Hands on lane centering keeps pulling to one side, in one particular part of the road

[byoungblood]

Roughly 3-4 months ago, my Mach E started trying to tug itself off the right side of the road going through one particular stretch of road on the way to work. If I let up pressure on the wheel, it will start to drive off onto the rumble strip/shoulder before it finally acknowledges that it is off the road (blue circle turns red on one side) and starts to correct. If I disengage lane centering and re-engage in the middle of this, it usually just keeps trying to drive off the road. If I'm in the left lane, it is less aggressive about it, but still requires firm correction on my part to keep it out of the adjacent lane. If traffic is heavy, I usually have to resort to disabling lane centering entirely.

The other ~29 miles of my commute, and nearly every other road I drive on does not have this problem.


Anyone else experienced this? Is it a problem with the mapping of the road, camera calibration (I got some sporadic errors regarding the camera maybe a year ago, nothing recent, probably just a bug), etc.?

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[AZBill]

Usually when vehicles do this, there is some seam in the road that it mistakes for a lane line. My Rivian does this a lot. Mapping is not used to center in the lanes, it is definitely not that.

 

[Tomm]

I occasionally fight the wheel in lane centering. Never noticed particular roads.
I do notice it in my area where there is an increase in re painting lines to make car lanes smaller and bike lanes bigger.

 

[rhougey]

Roughly 3-4 months ago, my Mach E started trying to tug itself off the right side of the road going through one particular stretch of road on the way to work. If I let up pressure on the wheel, it will start to drive off onto the rumble strip/shoulder before it finally acknowledges that it is off the road (blue circle turns red on one side) and starts to correct. If I disengage lane centering and re-engage in the middle of this, it usually just keeps trying to drive off the road. If I'm in the left lane, it is less aggressive about it, but still requires firm correction on my part to keep it out of the adjacent lane. If traffic is heavy, I usually have to resort to disabling lane centering entirely.

The other ~29 miles of my commute, and nearly every other road I drive on does not have this problem.


Anyone else experienced this? Is it a problem with the mapping of the road, camera calibration (I got some sporadic errors regarding the camera maybe a year ago, nothing recent, probably just a bug), etc.?

I just turned it all off. It was way more annoying than it was helpful.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Roughly 3-4 months ago, my Mach E started trying to tug itself off the right side of the road going through one particular stretch of road on the way to work. If I let up pressure on the wheel, it will start to drive off onto the rumble strip/shoulder before it finally acknowledges that it is off the road (blue circle turns red on one side) and starts to correct. If I disengage lane centering and re-engage in the middle of this, it usually just keeps trying to drive off the road. If I'm in the left lane, it is less aggressive about it, but still requires firm correction on my part to keep it out of the adjacent lane. If traffic is heavy, I usually have to resort to disabling lane centering entirely.

The other ~29 miles of my commute, and nearly every other road I drive on does not have this problem.


Anyone else experienced this? Is it a problem with the mapping of the road, camera calibration (I got some sporadic errors regarding the camera maybe a year ago, nothing recent, probably just a bug), etc.?

Were there any other sleets or camera faults during this time? And at the risk of asking the obvious, all the camera and forward sensors are clear and unobstructed? If the answer to those is No faults and no obstructions, I’d bet on a lane marking mid guiding the car.

One other question. Is this occurring st different times of the day along that se ton of road, or is always st about the same time?

 

[kamorela]

Roughly 3-4 months ago, my Mach E started trying to tug itself off the right side of the road going through one particular stretch of road on the way to work. If I let up pressure on the wheel, it will start to drive off onto the rumble strip/shoulder before it finally acknowledges that it is off the road (blue circle turns red on one side) and starts to correct. If I disengage lane centering and re-engage in the middle of this, it usually just keeps trying to drive off the road. If I'm in the left lane, it is less aggressive about it, but still requires firm correction on my part to keep it out of the adjacent lane. If traffic is heavy, I usually have to resort to disabling lane centering entirely.

The other ~29 miles of my commute, and nearly every other road I drive on does not have this problem.


Anyone else experienced this? Is it a problem with the mapping of the road, camera calibration (I got some sporadic errors regarding the camera maybe a year ago, nothing recent, probably just a bug), etc.?

I use lane centering all the time and this is one of my pet peeves. My car often pulls to the right when lane centering is on. Like you've described, if I let it go it will edge to the far right lane edge paint marking before correcting itself. I've tried turning off LC then back on but the pull-to-the-right continues. This happens everywhere and is not restricted to any particular stretch of road. Once it self-corrects it seems to snap out of it and act normally. If it happens while I'm in an inside lane with traffic beside me to the right I can't let it go to the edge to do its self-correcting thing or I'd side swipe another vehicle. So I have to either turn off LC or fight the pull.

Seems like this is not uncommon judging by the responses so far. I wonder if Ford knows about this and could offer an OTA to fix?

 

[DonM]

Just today my car was taking a dangerous line way to the right on a gradual right-hand curve on a particular stretch of road where it does this. I usually correct manually to be safe, but today I let it go. It sideswiped the right-hand curb at 40mph, with an audible squeal, before I pulled it back! It's black pavement, one lane in each direction, yellow center line and white line on the right side, then a black curb maybe 8 inches to the right of that. So there are 2 quite clear painted lines, one on the left and one on the right! Really lousy AI there, I have to say. My now-sold Teslas never came anywhere near the edges on these roads.

 

[byoungblood]

Answering some of the questions above, I've had no camera faults (outside of the driver facing one that an OTA fixed a while back) and generally speaking the lane centering is well behaved on straight roads, or in gentle curves.


However, if I'm negotiating a sharper curve, it wants to wander around like a drunk driver. Most of the time it stays in the lane, but it is making large control inputs and just ping pongs from one side of the lane to another. When I counteract this is typically when the car will try to leave the lane shortly after. It is like it has completely lost its reference to the center of the lane, and just throws its hands up. Lane markings (either new or old) really don't seem to make a difference.

About the only way that I have found that I can get it to stop fighting me is to either disable the lane centering for a few minutes (turning it off and immediately back on doesn't help) or turning on a turn signal and immediately cancelling it. Latter causes the vehicle to almost immediately snap back to the center of the road as soon as the lane centering/BC re-engages.

Is there any way to review what OTAs have been applied to the car? When I received the BC 1.3 update it worked great. Very smooth through curves, and tracked was rock solid in the middle of the lanes. As it works as intended 95% of the time, the most plausible explanation is that an OTA disrupted the calibration of one of the modules in the car. I'm out of warranty and a bit loathe to have to pay probably hundreds of dollars to diagnose and fix something that an OTA likely broke.

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