# NoA Nonsense Lane Changes



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

I've been having a lot of issues lately with Navigate on Autopilot recommending lane changes that make no sense.

I took a photo of such an instance that happened this morning. I was driving on an interstate that has only two lanes in each direction. Suddenly, NoA wanted me to get into the left lane. There was no left exit coming up. The lane configuration wasn't changing at all. My next turn wasn't for another 25 miles. I have no possible explanation for why it suddenly wanted me to get into the passing lane.


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

And yet, Elon wants to charge $10k for FSD. 

I hope the new software eliminates this crap. Because this is what holds FSD back.


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## NOGA$4ME (Sep 30, 2016)

It does this at about 60% of exits for me. For some reason it wants to get into the left lane just prior to the exit. I thought maybe it was taking a precautionary step to avoid merging traffic on the on-ramp so instead of cancelling the change I let it continue, but no, it moved back into the right lane just before the on-ramp and then had to jump back to the left lane to allow the cars to merge.

So I typically have my hand on the turn stalk to cancel the lane change or if it gets really ridiculous I just turn of NoA.

It's done this for well over a year now. I'm surprised you're just seeing it now. Maybe you are lucky.


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## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

This incorrect "lane change to follow route" nonsense is why I hardly ever use NOA. The only times I use it is on road trips, and mostly to see if by any chance they've fixed this nonsense. Which they haven't yet.


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## FRC (Aug 4, 2018)

I despise lane change without confirmation. I use lane with confirmation just to see what the car wants to do.


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

NOGA$4ME said:


> it moved back into the right lane just before the on-ramp


This is the part that really gets me. Moving to the left lane to let oncoming traffic easily merge is what I always do, but that's just when NOA would have me move back to the right lane. I'm with @FRC, I keep NOA on just to see its suggestions, but I keep the settings to require my confirmation. And this particular warning is one that I've also seen very frequently for a very long time.

Weirdly, there was one interchange that we were getting this message and also often had phantom braking as we approached the underpass. Happened to find that if we let NOA move to the left lane like it wanted to it wouldn't phantom brake. Haven't driven that stretch of road for awhile so no idea how the car behaves there now.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

garsh said:


> I've been having a lot of issues lately with Navigate on Autopilot recommending lane changes that make no sense.
> 
> I took a photo of such an instance that happened this morning. I was driving on an interstate that has only two lanes in each direction. Suddenly, NoA wanted me to get into the left lane. There was no left exit coming up. The lane configuration wasn't changing at all. My next turn wasn't for another 25 miles. I have no possible explanation for why it suddenly wanted me to get into the passing lane.


You can see an onramp right there on the map. It likes to move over to the left to give entering traffic space avoid swerving into the ramp that they never figured out


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

my morning commute employs a counterflow lane through the Massey tunnel. we get three lanes into the city and the reverse direction loses a lane for 3 hours each morning and in the afternoon into the city loses a lane to give three lanes to the great egress. in both cases you exit to the left to use the counterflow.

coming up to the tunnel in the morning there is traffic in both lanes and i'm typically in the left lane to take the counterflow. I have "stay in the passing lane" set on the car so there is no need to change to the right lane but every day I get the "changing lane to follow route" message to get into the right lane. If I did that I'd only have to switch back to the left in 20 seconds to get at the counterflow.

What I usually do at that point is tap off the "navigate on autopilot" blue button/bar and drive through the counterflow exchanges and the tunnel. Probably for the best anyway as the infinite number of overhead direction arrows all get read as traffic lights and i'm constantly fighting the automatic stops.


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## MrBill (Sep 30, 2018)

I've had my car suddenly want to change lanes when the nearest car is over a quarter of a mile away. I've also had it suddenly slam on the brakes out in the middle of nowhere. I never figured out what happened in either case but figured it must have been something like a shadow on the road or maybe flashing lights from someone up ahead changing lanes. My wife definitely does not like it when the car decides to stop and has told me to stop using the speed control and/auto-navigate. She claims to have had whiplash from the sudden surprise stops. It would be cool if the car had some way to explain why it does some of the things it does.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

JWardell said:


> You can see an onramp right there on the map. It likes to move over to the left to give entering traffic space avoid swerving into the ramp that they never figured out


Hmmm, that seems like a huge cop-out if true. I'll try to pay more attention and see if it always corresponds to approaching an off-ramp.


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## gary in NY (Dec 2, 2018)

On my 130 mile round trip on NoA w/auto lane changes yesterday (2020.40.8) it did not do this, but I've had it happen many other times. I'll have today more attention to the ramps to see of they are in play. I used it yesterday for the first time in a while to see if I could live with the auto lane changes. they were ok, but I probably won't use it all the time.


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## NOGA$4ME (Sep 30, 2016)

JWardell said:


> You can see an onramp right there on the map. It likes to move over to the left to give entering traffic space avoid swerving into the ramp that they never figured out


And yes, that is my other major complaint with autopilot in some states. NC has markings on the on-ramps that go pretty much to the end of the on-ramp so there is no swerving to center itself in what looks to be a wider lane. But this is definitely not the case in other states. Very annoying and actually dangerous.

But I don't think this is why the car moves to the left lane. As I said above, my experience is that if you let the car move into the left lane (which it does essentially at the off-ramp), it gets back into the right lane BEFORE the on-ramp, so it will do its crazy lane centering anyway.

The ONLY explanation I have for this is that the car THINKS that there ought to be an off-ramp at the point just prior to where the off-ramp actually starts, and seeing that it's all the way at the right shoulder, I think it believes that it's in the off-ramp, and thus wants to move to the left so it doesn't take the exit.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

garsh said:


> Hmmm, that seems like a huge cop-out if true. I'll try to pay more attention and see if it always corresponds to approaching an off-ramp.





NOGA$4ME said:


> And yes, that is my other major complaint with autopilot in some states. NC has markings on the on-ramps that go pretty much to the end of the on-ramp so there is no swerving to center itself in what looks to be a wider lane. But this is definitely not the case in other states. Very annoying and actually dangerous.
> 
> But I don't think this is why the car moves to the left lane. As I said above, my experience is that if you let the car move into the left lane (which it does essentially at the off-ramp), it gets back into the right lane BEFORE the on-ramp, so it will do its crazy lane centering anyway.
> 
> The ONLY explanation I have for this is that the car THINKS that there ought to be an off-ramp at the point just prior to where the off-ramp actually starts, and seeing that it's all the way at the right shoulder, I think it believes that it's in the off-ramp, and thus wants to move to the left so it doesn't take the exit.


Yes, my point was that Tesla slapped a software band-aid that it somehow couldn't hug the left lane line for on and off ramps, so with NOA they temporarily fixed it by moving to the left lane for no good reason at all. It didn't happen earlier builds, then they released this band aid which I've witnessed many times (and I very very rarely use NOA) and somehow forgot about it. I've seen it for both off and on ramps. Something in the map triggers it somehow, possibly just a heatmap of disengagements because a ton of drivers tug their wheel out of AP when it drifts over into the on ramp, which again AP does most of the time.

And yes, nail on the head....it's up to states to update lane markings to the latest standards to used dashed lane lines for exits. Or as is often the case around here, bother to repaint lane lines at all (we have stretches of interstates where they regularly don't bother to re-stripe for a good 4 months after paving).

And to turn the complaint over, this is Tesla's way of making a problem less annoying to the user yet continue to drive safely. Every other system would freak out and shut down in many of these situations.


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

JWardell said:


> that it somehow couldn't hug the left lane line for on and off ramps


I'm finding that now it does do a good job staying attached to the left line in the case of widening/expanding lanes, where it previously wanted to inappropriately center itself. The improvement started in some firmware updates quite awhile ago, and seems pretty rock solid now. But NOA wanting to move to the left lane when there is an exit ramp has remained.


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## RonAz (Oct 16, 2018)

lance.bailey, how does it handle the Lions Gate Bridge. For those that don't know, it has three lanes with the middle one being alternated for traffic and time of day.


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

I rarely take the lions gate so just don't know. from I live the ironworkers across the second narrows is the path for the north shore, whistler or the sunshine coast.

I'd be more nervous through the Stanley park causeway just to the south of the LG bridge!!


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## RonAz (Oct 16, 2018)

Good point. Excellent testing area for real FSD.


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## IPv6Freely (Aug 8, 2017)

I tried NoAP for the first time in probably a year the other day. Couldn't figure out a simple off-ramp while already in the right lane. Was about to drive right by it. Okayy.... well, that solidifies NOT spending more to upgrade to FSD if they can't make the absolute basics of NoAP work.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

IPv6Freely said:


> I tried NoAP for the first time in probably a year the other day. Couldn't figure out a simple off-ramp while already in the right lane. Was about to drive right by it. Okayy.... well, that solidifies NOT spending more to upgrade to FSD if they can't make the absolute basics of NoAP work.


My understanding is that NoA itself has not been updated yet as part of the FSD beta.
So I'm still holding out hope for some big improvements in NoA at some point during or after this FSD beta period.


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## francoisp (Sep 28, 2018)

garsh said:


> Hmmm, that seems like a huge cop-out if true. I'll try to pay more attention and see if it always corresponds to approaching an off-ramp.


I've seen this plenty of times, I'm guessing to avoid merging traffic, but the change lane request is often for naught and I usually cancel it.


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## IPv6Freely (Aug 8, 2017)

garsh said:


> My understanding is that NoA itself has not been updated yet as part of the FSD beta.
> So I'm still holding out hope for some big improvements in NoA at some point during or after this FSD beta period.


I sure hope so - I didn't expect NOA to improve significantly without HW3, but I'm shocked at the level of regression its had where it gets confused by a simple off-ramp.


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## francoisp (Sep 28, 2018)

garsh said:


> My understanding is that NoA itBself has not been updated yet as part of the FSD beta.
> So I'm still holding out hope for some big improvements in NoA at some point during or after this FSD beta period.


Based on some FSD videos I've seen on YouTube, at the moment there appears to be two distinct pieces of software: one for the standard Autopilot that comes with every cars plus one for city driving for those who bought FSD. In one video, as soon as the car got on the freeway ramp, the display switched from city driving mode to NoA. It felt like the city driving algorithm was handing the car over to the Autopilot algorithm. It is possible that's the way it's going to be.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

PalmtreesCalling said:


> One thing makes me wonder why I was one of the ones to get this update early.
> I have an intersection where 90+% of the time heading home the car jerks to the right as it passes over the dotted lines from the two-lane left turn lines. I often tell my M3 to report a bug.
> For the record, 2020.48.5 doesn't seem to make it better. But if this was something Tesla was trying to run to ground, it would make sense to me, to make sure tweaks that were supposed to address it might be included. But that could also just be shadow mode, so...
> 
> so does anyone else experience these random attempts to lane change at intersections?


Autopilot isn't made to handle that situation at the moment. Its generally following lines. The FSD software coming (currently known as FSD Beta) works differently and can handle that type of situation. That software version is only available to a few people outside of Tesla. More may be added by the end of the year. It is still very beta though so it will also make mistakes and needs to be monitored closely. Elon thinks it will be reliable by the end of 2021 but he is generally overly optimistic.


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## IPv6Freely (Aug 8, 2017)

IPv6Freely said:


> I sure hope so - I didn't expect NOA to improve significantly without HW3, but I'm shocked at the level of regression its had where it gets confused by a simple off-ramp.


I should have been more clear on this, looking at it again. NOA used to take this off-ramp with no issue about a year ago. Now it just drives right past it (with the turn signal on!) I totally understand that obviously FSD with HW3 is going to be a totally different thing, I was just saying that my confidence level in them having a usable FSD in the lifetime of my car is so low that it's not worth the upgrade price.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

IPv6Freely said:


> I should have been more clear on this, looking at it again. NOA used to take this off-ramp with no issue about a year ago. Now it just drives right past it (with the turn signal on!) I totally understand that obviously FSD with HW3 is going to be a totally different thing, I was just saying that my confidence level in them having a usable FSD in the lifetime of my car is so low that it's not worth the upgrade price.


Its hard to say whether that example is indicative of getting to usable FSD. I would guess your issue is due to a map change. There are huge amounts of map errors and perhaps they could crowdsource their own maps someday but it doesn't seem like they are doing that now. If you look at the FSD Beta they have lots of issues with the car being in the wrong lane. It seems like maybe they are using some map data and some visual. It's not clear to me what the game plan is. My speculation is that it will have to rely more on visual than map data to be reliable and they will do that over time.

Another data point I'd bring up is that its not clear that the FSD beta is any different on the freeway. I wouldn't be surprised if you had the exact same issue with the FSD beta. That's not too reassuring. They may be mostly focused on the city driving at the moment.

Another thing I saw recently was a Chinese company is testing full self driving cars on the road in multiple cities without safety drivers or remote support drivers. They expect it to take 2-3 more years to get approved for public usage. If the same thing played out here and even if Tesla got it to that point by the end of next year that could still be end of 2024 if regulatory approval took 3 years. That would be 8 years after some people purchased FSD.


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## IPv6Freely (Aug 8, 2017)

M3OC Rules said:


> Its hard to say whether that example is indicative of getting to usable FSD. I would guess your issue is due to a map change. There are huge amounts of map errors and perhaps they could crowdsource their own maps someday but it doesn't seem like they are doing that now. If you look at the FSD Beta they have lots of issues with the car being in the wrong lane. It seems like maybe they are using some map data and some visual. It's not clear to me what the game plan is. My speculation is that it will have to rely more on visual than map data to be reliable and they will do that over time.
> 
> Another data point I'd bring up is that its not clear that the FSD beta is any different on the freeway. I wouldn't be surprised if you had the exact same issue with the FSD beta. That's not too reassuring. They may be mostly focused on the city driving at the moment.
> 
> Another thing I saw recently was a Chinese company is testing full self driving cars on the road in multiple cities without safety drivers or remote support drivers. They expect it to take 2-3 more years to get approved for public usage. If the same thing played out here and even if Tesla got it to that point by the end of next year that could still be end of 2024 if regulatory approval took 3 years. That would be 8 years after some people purchased FSD.


I agree with everything you said. That said, my point was that if they can't make a simple offramp exit work then I have little confidence in FSD being a reality any time soon.


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## francoisp (Sep 28, 2018)

IPv6Freely said:


> I agree with everything you said. That said, my point was that if they can't make a simple offramp exit work then I have little confidence in FSD being a reality any time soon.


If you watch FSD Beta videos on youtube I think you'll get some of that confidence back. It's quite impressive how good FSD has become. Check this guy's channel.

https://www.youtube.com/c/JamesLocke

This video is particularly amazing when the car drives through curvy roads.


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## Chris350 (Aug 8, 2017)

This issue was corrected for me back in version 40.4

It was very constant about this weird lane change as it did it every time I passed this same exit...

40.4 corrected this and the car stopped the strange lane change behavior...

But it did return 40.8 and has been there since.... It's back to switching lanes at the same very spot it did before....

I must assume that NOA highway progress (outside of small bug fixes) is in a somewhat of a hold pattern as the resources are focused on getting local street NOA running.

I also assume that this new version rolling out currently (48.10) will be our last before the V11 release.....


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