When Highway Assist Can Be Dangerious

[DJL]

Before I get into the details, let me first state, emphatically, I love Lucid’s Highway Assist feature. It allowed this 72 old fella to drive multiple days in a row +/- 600 miles a day. I discovered that it made the long drives very pleasant, arriving each evening at our hotel with enough energy and get up and go to run over to the local EA station and charge up for the next day.
Here is a secret I discovered. First, if I hang my left hand, using just the three middle fingers on the lower, left most portion of the steering wheel, then just the weight of my hand puts enough torque on the wheel where the HA would steer the car by itself for hours. It was very comfortable to keep my hand there.
Now, with the above stated, let me also share that there are a few driving conditions where using the HA by itself could be very dangerous. These are all fixable, in my opinion, with a software upgrade so I have high hopes Lucid will address these issues in future updates. But, until they do, please be aware of these hazardous situations.
First, and this is the most dangerous in my opinion, is that the HA tends to keep the car closer to the right side of the lane you are driving in. If you are driving in the slow lane (or right lane), this typically does not present a problem. However, if you are driving in the speed lane (or left lane) and are passing a truck, you can very easily find that the truck you are approaching or passing will impinge on your driving space and the HA doesn’t adjust for this. As one who has driven a 40-foot RV bus about 20,000 miles, I believe that this can happen when the truck driver starts to watch you in his left side mirror. His slight turning of his head to the left results in a very slight increase in pressure on the left hand, resulting in the truck edging over to the left and, sometimes, into your lane. In using the HA, I found that this happens around 10 to 20% of the time I would pass a truck. I would need to jerk the Lucid’s wheel to the left to avoid getting pinched or even hit by the truck. I would like to have the HA hug closer to the left lane stripe instead of the right lane marker when I am in the left-hand lane. It would give me about a foot more space to allow for the truck driver to correct his impingement.
Here are a couple of hints to deal with this until Lucid corrects the software. First, if passing a line of trucks, simply switch to ACC as you approach. This keeps your speed up and allows you to steer the car smoothly if one of the trucks starts impinging on you space. My wife would get annoyed with my jerking the wheel over if I was still using the HA when this happened. The second hint is to watch the front left wheel of the truck you are approaching. Where this wheel goes, the rest of the truck will immediately follow. If it starts to edge toward your lane, be ready to pull your car to the left. Sometime, you can add a little torque to the wheel and move the car a bit to the left without breaking off the HA, but more times than not, I would still breakoff the HA in a jerky manner and get dirty looks from my wife..
The second potentially dangerous situation in using the HA is when going around shaper curves at a relatively high speed. The Lucid just loves taking curves at higher speeds and it is very easy to simple rely on the HA feature where this happens as you're driving down the freeway in mountainous areas. However, if the speed is too fast or the curve too sharp, the HA simply releases without telling you. Unless you are paying close attention, you are will discover that you are beginning to run off the road and need to quickly correct.
The third potentially dangerous situation is when approach exit lanes or entrance lanes. Here the right lane marker is moving to the exit ramp or is missing as the entrance lane starts to merge with the freeway. The former situation happened to me numerous times and I found I was heading for the exit when I wanted to go straight. In the latter situation, the car sometimes gets confused and the HA rudely jerks the car around or even shuts off.
If you have experienced other situations, please let me know as I wish to keep track of them for future references. Thanks

 

[goshen]

Before I get into the details, let me first state, emphatically, I love Lucid’s Highway Assist feature. It allowed this 72 old fella to drive multiple days in a row +/- 600 miles a day. I discovered that it made the long drives very pleasant, arriving each evening at our hotel with enough energy and get up and go to run over to the local EA station and charge up for the next day.
Here is a secret I discovered. First, if I hang my left hand, using just the three middle fingers on the lower, left most portion of the steering wheel, then just the weight of my hand puts enough torque on the wheel where the HA would steer the car by itself for hours. It was very comfortable to keep my hand there.
Now, with the above stated, let me also share that there are a few driving conditions where using the HA by itself could be very dangerous. These are all fixable, in my opinion, with a software upgrade so I have high hopes Lucid will address these issues in future updates. But, until they do, please be aware of these hazardous situations.
First, and this is the most dangerous in my opinion, is that the HA tends to keep the car closer to the right side of the lane you are driving in. If you are driving in the slow lane (or right lane), this typically does not present a problem. However, if you are driving in the speed lane (or left lane) and are passing a truck, you can very easily find that the truck you are approaching or passing will impinge on your driving space and the HA doesn’t adjust for this. As one who has driven a 40-foot RV bus about 20,000 miles, I believe that this can happen when the truck driver starts to watch you in his left side mirror. His slight turning of his head to the left results in a very slight increase in pressure on the left hand, resulting in the truck edging over to the left and, sometimes, into your lane. In using the HA, I found that this happens around 10 to 20% of the time I would pass a truck. I would need to jerk the Lucid’s wheel to the left to avoid getting pinched or even hit by the truck. I would like to have the HA hug closer to the left lane stripe instead of the right lane marker when I am in the left-hand lane. It would give me about a foot more space to allow for the truck driver to correct his impingement.
Here are a couple of hints to deal with this until Lucid corrects the software. First, if passing a line of trucks, simply switch to ACC as you approach. This keeps your speed up and allows you to steer the car smoothly if one of the trucks starts impinging on you space. My wife would get annoyed with my jerking the wheel over if I was still using the HA when this happened. The second hint is to watch the front left wheel of the truck you are approaching. Where this wheel goes, the rest of the truck will immediately follow. If it starts to edge toward your lane, be ready to pull your car to the left. Sometime, you can add a little torque to the wheel and move the car a bit to the left without breaking off the HA, but more times than not, I would still breakoff the HA in a jerky manner and get dirty looks from my wife..
The second potentially dangerous situation in using the HA is when going around shaper curves at a relatively high speed. The Lucid just loves taking curves at higher speeds and it is very easy to simple rely on the HA feature where this happens as you're driving down the freeway in mountainous areas. However, if the speed is too fast or the curve too sharp, the HA simply releases without telling you. Unless you are paying close attention, you are will discover that you are beginning to run off the road and need to quickly correct.
The third potentially dangerous situation is when approach exit lanes or entrance lanes. Here the right lane marker is moving to the exit ramp or is missing as the entrance lane starts to merge with the freeway. The former situation happened to me numerous times and I found I was heading for the exit when I wanted to go straight. In the latter situation, the car sometimes gets confused and the HA rudely jerks the car around or even shuts off.
If you have experienced other situations, please let me know as I wish to keep track of them for future references. Thanks

Thank you for pointing these very important safety situation to the spotlight. Also, thank you for the very detailed journal about your trip...definitely a classic read for all Lucid owners. Have you by any chance try to reach out or tag Lucid execs on their social media handles so they are aware of your experience? That would at least ensure one of them will pick up on the story and take necessary actions before it's too late. Once again, thank you so much...you are an inspiration sir!

 

[PCorkett]

Before I get into the details, let me first state, emphatically, I love Lucid’s Highway Assist feature. It allowed this 72 old fella to drive multiple days in a row +/- 600 miles a day. I discovered that it made the long drives very pleasant, arriving each evening at our hotel with enough energy and get up and go to run over to the local EA station and charge up for the next day.
Here is a secret I discovered. First, if I hang my left hand, using just the three middle fingers on the lower, left most portion of the steering wheel, then just the weight of my hand puts enough torque on the wheel where the HA would steer the car by itself for hours. It was very comfortable to keep my hand there.
Now, with the above stated, let me also share that there are a few driving conditions where using the HA by itself could be very dangerous. These are all fixable, in my opinion, with a software upgrade so I have high hopes Lucid will address these issues in future updates. But, until they do, please be aware of these hazardous situations.
First, and this is the most dangerous in my opinion, is that the HA tends to keep the car closer to the right side of the lane you are driving in. If you are driving in the slow lane (or right lane), this typically does not present a problem. However, if you are driving in the speed lane (or left lane) and are passing a truck, you can very easily find that the truck you are approaching or passing will impinge on your driving space and the HA doesn’t adjust for this. As one who has driven a 40-foot RV bus about 20,000 miles, I believe that this can happen when the truck driver starts to watch you in his left side mirror. His slight turning of his head to the left results in a very slight increase in pressure on the left hand, resulting in the truck edging over to the left and, sometimes, into your lane. In using the HA, I found that this happens around 10 to 20% of the time I would pass a truck. I would need to jerk the Lucid’s wheel to the left to avoid getting pinched or even hit by the truck. I would like to have the HA hug closer to the left lane stripe instead of the right lane marker when I am in the left-hand lane. It would give me about a foot more space to allow for the truck driver to correct his impingement.
Here are a couple of hints to deal with this until Lucid corrects the software. First, if passing a line of trucks, simply switch to ACC as you approach. This keeps your speed up and allows you to steer the car smoothly if one of the trucks starts impinging on you space. My wife would get annoyed with my jerking the wheel over if I was still using the HA when this happened. The second hint is to watch the front left wheel of the truck you are approaching. Where this wheel goes, the rest of the truck will immediately follow. If it starts to edge toward your lane, be ready to pull your car to the left. Sometime, you can add a little torque to the wheel and move the car a bit to the left without breaking off the HA, but more times than not, I would still breakoff the HA in a jerky manner and get dirty looks from my wife..
The second potentially dangerous situation in using the HA is when going around shaper curves at a relatively high speed. The Lucid just loves taking curves at higher speeds and it is very easy to simple rely on the HA feature where this happens as you're driving down the freeway in mountainous areas. However, if the speed is too fast or the curve too sharp, the HA simply releases without telling you. Unless you are paying close attention, you are will discover that you are beginning to run off the road and need to quickly correct.
The third potentially dangerous situation is when approach exit lanes or entrance lanes. Here the right lane marker is moving to the exit ramp or is missing as the entrance lane starts to merge with the freeway. The former situation happened to me numerous times and I found I was heading for the exit when I wanted to go straight. In the latter situation, the car sometimes gets confused and the HA rudely jerks the car around or even shuts off.
If you have experienced other situations, please let me know as I wish to keep track of them for future references. Thanks

Completely agree. I regularly experienced all three of the scenarios you described. A fourth is when traffic comes to a complete stop ahead, the car does not begin auto braking early enough.

 

[DJL]

Thank you for pointing these very important safety situation to the spotlight. Also, thank you for the very detailed journal about your trip...definitely a classic read for all Lucid owners. Have you by any chance try to reach out or tag Lucid execs on their social media handles so they are aware of your experience? That would at least ensure one of them will pick up on the story and take necessary actions before it's too late. Once again, thank you so much...you are an inspiration sir!

Such kind words. Thank you very much for reaching out. I have not yet tried to reach anyone from Lucid. I wanted to first get some responses from other Lucid owners to confirm my findings. Right now, they are just the observations of a single owner and, as such, I would guess would not carry much weight. I hope that others will chime it and share their experiences. If so, we as a group, I would think, should have a much stronger impact on the decision making process that the Lucid management team goes through. I was one of the Beta 100+ folks and found that our comments, when addressing an issue, did bear some weight on what they did.

 

[Spaniard]

We recently drove from San Francisco to San Diego on I-5 and experienced similar patterns with the Highway Assist. However because it was an extended drive, with lots of trucks, we learned some very important things about the AI (artificial intelligence) in the car. Let me explain. For the first portion of the drive my wife was driving and she noticed that the car hugged the right side. When she passed trucks she felt the car veer away from trucks. This happened quite a bit at the beginning. She thought the car was "confused" -- that the lane centering might be happening visually, with cameras, and the car's self correction when passing trucks might have been the radar kicking in (that was her speculation). When we switched drivers, she called the Lucid customer service number and asked them about it. They told us that the car uses AI as you drive it and learns as it goes through various situations, so it was important to continue driving the car using Highway Assist. At the time, the car only had 500 miles. Interestingly, within a few hours of driving we noticed that the lane centering was more steady and passing trucks didn't seem to present a problem.

 

[Bbq9]

This is interesting. I found HA unpleasant - not so much unnerving, but the variation in speed / position … of course coupled with I love driving.
I drove both Bay Area to Scottsdale and Bay Area to Bend (and back) and found (as I am sure other owners know) the ride / drive is amazing, and arriving without the aches and pains typical.

I will try HA every month or two to see if it improves, but now, I prefer ACC and driving the car myself… even for 1000miles without layover

 

[Ksa23]

First, and this is the most dangerous in my opinion, is that the HA tends to keep the car closer to the right side of the lane you are driving in

I've observed this multiple times, and living in downtown Seattle, the highway lanes tend to be very tight. Because of this, I don't feel safe using HA often when there's lots of traffic. Making highway turns is downright scary when there is traffic next to me and it can be frustrating to fight the wheel. HA is very good at resuming after a manual override, but the force it takes to override plus the jerkiness of it auto-resuming can be irritating.

Don't get me wrong -- in rural/light traffic areas, it's great and I can live with it! But there's room for improvement. Instead of complaining, Ill just say I'm excited for the update that fixes this

 

[stratus]

Before I get into the details, let me first state, emphatically, I love Lucid’s Highway Assist feature. It allowed this 72 old fella to drive multiple days in a row +/- 600 miles a day. I discovered that it made the long drives very pleasant, arriving each evening at our hotel with enough energy and get up and go to run over to the local EA station and charge up for the next day.
Here is a secret I discovered. First, if I hang my left hand, using just the three middle fingers on the lower, left most portion of the steering wheel, then just the weight of my hand puts enough torque on the wheel where the HA would steer the car by itself for hours. It was very comfortable to keep my hand there.
Now, with the above stated, let me also share that there are a few driving conditions where using the HA by itself could be very dangerous. These are all fixable, in my opinion, with a software upgrade so I have high hopes Lucid will address these issues in future updates. But, until they do, please be aware of these hazardous situations.
First, and this is the most dangerous in my opinion, is that the HA tends to keep the car closer to the right side of the lane you are driving in. If you are driving in the slow lane (or right lane), this typically does not present a problem. However, if you are driving in the speed lane (or left lane) and are passing a truck, you can very easily find that the truck you are approaching or passing will impinge on your driving space and the HA doesn’t adjust for this. As one who has driven a 40-foot RV bus about 20,000 miles, I believe that this can happen when the truck driver starts to watch you in his left side mirror. His slight turning of his head to the left results in a very slight increase in pressure on the left hand, resulting in the truck edging over to the left and, sometimes, into your lane. In using the HA, I found that this happens around 10 to 20% of the time I would pass a truck. I would need to jerk the Lucid’s wheel to the left to avoid getting pinched or even hit by the truck. I would like to have the HA hug closer to the left lane stripe instead of the right lane marker when I am in the left-hand lane. It would give me about a foot more space to allow for the truck driver to correct his impingement.
Here are a couple of hints to deal with this until Lucid corrects the software. First, if passing a line of trucks, simply switch to ACC as you approach. This keeps your speed up and allows you to steer the car smoothly if one of the trucks starts impinging on you space. My wife would get annoyed with my jerking the wheel over if I was still using the HA when this happened. The second hint is to watch the front left wheel of the truck you are approaching. Where this wheel goes, the rest of the truck will immediately follow. If it starts to edge toward your lane, be ready to pull your car to the left. Sometime, you can add a little torque to the wheel and move the car a bit to the left without breaking off the HA, but more times than not, I would still breakoff the HA in a jerky manner and get dirty looks from my wife..
The second potentially dangerous situation in using the HA is when going around shaper curves at a relatively high speed. The Lucid just loves taking curves at higher speeds and it is very easy to simple rely on the HA feature where this happens as you're driving down the freeway in mountainous areas. However, if the speed is too fast or the curve too sharp, the HA simply releases without telling you. Unless you are paying close attention, you are will discover that you are beginning to run off the road and need to quickly correct.
The third potentially dangerous situation is when approach exit lanes or entrance lanes. Here the right lane marker is moving to the exit ramp or is missing as the entrance lane starts to merge with the freeway. The former situation happened to me numerous times and I found I was heading for the exit when I wanted to go straight. In the latter situation, the car sometimes gets confused and the HA rudely jerks the car around or even shuts off.
If you have experienced other situations, please let me know as I wish to keep track of them for future references. Thanks

Thank you taking the time to write this detailed and incredibly helpful post!!!

 

[Drendino]

Great post! I’m totally addicted to HA and agree that it is very helpful for mitigating road fatigue on long drives. Sometimes I’ll even take a longer route if it keeps me on the freeway longer. Like you I’m also learning best practices, and you offer some great advice, particularly switching to ACC during certain events.

I’ll add a couple of times to never use HA. The first one is obviously in road work areas, since the lines are often inconsistent and potholes are common. HA in a roadwork area with 21s is a recipe for welt city.

The second red zone that comes to mind is
during early morning sunrise, when the roads are wet. I learned that during high glare events, the car has absolutely no idea what to do and “freaks out” and then disengages HA after a big pull. Basically, if there is excessive glare on the road, best to turn it off. Or, like you suggested, switch to ACC.

 

[DJL]

Great post! I’m totally addicted to HA and agree that it is very helpful for mitigating road fatigue on long drives. Sometimes I’ll even take a longer route if it keeps me on the freeway longer. Like you I’m also learning best practices, and you offer some great advice, particularly switching to ACC during certain events.

I’ll add a couple of times to never use HA. The first one is obviously in road work areas, since the lines are often inconsistent and potholes are common. HA in a roadwork area with 21s is a recipe for welt city.

The second red zone that comes to mind is
during early morning sunrise, when the roads are wet. I learned that during high glare events, the car has absolutely no idea what to do and “freaks out” and then disengages HA after a big pull. Basically, if there is excessive glare on the road, best to turn it off. Or, like you suggested, switch to ACC.

These are great observations and I greatly appreciate you sharing them. Thanks!

 

[HC_79]

Is it really Lucid’s burden to adjust the software for others veering/entering your lane? If you’re on a 3 lane highway and you’re in the middle and someone on the left gets too close should Lucid then adjust the software again? I guess they could take the center of the lane approach. The point is though, these systems aren’t designed for you to tune out and not pay attention to what’s going on around you. I might be one of the few to disagree but don’t see this as a Lucid problem to solve for distracted drivers. Someone veers into your lane and side swipes your car, they’re at fault so the Lucid is doing nothing wrong sticking to the right, it’s still in its lane unlike the truck who swerved over.

I agree with you that HA is very aggressive on bends and Lucid could use the mapping software to read the road ahead and know a bend is coming up to automatically slow the car down. I know Audi does this. The disengaging on bends is also a little worrisome as well which is why I tend to take over when I see a bend coming up.

As much as I enjoy HA I don’t trust Lucid or any other carmaker to have a system 100% reliable. Other drivers are unpredictable and computers can be too slow to anticipate what’s going on. For that reason, I’m always scanning the road and checking the mirrors myself because I see HA / Driver Assist systems compliment the driver not take over for them.

 

[smyles09]

About a month ago we did a trip from MD to TN to GA back to MD. We unexpectedly received the update that included Highway Assist the night before leaving. i found HA to be very steady keeping me centered in the lane. i tend to drive exclusively in the left lane with a weighty foot and found the release of HA to ACC to be fairly smooth around the sharper or faster turns as i think i was hesitant to completely trust the technology. i tend to drive around 85mph for what it's worth.

There were two occasions when i was in the right lane and when the entrance ramp appeared the car veered to the right to find it's place. So i can agree with DJL this can be a dangerous situation.

 

[Drendino]

Is it really Lucid’s burden to adjust the software for others veering/entering your lane? If you’re on a 3 lane highway and you’re in the middle and someone on the left gets too close should Lucid then adjust the software again? I guess they could take the center of the lane approach. The point is though, these systems aren’t designed for you to tune out and not pay attention to what’s going on around you. I might be one of the few to disagree but don’t see this as a Lucid problem to solve for distracted drivers. Someone veers into your lane and side swipes your car, they’re at fault so the Lucid is doing nothing wrong sticking to the right, it’s still in its lane unlike the truck who swerved over.

I don’t think the op was advocating for a system that would allow him to “tune out and not pay attention”. The more real world feedback Lucid hears from owners the better. There has been quite a bit of feedback regarding the tendency of the car to hug the right side of the lane, which can be a bit unnerving when driving next to a truck to the right. I’m sure Lucid will make lots of adjustments to make HA both more comfortable and safe.

As an aside, I’m finding out that what feels like the right side of the lane is actually closer to center. I’ve had my wife drive behind me to tell me if I’m more in the center of the lane or to the right and I was indeed centered.

 

[Volund]

Before I get into the details, let me first state, emphatically, I love Lucid’s Highway Assist feature. It allowed this 72 old fella to drive multiple days in a row +/- 600 miles a day. I discovered that it made the long drives very pleasant, arriving each evening at our hotel with enough energy and get up and go to run over to the local EA station and charge up for the next day.
Here is a secret I discovered. First, if I hang my left hand, using just the three middle fingers on the lower, left most portion of the steering wheel, then just the weight of my hand puts enough torque on the wheel where the HA would steer the car by itself for hours. It was very comfortable to keep my hand there.
Now, with the above stated, let me also share that there are a few driving conditions where using the HA by itself could be very dangerous. These are all fixable, in my opinion, with a software upgrade so I have high hopes Lucid will address these issues in future updates. But, until they do, please be aware of these hazardous situations.
First, and this is the most dangerous in my opinion, is that the HA tends to keep the car closer to the right side of the lane you are driving in. If you are driving in the slow lane (or right lane), this typically does not present a problem. However, if you are driving in the speed lane (or left lane) and are passing a truck, you can very easily find that the truck you are approaching or passing will impinge on your driving space and the HA doesn’t adjust for this. As one who has driven a 40-foot RV bus about 20,000 miles, I believe that this can happen when the truck driver starts to watch you in his left side mirror. His slight turning of his head to the left results in a very slight increase in pressure on the left hand, resulting in the truck edging over to the left and, sometimes, into your lane. In using the HA, I found that this happens around 10 to 20% of the time I would pass a truck. I would need to jerk the Lucid’s wheel to the left to avoid getting pinched or even hit by the truck. I would like to have the HA hug closer to the left lane stripe instead of the right lane marker when I am in the left-hand lane. It would give me about a foot more space to allow for the truck driver to correct his impingement.
Here are a couple of hints to deal with this until Lucid corrects the software. First, if passing a line of trucks, simply switch to ACC as you approach. This keeps your speed up and allows you to steer the car smoothly if one of the trucks starts impinging on you space. My wife would get annoyed with my jerking the wheel over if I was still using the HA when this happened. The second hint is to watch the front left wheel of the truck you are approaching. Where this wheel goes, the rest of the truck will immediately follow. If it starts to edge toward your lane, be ready to pull your car to the left. Sometime, you can add a little torque to the wheel and move the car a bit to the left without breaking off the HA, but more times than not, I would still breakoff the HA in a jerky manner and get dirty looks from my wife..
The second potentially dangerous situation in using the HA is when going around shaper curves at a relatively high speed. The Lucid just loves taking curves at higher speeds and it is very easy to simple rely on the HA feature where this happens as you're driving down the freeway in mountainous areas. However, if the speed is too fast or the curve too sharp, the HA simply releases without telling you. Unless you are paying close attention, you are will discover that you are beginning to run off the road and need to quickly correct.
The third potentially dangerous situation is when approach exit lanes or entrance lanes. Here the right lane marker is moving to the exit ramp or is missing as the entrance lane starts to merge with the freeway. The former situation happened to me numerous times and I found I was heading for the exit when I wanted to go straight. In the latter situation, the car sometimes gets confused and the HA rudely jerks the car around or even shuts off.
If you have experienced other situations, please let me know as I wish to keep track of them for future references. Thanks

all happened to me too on my road trip, however I didn't disengage from HA, I just tugged and fought with it to the left. Great writeup!

Completely agree. I regularly experienced all three of the scenarios you described. A fourth is when traffic comes to a complete stop ahead, the car does not begin auto braking early enough.

I noticed this too, very dangerous and thought I would rely or test it, but then decided to smash the brakes lol

 

[CLTGT]

I have not had much of a chance to really use the HA over longer stretches. I did, however, use it for about 30 minutes to get it "calibrated" and just see what it was like. I enjoy driving and am hyper sensitive to anything that might damage the car as I just lived without it for a month for a very minor accident when a young lady rear-ended me.

I can relate to the dangerous nature of your findings though as I would find those looks from my wife dangerous enough to not use HA.

 

[DJL]

Is it really Lucid’s burden to adjust the software for others veering/entering your lane? If you’re on a 3 lane highway and you’re in the middle and someone on the left gets too close should Lucid then adjust the software again? I guess they could take the center of the lane approach. The point is though, these systems aren’t designed for you to tune out and not pay attention to what’s going on around you. I might be one of the few to disagree but don’t see this as a Lucid problem to solve for distracted drivers. Someone veers into your lane and side swipes your car, they’re at fault so the Lucid is doing nothing wrong sticking to the right, it’s still in its lane unlike the truck who swerved over.

I agree with you that HA is very aggressive on bends and Lucid could use the mapping software to read the road ahead and know a bend is coming up to automatically slow the car down. I know Audi does this. The disengaging on bends is also a little worrisome as well which is why I tend to take over when I see a bend coming up.

As much as I enjoy HA I don’t trust Lucid or any other carmaker to have a system 100% reliable. Other drivers are unpredictable and computers can be too slow to anticipate what’s going on. For that reason, I’m always scanning the road and checking the mirrors myself because I see HA / Driver Assist systems compliment the driver not take over for them.

I do not trust the HA 100% either. I believe that I have to be responsible to my driving, whether I am using HA, ACC or something else. However, my wife really got fed up with my pulling the wheel over enough to break the hold the HA had on the car to avoid a truck which was stepping on the lane marker between us. This happened scores of time during both the 1500 mile trip out to Denver and the 2450 mile trip back home with my Lucid coming within just inches of the truck before I forced the Lucid over to the left. My guess is that I used the HA during 2500 to 3000 of those miles. I finally learned to put the car into ACC as I appoarch trucks just to avoid this repeatedly happening. If HA uses AI to learn how to move the car to the left as a vehicle starts to enter my lane, I never saw it.

 

[DJL]

This is interesting. I found HA unpleasant - not so much unnerving, but the variation in speed / position … of course coupled with I love driving.
I drove both Bay Area to Scottsdale and Bay Area to Bend (and back) and found (as I am sure other owners know) the ride / drive is amazing, and arriving without the aches and pains typical.

I will try HA every month or two to see if it improves, but now, I prefer ACC and driving the car myself… even for 1000miles without layover

I look forward to hearing about your experiences and advice.

 

[DJL]

As an aside, I also found during the 4000 miles of our round trip that the Highway Assist would sometimes just turn off by itself and I could not get it to turn on again for a little bit. Sometimes this would last for just a few seconds before I could turn it back on, other times it was for a few minutes. I am not sure why this would happen. It ocurred about 5 or 6 times during our round trip. Hmmmm.

 

[joec]

As an aside, I also found during the 4000 miles of our round trip that the Highway Assist would sometimes just turn off by itself and I could not get it to turn on again for a little bit. Sometimes this would last for just a few seconds before I could turn it back on, other times it was for a few minutes. I am not sure why this would happen. It ocurred about 5 or 6 times during our round trip. Hmmmm.

It’s probably programmed to disengage when it enters a scenario where it doubts itself. Which is actually what you want it to do, rather than brake suddenly or swerve.

Personally, I don’t use these types of features on any car in heavy traffic for all the reasons you specified. I’m sure it will get better, but it will be a while before that happens.

 

[Volund]

As an aside, I also found during the 4000 miles of our round trip that the Highway Assist would sometimes just turn off by itself and I could not get it to turn on again for a little bit. Sometimes this would last for just a few seconds before I could turn it back on, other times it was for a few minutes. I am not sure why this would happen. It ocurred about 5 or 6 times during our round trip. Hmmmm.

This happens a lot on SLC highways, I think it's because the geo fencing isn't 100% accurate and so it just thinks I'm in an area that shouldn't allow highway assist. Then a few seconds later it realizes that I am, then I re-enable it again.

But it should have more warnings for when HA is disengaged