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I'm just back from a 500-mile cross-Florida road-trip. Here are my impressions:
#1 - I really like the adaptive cruise control. It worked flawlessly in most situations and feels trustworthy enough to be relaxing to use -- even more relaxing in fact than me regulating the speed. The only time it seemed to stumble was when I had it set for something like 75 mph on a multi-lane highway and came up on a car doing 65. Sometimes if I slid into the left passing lane just behind another car that was also passing it might not blend in in an ideal manner. Sometimes it would slow abruptly in the passing lane to maintain the preset travelling distance (now behind the passing car) which could alarm the person behind me that was also passing. Admittedly this is a somewhat complex (though common) maneuver – merging into the flow of a train of cars passing a slower one.
#2 - Drive Pilot is fun to play with but far too unreliable to turn it on and just sit back and relax. It ping pongs a bit when you first turn it on but does seem to settle down quickly in the center lane so that is good. And I acknowledge part of the problem is trust and personal comfort level (some here really like this feature). I did find that if I allow the car to steer while a drum my fingers on the wheel (find the right song) and remain at the ready it's pretty good. But then I might pass an exit ramp and have the car drift too far right for comfort.
#2A - Using the turn signal to change lanes while Drive Pilot is on works pretty well most of the time but, here again, it only had to scare me once (it started by gliding left comfortable and then suddenly went diving for the far left edge of the target lane – I manually swerved right to adjust). After that I was not comfortable using it without being on "full alert" so it was much easier to simply do the lane change manually.
#3 - The car is super smooth and quiet at highway speeds. That said the interior sound at higher speeds is not zero. I measured about 78 db when doing 80 using a free iPhone download sound meter (which may not be that accurate). Of course road surface type has a big impact on noise level since most of the noise seems to be tire related rather than wind related.
#4 - The lane keeping system (not Drive Pilot) is far too sensitive. On multiple occasions it alarmingly braked and shoved me right or left if I got too close to the solid line marking the road edge. I dead that happening when someone idiot is tailgating me at highway speeds.
#5 - The seats are very very comfortable.
#6 - The nav sys is very good at correctly recognizing a spoken address – nearly 100%. And I find the controls interface pretty easy to master. I do wish more street names would show when you zoom way in. And the sys is hit or miss using voice commands to find a specific store (CVS, Starbucks, Church’s Chicken, etc.) sometimes it is spot on and other times it is not even close.
#7 – I have yet to be able to get the self-parking feature to work.
#8 – I love that the seat hugs me on every turn or curve!
#9 - The massage feature is far too wimpy to be useful. If you have ever tried one of those $3,000 Japanese massage chairs (or $100 Korean girls) that is what it should be like.
#10 – Trunk opening with a kick, HOLD feature at stop lights, reading the speed limits (Speed pilot) and ability to adjust the passenger seat from the driver side are all awesome).
#11 – I actually found the HUD display distracting and turned it off. And you can barely see it with polarized sunglasses on.
#12 – The auto-stop/start feature is annoying and way too noisy.
#13 - The scent canister in the glove box is a huge waste of space.
#14 – The fact that you cannot use the car’s nav sys or many other features if you engage Apple CarPlay is idiotic.
Bottom line? I love the car. Not perfect but no car ever is. Extremely comfortable, handles real well, I love all the tech and safety features, the sound sys is awesome (even plays videos when in park) and the interior is stunning (the exterior is a little bland).
Last edited by Sunrose305; 06-03-2017 at 08:03 PM.
Glad you are enjoying the car I concur with almost your impressions. The self parking feature is fidgety, but Im starting to work it out. When you enter the area you're looking for parking press the button follow the instructions from there. Its still much faster to park yourself.
#4 - The lane keeping system (not Drive Pilot) is far too sensitive. On multiple occasions it alarmingly braked and shoved me right or left if I got too close to the solid line marking the road edge. I dead that happening when someone idiot is tailgating me at highway speeds.
great write up, thanks.
Can you turn off things like Automatic Braking and Lane Keeping?
I almost got into a crash a few days ago because the traffic in front of me suddenly and violently came to an abrupt stop. as i kept driving i actually saw a friend of mine a few cars up and at a stoplight we talked -- turned out her Audi's emergency braking engaged to reasons unknown to her.
Can you turn off things like Automatic Braking and Lane Keeping?
Lane Keeping Assist definitely worries me a bit. I have yet to turn it off but you you can as per below. It's the button right next to the one that turns on and off the Steering Pilot feature. What I am not sure of is will Steering Pilot work of you turn off LKA? As for Automatic Braking ("Distance Pilot DISTRONIC") as best I can tell that comes on automatically when you activate the cruise control system. Not sure if you can turn on cruise control without the automatic braking. Note that the automatic braking function is the one feature that seems to work really well and never does worrisome things. Also note that there is yet another braking system called "Active Brake Assist" that will warn you of an impending collision and even put the brakes on autonomously if you don't. The E300 has so much overlapping technology that even after owning the car for two months I am still only just beginning to learn about it all. Definitely confusing. I wish there were more learning videos from MB.
Last edited by Sunrose305; 06-05-2017 at 01:33 PM.
I keep the lane keeping assist off as well. Its annoying and otherwise useless. All it does is vibrate whenever you touch a line. All other self steering functions are still active and controlled by a separate button (the one with the steering wheel). I only turn it on, if I remember, on looong highway drives.
The only times lane assist has actively braked the car to keep me in lane have been in narrow UK back country lanes where the lane is only a few inches wider than the car, when crossing lanes of multi lane highways where roadworks force force all traffic to cross lanes (i..e. where cones are out to mark the lanes but usual lane markings are still visible) and couple times when I've forgotten to indicate when changing lane. All are fair enough and the system is just trying to do its job.
I do frequently get the rumbles come on, usually on narrow winding roads, but sometimes that's because I have drifted a little over to the passenger side so I don't mind the little reminder.
If the system is working too frequently, check its set to dynamic rather than standard, I think they tries to minimise alarms based on what it thinks you're trying to do.
Three things jump out at me from that. First, wow are there some major fanboys on that board. That or they are deluded. Second, AP2 sounds downright dangerous, surprised it's allowed out in the wild in that condition. Third, they appear to have far worse errant behavior than we have with our systems. AP2 is likely to self steer for longer and through, perhaps, conditions which drive pilot can't cope with, but I'd rather reduced functionality and avoid such alarming near accidents that their system is giving them (even if it's only a small minority).
To me, swerving across the road at 80mph is risking a catastrophic accident, that is, one involving death of majority of occupants/total loss of car. That's irrespective of the cop out clause of the driver needing to be in control. I think there's a big difference between drive pilot failings of not following a bend or lane assist kicking in when not needed (which are easy to recover from) versus strong or deliberate sideways steering on an otherwise straight road (which would take a lot is concentration to react to quickly enough on narrow highways).
Whatever is the cause of that swerve/loss of control, in aircraft industry it would have to be demonstrated that it would occur no more often than once every 1,000,000,000 flying hours (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_25.1309-1) on the basis it is catastrophic. You could argue that ramming a car at 80mph may not lead to deaths but I'd not fancy trying it to find! If we assume a typical Tesla is driven for 2 hours per day (that's more than the average UK commute, I'm guessing America is a little higher) and they do that every day of the year, you'd need over 1.3 million Tesla's on the road to encounter such an incident once a year. They've got not much over 200,000 cars on the road, not all of which have autopilot and not all of which can/could use it for all of their daily drive. So perhaps they are getting, generously, 100,000 hours of AP operation per year. So really, they should be incident free for 13 years. So to see so many people, on just one thread, say they've narrowly avoided accidents is pretty alarming.
Maybe I'm just expecting too much coming from aero industry but it's genuinely amazing to me that they are allowed a bloody public beta test like this in the hands of Joe public. We have to jump though considerable hoops to get flight approval for test aircraft, did Tesla just have to write their name at the top of the page (I jest, clearly they'll have had to show some level of safety but whatever height that bar is set at, it's way too low imo).
As with Mercedes the assumption (and caveat) in the operating guide is the the driver remains in control at all times with a warning if hands are removed from the steering wheel for a certain mount of time. If the driver doesn't follow the rules, that is the driver's problem, not the manufacturer's. The MB operator's manual is full of valuable legal informing one of things of which to be aware and how to proceed safely.
The above fine print is brought to you by the suppressed lawyer in me.
As with Mercedes the assumption (and caveat) in the operating guide is the the driver remains in control at all times with a warning if hands are removed from the steering wheel for a certain mount of time. If the driver doesn't follow the rules, that is the driver's problem, not the manufacturer's. The MB operator's manual is full of valuable legal informing one of things of which to be aware and how to proceed safely.
The above fine print is brought to you by the suppressed lawyer in me.
Level 2 cars do indeed require you to be hands on at all times but that doesn't mean the car is free to yank you across the road with no warning. Failing to follow a lane as it curves is easy enough to correct but the car quickly and deliberatly steering out of lane, as the Tesla owners said happened, is quite a different issue. Passive failures can easily be controlled but these active failures, where concerted effort is needed by the driver to fight the car, surely can't be underwritten by "the driver's in charge"!
I doubt a steering system in a conventional car would ever be verified as safe for public use if a typical failure mode meant it failed hard over. But that's sort of what they say is happening with their cars.
If a driver is gripping the wheel as they should, the automated systems are not strong enough to override the driver.
Flawed logic that wouldn't pass any safety argument. If you're saying the driver always grips the steering, and the driver's grip generates more torque than the system can generate, the system can therefore never operate hence rendering it completely useless.
So, we're back to the situation where the driver has only a light grip, allowing the system to steer. This is what level 2 cars do and how they should be treated. And it's on that basis I made my earlier statement that passive failures, those where the system fails to do something are easier to deal with than active failures, where the system purposefully does something contrary to expectation. You drift out of lane, it's relatively slow hence a reasonably alert driver would be reasonably likely to react and correct in a safe manner. A rapid change of lane, induced by positive and unwanted application of steering torque by the system would occur too quickly to rely on the reasonable skill/alertness argument. That's akin to sudden and very strong cross winds and plenty of accidents happen as a result of those highlighting how poor a typical driver's reaction is.
I do agree with Volvo and other manufacturers insomuch as we should never have level 3 cars (crazy flawed logic, why sae ever thought it was a sensible stepping stone is beyond me) and level 4 cars should be very tightly controlled as to where and when they operate in that mode (i.e. don't allow systems to be engaged in roads or conditions for which the system isn't verified as level 4 - you can keep drive pilot on through right s bends in the dark in snow when the system sure as hell can't handle it. A level 4 car should never engage at all in such conditions unless it really can take over driving completely for you).
I grip the wheel with medium force at all times. If there is unexpected torque in the wheel, I immediately (1 or 2 ms) strengthen my grip. That's how muscle memory works. I agree there are lots of people driving who don't have the appropriate skill set because they have never been properly trained. Everyone with a drivers license should be required to take recurrent defensive driving training just as other licensed activities require.
I grip the wheel with medium force at all times. If there is unexpected torque in the wheel, I immediately (1 or 2 ms) strengthen my grip. That's how muscle memory works. I agree there are lots of people driving who don't have the appropriate skill set because they have never been properly trained. Everyone with a drivers license should be required to take recurrent defensive driving training just as other licensed activities require.
1 or 2 ms? Even for well learnt skills you're off by two orders of magnitude there. Perhaps your muscles in your hands contract once commanded to in that time, but for your brain to detect an unusual condition in the cars behavior and decide the appropriate response more like 130 to 260 ms will have passed by. And that's of course if you're paying attention, which drive pilot/ap tends to significantly suppress, lengthening reaction time accordingly.
Yes, I used the wrong abbreviation. My reaction time varies between .15 and .20 seconds to light stimuli as measured during my last complete physical. That's 150 to 200 milliseconds.
If one is not paying attention to their driving, they are a menace.
Flawed logic that wouldn't pass any safety argument. If you're saying the driver always grips the steering, and the driver's grip generates more torque than the system can generate, the system can therefore never operate hence rendering it completely useless.
So, we're back to the situation where the driver has only a light grip, allowing the system to steer. This is what level 2 cars do and how they should be treated. And it's on that basis I made my earlier statement that passive failures, those where the system fails to do something are easier to deal with than active failures, where the system purposefully does something contrary to expectation. You drift out of lane, it's relatively slow hence a reasonably alert driver would be reasonably likely to react and correct in a safe manner. A rapid change of lane, induced by positive and unwanted application of steering torque by the system would occur too quickly to rely on the reasonable skill/alertness argument. That's akin to sudden and very strong cross winds and plenty of accidents happen as a result of those highlighting how poor a typical driver's reaction is.
I do agree with Volvo and other manufacturers insomuch as we should never have level 3 cars (crazy flawed logic, why sae ever thought it was a sensible stepping stone is beyond me) and level 4 cars should be very tightly controlled as to where and when they operate in that mode (i.e. don't allow systems to be engaged in roads or conditions for which the system isn't verified as level 4 - you can keep drive pilot on through right s bends in the dark in snow when the system sure as hell can't handle it. A level 4 car should never engage at all in such conditions unless it really can take over driving completely for you).
Sorry for not reading the entire thread,
but my experience is this the system can apply torque but its limited and as soon as you grab the wheel you are in control it takes very little input at all. If Im doing the look mom no hands thing and the system beeps to get my hands back on, putting a firm fingertip on the wheel will let the system continue in auto mode. I have no illusions about the systems performance given that it "loses its way" at any moment. I always keep my hands on the wheel. Even the autocruise, as good as it is, will rarely stop too late requiring you to stomp the brakes. As I have pointed out before any notion of a viable self driving car in the foreseeable future is still simple BS, given the limitations of computing power and sensors. What people don't realize is that driving a car on a city street is orders of magnitude more difficult that piloting an airplane at 600 mph in a mostly empty sky. Even systems with 360 lidar (still experimental) are barely better than an amoeba at getting around. We think they are better than they are because our brain can interpret the artificial representation of the surroundings that a Lidar sensor creates but to a stupid computer it means exactly squat. In effect unless someone tells the computer that an elm and a pine are both trees it might just think one is a giant traffic cone and the other one is a gigantic duster. The amount of information that a biologic brain uses to recognize anything is immense; color, size, touch smell, contour even emotion all are used to navigate in the real world and all happen automatically and basically instantly in organic systems. Computers are still just very fast adding machines, good at what they do, but hampered by the lack of 4 billion years of trial and error.
I don't disagree with your sentiment at all though whilst binary computers are only good at 1 plus 1 form of calculations self driving tech is using deep learning where the system teaches itself. You no longer specify that the object in view is tree of type A, you let it learn what attributes makes a tree a tree and then it can recognise pretty much any tree you show it after that. It's a fascinating field and one beyond my comprehension but I expect improvement in driving aids will be exponential over the next 10 to 15 years.
I don't disagree with your sentiment at all though whilst binary computers are only good at 1 plus 1 form of calculations self driving tech is using deep learning where the system teaches itself. You no longer specify that the object in view is tree of type A, you let it learn what attributes makes a tree a tree and then it can recognise pretty much any tree you show it after that. It's a fascinating field and one beyond my comprehension but I expect improvement in driving aids will be exponential over the next 10 to 15 years.
I agree but I think one primordial issues is that computer people of the highest caliber have no idea of how truly complicated object recognition is. Reductionist efforts to try to reduce an ever changing three dimensional world into on and off are extraordinarily difficult and to put it mildly our knowledge of the biological basis of it are pretty primitive. For example they are billions of neurons all of which are interconnected to each other by electrical, chemical and hormonal. And mind you not, not a single one of those is redundant they all work in concert! Its amazing and beautiful all at once. The brain of a snail makes the entire internet seem stupid as far as simply "slugging" on the ground through the forest is concerned.
06-03-2017, 07:16 PM
