# NOA or Autopilot?



## Nizadar (Nov 3, 2018)

I live very close to the highway and drive almost 20 miles to my office. My office is also located just off the highway. I'm trying to decide if I should use NOA or just Autopilot? I've read about the issues with phantom braking and NOA, and I haven't experienced that before with Autopilot. Is that specific to NOA? If I was wanting highway exits to be taken and longer drives I could see where NOA would be very useful, but for my daily needs I can't see a reason to use it in place of Autopilot?

Am I looking at this wrong?


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Nizadar said:


> I've read about the issues with phantom braking and NOA, and I haven't experienced that before with Autopilot. Is that specific to NOA?


No, it's a generic autopilot issue. It sometimes gets confused by overpasses and large overhead signs, and temporarily thinks that it's a very slow truck in front of you in your lane. Thus, it hits the brakes, sometimes rather hard, until you get close enough that it realizes that it's not a vehicle.

If you haven't had it happen on your normal route, then you should be fine to try NOA on that route.


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

From the manual - currently p. 87
_If driving 35 mph (56 km/h) or faster, the brakes are released after Automatic Emergency Braking has reduced your driving speed by 30 mph (50 km/h). For example, if Automatic Emergency Braking applies braking when driving 56 mph (90 km/h), it releases the brakes when your speed has been reduced to 26 mph (40 km/h). Automatic Emergency Braking operates only when driving between approximately 7 mph (10 km/h) and 90 mph (150 km/h). _

So if you are driving over 35 MPH, the car will only slow you down by 30 MPH. That is still a LOT and more than enough to catch someone off guard following closely behind you, but it should not stop the car due to one of the phantom kind of braking events on a freeway.


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## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

Nizadar said:


> I live very close to the highway and drive almost 20 miles to my office. My office is also located just off the highway. I'm trying to decide if I should use NOA or just Autopilot? I've read about the issues with phantom braking and NOA, and I haven't experienced that before with Autopilot. Is that specific to NOA? If I was wanting highway exits to be taken and longer drives I could see where NOA would be very useful, but for my daily needs I can't see a reason to use it in place of Autopilot?
> 
> Am I looking at this wrong?


Navigate on Autopilot is, as it name suggests, navigation while on Autopilot. Autopilot still drive the car, so nothing will change. With NOA on, you will get lane change suggestions and exit initiation (turning on the turn signal and turning on the ramp)

But honestly, this is one of the fun things about the car, learning what it does. Just turn on NOA and see what happens!


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## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

I have a few spots on my commute where NOA regularly phantom brakes (not slamming on the brakes) and it doesn’t happen when regular Autopilot is engaged.


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## He Chen (Jan 11, 2018)

SoFlaModel3 said:


> I have a few spots on my commute where NOA regularly phantom brakes (not slamming on the brakes) and it doesn't happen when regular Autopilot is engaged.


I've noticed this braking behavior too along my daily commute route. I tried driving with NoA, with Autopilot and with just manual human input. For my particular route, I've noticed that both NoA and Autopilot struggle and phantom brakes at the same spots. I also noticed that the "Autopilot available" wheel icon near the upper left of the screen disappears along those same stretches of road when I was driving with just manual human input. It is interesting that you have the opposite experience. My guess was that the car wasn't able to clearly read the road lanes, markings and etc. and thus the erratic behavior. I know Autopilot will disengage when it can't clearly read the road. But I have yet to see NoA disengage when it can't clearly read the road... WHILE on the highway (which is where NoA/Autopilot struggles/phantom brakes for me). Autopilot does disengage by itself along those problematic spots in my daily commute. NoA does not and slowly keeps going and you can clearly tell it's struggling along. I only experienced it disengage automatically at the end of the navigation... i.e. after it helps you take the last highway exit in your nav/directions like it's advertised/supposed to.


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## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

He Chen said:


> I've noticed this braking behavior too along my daily commute route. I tried driving with NoA, with Autopilot and with just manual human input. For my particular route, I've noticed that both NoA and Autopilot struggle and phantom brakes at the same spots. I also noticed that the "Autopilot available" wheel icon near the upper left of the screen disappears along those same stretches of road when I was driving with just manual human input. It is interesting that you have the opposite experience. My guess was that the car wasn't able to clearly read the road lanes, markings and etc. and thus the erratic behavior. I know Autopilot will disengage when it can't clearly read the road. But I have yet to see NoA disengage when it can't clearly read the road... WHILE on the highway (which is where NoA/Autopilot struggles/phantom brakes for me). Autopilot does disengage by itself along those problematic spots in my daily commute. NoA does not and slowly keeps going and you can clearly tell it's struggling along. I only experienced it disengage automatically at the end of the navigation... i.e. after it helps you take the last highway exit in your nav/directions like it's advertised/supposed to.


That's interesting - the odd points on my commute are on the highway with perfectly marked lanes and generally very good conditions (weather and lighting wise), but it's consistent. There is just something it doesn't like about those few spots. When it happens I just step on the accelerator to bring it back to the speed I want.


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## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

SoFlaModel3 said:


> I have a few spots on my commute where NOA regularly phantom brakes (not slamming on the brakes) and it doesn't happen when regular Autopilot is engaged.


My car does this when on NOA if I am 1) driving in the HOV lane, 2) The car wants me to start moving out of the HOV lane, and 3) It sees that the double dotted line separating the HOV lane from the general lanes is about to turn into a double solid line, at which such lane changes become illegal. If I am doing above 55 mph or so, the car will slow to that speed, wait to see if I initiate a lane change if I don't override the slowdown, and then speed back up once I have reached the solid lines.

The most annoying thing about this behavior is that NOA often wants me to start moving to the right a good 10+ miles before my exit. I am all about being in the proper exit lane quite early, but not THAT early.


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## Long Ranger (Jun 1, 2018)

Nizadar said:


> I live very close to the highway and drive almost 20 miles to my office. My office is also located just off the highway. I'm trying to decide if I should use NOA or just Autopilot? I've read about the issues with phantom braking and NOA, and I haven't experienced that before with Autopilot. Is that specific to NOA? If I was wanting highway exits to be taken and longer drives I could see where NOA would be very useful, but for my daily needs I can't see a reason to use it in place of Autopilot?
> 
> Am I looking at this wrong?


You've got it right. Even ignoring the phantom braking debate, NOA just isn't very useful. I think the only somewhat useful feature is the ability to take freeway interchanges automatically. However, it generally does a poor job of navigating the corner and I usually have to disengage anyway. If I'm reading your commute description correctly, it sounds like you travel on a single highway, so that feature may not apply to you. Otherwise, I don't find the NOA lane change suggestions to be helpful at all, just annoying nags that are often really poor choices.

While I don't find NOA to be useful as a driving tool, I do find it fascinating for providing a glimpse into what the car might be capable of today if it was making autonomous driving decisions. Fun to experiment with in that regard.


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## FRC (Aug 4, 2018)

Long Ranger said:


> You've got it right. Even ignoring the phantom braking debate, NOA just isn't very useful. I think the only somewhat useful feature is the ability to take freeway interchanges automatically. However, it generally does a poor job of navigating the corner and I usually have to disengage anyway. If I'm reading your commute description correctly, it sounds like you travel on a single highway, so that feature may not apply to you. Otherwise, I don't find the NOA lane change suggestions to be helpful at all, just annoying nags that are often really poor choices.
> 
> While I don't find NOA to be useful as a driving tool, I do find it fascinating for providing a glimpse into what the car might be capable of today if it was making autonomous driving decisions. Fun to experiment with in that regard.


As it stands currently, I find NOA useful only on interstates with which you are unfamiliar. Then, showing upcoming necessary lane changes and the detail of which lanes ahead take you to your destination is quite helpful. If you know the route you are traveling, NOA is fairly useless in it's current iteration(but EAP is great everywhere).


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## undergrove (Jan 17, 2018)

evannole said:


> My car does this when on NOA if I am 1) driving in the HOV lane, 2) The car wants me to start moving out of the HOV lane, and 3) It sees that the double dotted line separating the HOV lane from the general lanes is about to turn into a double solid line, at which such lane changes become illegal. If I am doing above 55 mph or so, the car will slow to that speed, wait to see if I initiate a lane change if I don't override the slowdown, and then speed back up once I have reached the solid lines.
> 
> The most annoying thing about this behavior is that NOA often wants me to start moving to the right a good 10+ miles before my exit. I am all about being in the proper exit lane quite early, but not THAT early.


I have the same thing happening in NOA in the opposite way. I am in the leftmost regular lane or even one lane to the right. NOA wants me to move over to the HOV lane. If I do not want to do this, because traffic is already moving at the speed limit and the HOV drivers are going way over the speed limit, NOA will slow down each time the dotted entry lane passes. Again, this happens even if there is a lane between me and the HOV lane.

I could turn off the HOV setting for NOA, but most often I want to use it.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Long Ranger said:


> You've got it right. Even ignoring the phantom braking debate, NOA just isn't very useful.


NOA can handle freeway splits pretty well. That's pretty useful.

It attempts to tell you if you need to be in a particular lane. That could be useful, but I find this feature to still be very buggy. Hopefully they fix the bugs soon.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

I’ve not felt NOA doesn’t do well in my commute. My freeway interchange one direction goes from a smoothly moving 2 lane freeway to a 3 lane + 3 exit lane freeway with stopped traffic, with those exit lanes exiting immediately. It can’t manage the 3lane merge into stopped traffic at all (in its defense, daily I see people who also can’t). Going the other direction isn’t quite as bad, but includes merging over 2 lanes of combined on-ramp/off ramp traffic over a short distance and a sharply turning combined off ramp for surface traffic and freeway interchange. 

And my work exit is directly after an exit only lane for another freeway (like a few car lengths beyond). Both the onscreen nav lane markings and NOA want to be in the prior exit only lane instead of staying in the main right hand lane until my exit.

So, I just don’t use it at all. I know the particular interchanges I have are wacky and not normal, and likely would use it more if my commute included smoother connections.


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

garsh said:


> No, it's a generic autopilot issue. It sometimes gets confused by overpasses and large overhead signs, and temporarily thinks that it's a very slow truck in front of you in your lane. Thus, it hits the brakes, sometimes rather hard, until you get close enough that it realizes that it's not a vehicle.
> 
> If you haven't had it happen on your normal route, then you should be fine to try NOA on that route.


I noticed that while using NOA instead of regular EAP, my phantom braking instances increased. Went back to EAP only and they have gone down.

I know it's purely anecdotal but I'm convinced that NOA is changing the behavior of the EAP because it's anticipating lane changes. It seems extremely sensitive to cars coming at it from two lanes away making a lane change next to the car. It thinks that the car is merging on from an on-ramp and is going to come into it's lane and will brake hard.

With EAP only, it doesn't seem to do that.


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