them.

As a handful of drivers abused the system and were highly visible about it, Tesla started to claim that those who were not holding the wheel were responsible for accidents because they were expected to take over. And those who were holding the wheel were responsible for accidents because they were in control of the car. It was the driver's fault no matter what, but regulatory agencies seemed appeased when Tesla made the nag more frequent.

Some drivers figured out that adding weights helped, and never claimed to be doing it so they wouldn't have to pay attention. But people who accepted that cruise control was safe without a driver's foot hovering over the brake pedal couldn't accept that the car was safe without a driver having physical contact with the wheel, even though there was never any evidence that drivers who held the wheel either paid more attention or had fewer accidents.

Then Tesla added a camera, and as competitors monitored the driver's eyes instead of relying on torque on the steering wheel, Tesla left the nag in place. Cameras actually check to see if the driver is watching the road, and should give a message on the screen if a driver is looking at the screen instead of watching the road. But this time around, drivers will be better off watching the road instead of looking at the screen so they can react to a nag faster to avoid losing Autopilot.

 

[henryfarkas]

There's a problem with not holding the steering wheel. When you need to take over the steering, you need to take over immediately. You usually have less than one second to correct Autopilot's mistake. It'll save you two tenths of that second if your hands are already on the wheel. This is especially true if you are hands off with the yoke steering since you can't just grab for the wheel without looking and expect to actually catch it and take control since you won't know exactly where the yoke is at any given time.

There's also the place where your foot should be hovering. I need to hover my foot over the accelerator rather than the brake. The phantom braking, which needs to be corrected immediately in order to avoid being rear-ended is much more frequent than any event that needs immediate braking.

 

[Hagg6]

There's a problem with not holding the steering wheel. When you need to take over the steering, you need to take over immediately. You usually have less than one second to correct Autopilot's mistake. It'll save you two tenths of that second if your hands are already on the wheel. This is especially true if you are hands off with the yoke steering since you can't just grab for the wheel without looking and expect to actually catch it and take control since you won't know exactly where the yoke is at any given time.

There's also the place where your foot should be hovering. I need to hover my foot over the accelerator rather than the brake. The phantom braking, which needs to be corrected immediately in order to avoid being rear-ended is much more frequent than any event that needs immediate braking.

Not true at all. For the types of things that need immediate responses, those are the types of things that ADAS handles far better than people. For things that Autopilot isn't designed to handle, there's going to be plenty of time to take over for anybody paying attention. And people not paying attention aren't going to take over. Reaction time is the big factor, but it's not an issue when taking over for Autopilot. In almost all of the high profile accidents involving Autopilot, the one thing the car did right was stay on course.

 

[VoodooPriest]

I keep a hand gently on the steering wheel but do a quick volume increase/decrease by 1-click to dismiss the nag. Much easier than jiggling the wheel, and you don't notice the increase/decrease on any audio playing.

 

[mvlaun]

I have two issues with the nag. First, there are times when I feel like it's alerting me every 10 seconds, and that seems to be true whether I am touching the wheel or not. At other times, I think it will go for several minutes. Second, it often nags whiles in the middle of a maneuver. We have a lot of traffic circles in my area, and FSD is surprisingly good at navigating them, but it takes a lot of movement in the wheel and if I touch the wheel at all it will generally disengage FSD. I do not think the nag does anything to add to the safety of the car or my driving. I still think FSD is better than most drivers in Florida!

 

[Hagg6]

I have two issues with the nag. First, there are times when I feel like it's alerting me every 10 seconds, and that seems to be true whether I am touching the wheel or not. At other times, I think it will go for several minutes. Second, it often nags whiles in the middle of a maneuver. We have a lot of traffic circles in my area, and FSD is surprisingly good at navigating them, but it takes a lot of movement in the wheel and if I touch the wheel at all it will generally disengage FSD. I do not think the nag does anything to add to the safety of the car or my driving. I still think FSD is better than most drivers in Florida!

Agreed. It's safer to watch the road than to look for nag messages. It's safer to hold the wheel loosely than to put pressure in the wrong direction, since it's quicker to react. And when the action needed to let the car know that you are holding the wheel is the same as the one needed to disengage Autopilot, it's absurd.

There's no way to hold the wheel firmly when the car is about to make a right turn and will suddenly turn the wheel rapidly. A human driver would need to move hands repeatedly during the maneuver when driving manually. If it literally can't be done without letting go of the wheel to move your hands, then you can't hold the wheel and let the car do it without autosteer disengaging.

 

[mvlaun]

Agreed. It's safer to watch the road than to look for nag messages. It's safer to hold the wheel loosely than to put pressure in the wrong direction, since it's quicker to react. And when the action needed to let the car know that you are holding the wheel is the same as the one needed to disengage Autopilot, it's absurd.

There's no way to hold the wheel firmly when the car is about to make a right turn and will suddenly turn the wheel rapidly. A human driver would need to move hands repeatedly during the maneuver when driving manually. If it literally can't be done without letting go of the wheel to move your hands, then you can't hold the wheel and let the car do it without autosteer disengaging.

100% on road safety! I really don't like that the nag is hidden at the bottom corner of my screen down by the radio station/music widget. And, by the time you get the blue flash at the top, it pretty quickly goes ballistic. I got my only strike so far in a traffic circle where I was busy trying to monitor how we were doing on the important stuff like not hitting things, and wasn't paying attention to the screen. I don't know about the S or X (maybe they get the nag in front of the wheel), but the nag on my M3 is kind of hidden.

 

[Hagg6]

100% on road safety! I really don't like that the nag is hidden at the bottom corner of my screen down by the radio station/music widget. And, by the time you get the blue flash at the top, it pretty quickly goes ballistic. I got my only strike so far in a traffic circle where I was busy trying to monitor how we were doing on the important stuff like not hitting things, and wasn't paying attention to the screen. I don't know about the S or X (maybe they get the nag in front of the wheel), but the nag on my M3 is kind of hidden.

Yes, the worst possible time for the nag is in the middle of something like a lane change, where no driver should be looking at the screen. That's the worst time for autosteer to wait until it thinks that someone is holding the wheel, and the only practical and least distracting way to handle it is to disengage autosteer. If the car can accept that my hands are on the wheel when I fiddle with a knob, it should accept the same thing if I use the turn signal lever.

 

[silversam]

"Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla vehicles will no longer require the driver to apply force to the wheel while using FSD Beta." That is a really dangerous line following the headline and starting the article as all those who just read the first parts of articles could get the wrong impression. The fact is they still do require steering wheel attention now but talk of this requirement changing in the future is what the focus should be on, not now, in the future!

 

[Hagg6]

What they require is paying attention to the road. I don't know what "steering wheel attention" is because you don't need to be paying attention to anything in order to hold a steering wheel. If you do hold it, and the car tries to make a turn, autosteer disengages.