Hands Free - Observations...

Maybe this was just a revelation to me, but I thought I'd share it...

I took my first drive with Hands Free last night. It was smooth to the point that I wondered if Lucid implemented other performance enhancements than just enabling Hands Free. That seemed unlikely to me, as I thought it made far more sense for Lucid to only make this one important change, and then monitor the result. Then, something occurred to me. With Drive Assist alone, while the car almost always stayed safely within its lane, it was seldom quite where I would normally have it positioned. (I think I tend to hug the left a little.) So, with torque-based Hands On driving, and since I had to nudge the wheel one way or another anyway, I would find myself nudging the wheel to where I wanted the car to be positioned, and the car subtly fought me on that. Hence, a little bit of a ping pong ride.

With Hands Free, I quickly got accustomed to just letting the car do its thing, and that ping pong effect disappeared. Looks like some of my software was interfering with the car's software!

Of course, I'll be keeping my hands either gently resting on the wheel or right next to it, but for the most part, I'll just start getting comfortable with letting the car do its thing. As nicely as it performed, that should be pretty easy.

When driving with driver assist on, I noticed that I like to hug the left a little more than I thought. When the car is centered in the lane as shown by the driver display, it feels like it’s too far right to me. Lesson learned.

L-Dude said:

When driving with driver assist on, I noticed that I like to hug the left a little more than I thought. When the car is centered in the lane as shown by the driver display, it feels like it’s too far right to me. Lesson learned.

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Yeah, this took me a few weeks when I first got the car. The car drives perfectly centered. We, humans, don’t. This observation freaked me out for a few weeks too.

The Gravity, incidentally, has a feature to bias left or right away from large trucks/buses, which is nice because that’s also a thing humans naturally do.

Today I drove 200+ miles on US 23 and I-75. Often there was heavy rain. The system performed flawlessly. I’d give Lucid’s engineers a standing ovation.

borski said:

Yeah, this took me a few weeks when I first got the car. The car drives perfectly centered. We, humans, don’t. This observation freaked me out for a few weeks too.

The Gravity, incidentally, has a feature to bias left or right away from large trucks/buses, which is nice because that’s also a thing humans naturally do.

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I don't want to steal this thread but I saw an interesting driving experience this morning. I was behind a Waymo. My road was a one lane in each direction road with a bike lane alongside. There was a bike rider in the bike lane. Since there is a separate lane for bike and car I am sure that the space was adequate for the Waymo to stay in its lane. If I were driving I would have crossed the lane (there was no oncoming traffic) to give the bicycle rider more room. I expected that the Waymo would stay in its lane. To my surprise, the Waymo did exactly what I would have done -- it crossed over the line to give the bike rider more room. I was amazed that it is programmed to illegally cross a traffic line to give the bike rider more room.

My Waymo honked at a driver that cut in front of it is a reckless way. That was cool to see!

Steveinarizona said:

I don't want to steal this thread but I saw an interesting driving experience this morning. I was behind a Waymo. My road was a one lane in each direction road with a bike lane alongside. There was a bike rider in the bike lane. Since there is a separate lane for bike and car I am sure that the space was adequate for the Waymo to stay in its lane. If I were driving I would have crossed the lane (there was no oncoming traffic) to give the bicycle rider more room. I expected that the Waymo would stay in its lane. To my surprise, the Waymo did exactly what I would have done -- it crossed over the line to give the bike rider more room. I was amazed that it is programmed to illegally cross a traffic line to give the bike rider more room.

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Yeah - these systems that are intended for full autonomy break laws all the time. Tesla’s FSD does it constantly too, but not always with such great success; if it were to follow all traffic laws at all times, it would actually be a lot less safe, as “on the road conditions” and common sense often overrule the law. Construction zones, accidents, someone broken down, etc.