‘Lane assist’ – how do I switch it off?

One thing that the i4 has that I have been surprised to find is really good is “adaptive regeneration”.

Essentially the car judges how much regen (which feels to driver like engine braking when you lift off the throttle) is needed in any given situation. So with a clear road ahead and doing at or lower than the speed limit there is very little – lift off and the car just coasts. If there is a bend coming up, a speed limit change, or (very usefully) a car ahead then it increases the regen (equivalent behaviour to dropping down a gear or two to increase engine braking).    This works brilliantly on a motorway, as if you’re a bit close to the car in front just lift off and the car slows down until it’s a decent distance away.   It’s good enough I leave this system on 95% of the time. It “just works” and when it’s turned off I miss it.

For comparison the ETron I had before the i4 also had adaptive regen, but that was terrible – not predictable at all and I switched it off pretty quickly. Proof that these “assistance” systems aren’t necessarily “all good” or “all bad” – how they are implemented makes a massive difference.

My A250e has a similar system. I leave it on all of the time. Only downside is when I drive my wife or my daughter’s cars, if have to remember they don’t have it.

So essentially you disagree with the car about how close is too close? Without seeing your driving, that could be either you or the car in the wrong

Was expecting that comment so no offence taken. My point was specifically about cars in front that are turning off into slip roads where no intervention is needed, not about being unable to sit 6 inches away from someone’s rear bumper at dual carriageway speeds for miles on end.
Car to car distance for cruise is adjustable but on anything other than its minimum, it leaves a big enough gap that encourages overtaking drivers to drop in between rather than just staying in outside lane. This in turn triggers the car to brake because it’s too close.
Only had the car a month and don’t drive on cruise control much, so I’m still learning how the car reacts to certain situations. It’s all context dependant though and the car acts on its rules no matter the situation.  In my original point, all it sees is the car in front getting closer. It can’t tell it also has its indicator on and is approaching a slip road. I can.

So essentially you disagree with the car about how close is too close? Without seeing your driving, that could be either you or the car in the wrong 🙂

Seeing as there’s an entire team of people, a good percentage of whom will have more driving experience, driving qualifications and track time than any of the driving gods on here, most likely by orders of magnitude, doing the design and test, along with a bunch of software and system designers and architects (like me).

Then a load of safety and crash specialists with a deep understanding of how people and cars behave in and shortly before accidents and while driving generally, they’ll then come up with a sensible design based on how much risk the company is willing to take with customers (e.g. BMW you can adjust the range, they make a big deal about being marketed to driving gods, Volvo are a safety first company, so sit much further the other way along the bell curve. Audi are a tech company, so have 906 settings, 7 of which the average owner knows how to use.)

Then they stick all that together and give a system design and calibration that is 99% good for 99% of *their* customers.

Yes, some systems are shit on country lanes and in road works, it’s a matter of the tech lagging the legislation.

Then they stick all that together and give a system design and calibration that is 99% good for 99% of *their* customers.

Not going to bother commenting on the rest of your condescending post, but as far as the quote above goes, the car should work for 100% its drivers.

You know your stuff though and I do have a genuine question. Is the system calibration market dependant or is it a standard for a particular model? I ask, as where I live and drive the lane intervention can be a total liability. Some of the roads here narrower than single lanes on American highways. What works there doesn’t here. We also don’t have derestricted roads like Germany where I can see the bigger car gaps in adaptive cruise systems being necessary.

Thick fog.

I was waiting for that comment, thank you. 😁

I agree, but, that is surely easy to detect and build into the “auto” setting.

Not going to bother commenting on the rest of your condescending post, but as far as the quote above goes, the car should work for 100% its drivers.

Really? Nothing works perfectly for 100% of it’s users, even something as simple as a mug.

Condescending, probably, but a lot on here seem to think the whole thing is thrown together in 20 minutes before a coffee break. It’s not. It’s thousands of hours of design, analysis, coding and test to try and get it as good as possible for as many customers in as many scenarios as possible. The issue is, if we miss one scenario, or it isn’t very good, the few drivers that do that particular scenario *all the time* will complain about it *all the time*, the other 99% have no issues at all.

Is the system calibration market dependant or is it a standard for a particular model?

Depends on the system, market, hardware available (there are dozens of standards of sensors, probably as bad bottom brackets), how the hardware is installed, even a different angle of windscreen or height from the road might drive a changed calibration, or it might just get some new offsets, depending on the level of change.

Generally speaking though, every Passat in Europe will have the same calibration, a Golf will probably have the same, but a T-Roc or Tiguan will more likely not.

to try and get it as good as possible for as many customers in as many scenarios as possible.

It’s my observation from driving around various places in Europe that UK roads are a fairly unique challenge in Western Europe. Other countries have small roads but not usually as narrow, windy or just crappy as we do here when mixed in with other decent roads.

I can imagine in a country with universally poor roads the system would just not be available, but for the UK where most miles are done on decent roads, the 20% of miles that are done on inconsistent B or C roads might be an issue.

Hey @mert – do you know Minty?

I know two people who go by the nickname Minty. Neither of whom i’ve seen for probably 20 years.

Really? Nothing works perfectly for 100% of it’s users, even something as simple as a mug.

I agree, but as this tech is introduced, the majority of drivers are encountering it for the first time. It’s a case of going from being completely responsible for the way the car is driven (well or not) to the car making decisions for you. My last car had emergency braking. It never triggered or gave a warning in nearly 7 years of driving it. My new one has never triggered but has flashed a warning a few times in a month approaching stationary cars waiting at crossroads.
It can be a real shock at the wrong moment when the car tries to steer you into oncoming traffic on a narrow road when you are actively trying to avoid it. I may be in 1% of the drivers that need to change this but it doesn’t mean I don’t. Like you commented at least BMW allow us “driving gods” to tailor intervention levels. Although this car obviously thinks I’m a lot worse driver than my last car did.
Difficult to tell, as according to the STW driver stereotype generator, given my car choices I’m a Geriatric boy racer driving god, that parks on double yellow lines on the school run on her way to work at the hair salon, while tailgating other cars (in a safety conscious manner) that’s having a midlife crisis at 30.

Thousands of hours of development and it’s still shonky.

On the Octavia I had, the satnav only understood the first half of a postcode. So in the search bar you could enter say “BB5 0″… and beyond that it went “I don’t know what you mean?” But if instead you ignored the search and went to manually enter an address, then hit “city” on the form, then in the very bottom left corner of the on-screen keyboard was a button reading “P.Code” which cheerfully accepted a full postcode. I appreciate that this might make some form of sense in other territories which don’t have UK-format postcodes, but how in the actual **** did that system make it to the UK market?

I’m a card-carrying geek I’ve been driving since before all this stuff existed, and I’m struggling to recall any car I’ve ever driven in recent years where the ICE / “infotainment” system didn’t piss me off for some easily fixed reasons. One of the first ones I had was a Mondeo with “Converse+”, half of the features they promised came in with the facelift model and couldn’t easily be retrofitted.

I praise the gods for Android Auto bypassing the inbuilt bollocks but even then this stupid ****ing bastard of a thing connects maybe 80% of the time and the rest it throws an error which you cannot clear because “off” is no longer a thing so you’ve actually got to pretend to leave the car in order to reset the system.

I love technology. But in-car technology is rapidly catching up with printers for the gold medal in the “objects that are pricks” competition.

@whatgoesup – can you share your shortcut for the 2 clicks and off please ?  My i4 is incoming and i hate the lane assist in my son’s new Corsa so imagine I’ll want to put it off in the i4 too !

Cougar, you should try Mercedes, mine is the least egregious one I’ve used, with Toyota in second place.

I tried the radar/adaptive cruise control on our new to us VW tiguan for the first time the other day, I learnt that I really dont like trusting the car to slow down if the one in front does, I found it very unnerving , I probably just need to get used to it, but I dont think I want to.

Our other new to us car (both our cars were stolen in the same burglary recently), Toyota GR yaris, also has lane assist, auto braking/collision detect & radar cruise control . The lane assist is as annoying as it is on the VW, havent tried the radar cruise, but the collisiondetect hasnt come on yet, so that seems like a useful safety measure – or maybe its broken.

I’ve found BMW’s in car infotainment to be the best of all the ones I’ve tried in recent years, light years better than the others I have tried (ford,VW,Toyota), the ability to have a split screen sat nav with one side of the screen zoomed in for detail, and the otehr zoomed out for traffic jam awareness , and overall location awareness is great.

the ability to have a split screen sat nav with one side of the screen zoomed in for detail, and the otehr zoomed out for traffic jam awareness

My Toyota had that in 2006.

My Toyota had that in 2006.

they dont have it now – or least the corolla I borrowed recently doesnt have it. The current toyota nav (or the one in the corolla at least) is probably the joint worst I have used, low res screen, slow response times, crappy mostly touch only interface etc.

Car to car distance for cruise is adjustable but on anything other than its minimum, it leaves a big enough gap that encourages overtaking drivers to drop in between rather than just staying in outside lane. This in turn triggers the car to brake because it’s too close.

correct behaviour.  2 second rule.

the car I had with adaptive cruise control went far to close to the car in front – but it had been set to minimum.  I put it to max.  Even then it was barely 2 seconds.

Our Prius also had the best climate control I’ve used – it managed to pump out loads of cold air without getting any exposed body part cold, and it responded to driving into sunlight instantly.

I have never driven a lane assist car, what happens if you gaffa taped over the sensor? Would it go batshit?

It was me that resurrected this thread due to collecting a fleet car for the National Road Race Championships this weekend. The cars are now all liveried up with stickers, the top windscreen one which partially covers some of the sensor kit (can’t avoid it).

Every so often (usually in the middle of a turn or with an oncoming caravan etc demanding the drivers full attention), the dashboard will light up with “driver aids unavailable!” and several loud chimes.

It’s very annoying.

However the auto-hold feature is fantastic to the extent that when I got into another car without it, I was like “why am I rolling forwards…? Oh.”

I had a hire Toyota in the US with all the aids, and it got covered in caked on snow which had a similar effect.

@iainc – see this quick video https://youtube.com/shorts/eNcw8MmxxNU?feature=share

^^^ thanks

Its a pain in the arse ! I have a new Octavia VRS estate and the Mrs has a new Scala Monte Carlo and we have just got used to living with it turned on.

Its a pain in the arse ! I have a Octavia VRS estate (new in Jan) and the Mrs has a 6 week old Scala Monte Carlo and we have just got used to living with it turned on. It’s too much of a hassle to keep going into the menu to turn it off every time.

Possibly dumb questions.

I assume that the car will record when lane assist is turned off and this could be accessed in the case of an accident.

Is it likely that turning it off will make you be seen as contributing to the accident.

Also, if it’s on and steers you into something as per the comments about not always picking up lanes accurately, this would also be recorded so you would be able to claim against the manufacturer.

Is there any data anywhere that suggests lane assist has led to a reduction in injury accidents?

And of course has it contributed?

It seems like it’s been around long enough to give some indication

Possibly dumb questions.

I assume that the car will record when lane assist is turned off and this could be accessed in the case of an accident.

Is it likely that turning it off will make you be seen as contributing to the accident.

Also, if it’s on and steers you into something as per the comments about not always picking up lanes accurately, this would also be recorded so you would be able to claim against the manufacturer.

How often are there actual proper forensic investigations into collisions? Genuine question, I don’t know the answer myself. I mean, fatals, yes but even then isn’t it just a case of “was the driver drunk / on the phone…?” rather than a deep dive into the car computer system. Do they even have journey records, black box style?
Surely the more minor stuff with no injuries is just “let the insurance deal with it” and most of the time they just settle up and let the industry manage it in terms of premiums…?

I think claiming against the manufacturers would be near enough impossible. Ultimately the driver remains in control of the vehicle and none of the systems are severe enough to physically yank you back into the lane, it’s just an annoying tug on the wheel.

Possibly dumb questions.

No.

I assume that the car will record when lane assist is turned off and this could be accessed in the case of an accident.

No.

Is it likely that turning it off will make you be seen as contributing to the accident.

No.

Also, if it’s on and steers you into something as per the comments about not always picking up lanes accurately, this would also be recorded so you would be able to claim against the manufacturer.

No.

I assume that the car will record when lane assist is turned off and this could be accessed in the case of an accident.

No.

Yes. Sorry, you’re wrong. Modern vehicles contain an event data recorder and the items recorded include driver support systems.

In a serious collision this information is made available to the police. If you have a Tesla you can get the data yourself after an accident.

In fact when I bought a new Volvo a few years back I had to sign a disclaimer to confirm that I understood this.

Also, if it’s on and steers you into something as per the comments about not always picking up lanes accurately, this would also be recorded so you would be able to claim against the manufacturer.

No

It’s only a matter of time before there’s a class action lawsuit (or action by the transport authorities) in the US against some manufacturers dumb implementation of “driver aids”…

Lane assist doesn’t ‘steer you into things’ as above – it just resists your steering line a bit. It feels weird at first but you get used to it. In fact, in my car it won’t do anything if you don’t have your hands on the wheel – so if you have your hands on the wheel, you are the one steering.

One of the hire cars I had with lane assist certainly steered you back into the centre of the lane if you drifted and did nothing. It actually turned the wheel to stop you crossing the white line with a fair amount of force.  You could override it of course by being firm on the wheel but left to its own devices it did steer the car

Yes. Sorry, you’re wrong. Modern vehicles contain an event data recorder and the items recorded include driver support systems.

In a serious collision this information is made available to the police. If you have a Tesla you can get the data yourself after an accident.

In fact when I bought a new Volvo a few years back I had to sign a disclaimer to confirm that I understood this.

OK, I didn’t know that.

In the event of a collision, what would be the consequences of turning off completely optional driver aids?

I really dislike lane assist, but I’ve only ever driven a small number of cars that had it fitted, and those were around six years ago, when I was driving for BCA, and those were all sorts of fleet/lease vehicles, so not so common then. I have had a chance to drive a few cars with regenerative braking since, and as someone who drives a semiautomatic, I love it. With my old diesel Skoda, I could drive miles without touching the brakes, just using the (manual) gearbox and engine-braking, but that doesn’t work with my Ford’s little EcoBoost; lifting off the accelerator the car just carries on rolling, so I have to keep dabbing the brakes to keep a safe distance. A regenerative  system that gives something like engine-braking with a semiautomatic is something I would love on my car.

Its a pain in the arse ! I have a Octavia VRS estate (new in Jan) and the Mrs has a 6 week old Scala Monte Carlo and we have just got used to living with it turned on

@pacemaker75 Depends what you mean by menu, but you can turn LA off on the steering wheel/dash display, much more responsive than the main screen, which can take an age to boot. Two button presses (third to bring the rev counter back, although this will appear after a few seconds without intervention)

Of course the other horrible function that cannot be turned off in modern cars is left foot braking.

Many cars these days make it impossible to left foot brake as if you press the brake and accelerate at the same time it cuts all engine power 😞

I first noticed this ‘feature’ on VAG cars, but it has spread. Luckily not all BMW’s have it yet though

In the event of a collision, what would be the consequences of turning off completely optional driver aids?

Genuinely don’t know. My guess would be that it would be considered negligent to a degree.

Cougar
….
Riddle me this,

Outside of, say, police cars, why do headlights have any settings at all other than “auto” and “on”? There’s a logic to turning off some assist systems in exceptional conditions but under what circumstance might you think “it’s really dark, best turn my lights off”?

Cougar, matt_outandabout, multi21

I found heavy snowfall is one exceptional conditions where having headlight settings other than “auto” and “on” can help safety, if the driver is curious enough to try different settings to see what works best for the conditions, and sensible enough not to accidentally turn the lights off completely by mistake (ask me how I know!).

I’ve had cars with fog lights for years, and they did not seem significantly better than the headlights in fog (I suppose marginally better in heavy fog).  Then one day, I was driving in the dark with heavy snow falling.  I tried turning the fog lights on, and the light switch from ‘headlights and rear lights’ to ‘sidelights and rear lights’.  My goodness:  I could see objects at three times the distance!  It was a massive improvement.

So yes, it is worth having being able to turn headlights off when moving:  I think it reduces the glare reflected from falling snow (and heavy fog).  Even day running lights might give too much reflected glare.

Not a perfect solution.  The advantage of fog lights being low is that most of the light is not bounced back by fog or falling snow; it carries to objects, to reflect back and show you the scenery.  The disadvantage of fog lights being low is that over crests, or if the road is uneven; the road blocks the light, and you can’t see anything lower than the tops of trees!

“Depends what you mean by menu, but you can turn LA off on the steering wheel/dash display, much more responsive than the main screen, which can take an age to boot. Two button presses (third to bring the rev counter back, although this will appear after a few seconds without intervention)”

I have had the car since the end of Jan and used the cruise/speed limiter many times, but some how managed to miss the tick in the lane assist box above them up to now…

Thanks for the heads up and I think a trip to spec savers must be in order !