“Hey, Hands on the Wheel, Bud!”

Yeah, I have seen the coffee brake alert. If I am not mistaken, the coffee brake alert is linked to the Lane Departure Warning. If you have it enabled and if you cross the center line so many times, it triggers it. When I have disabled the lane departure alert for a long interstate trips, I never saw the coffee brake alert anymore.

 

I drive my Gen 4 150 miles home in the dark. I began to feel frustrated and that I had made the wrong choice of cars. Distracted driving at 60 mph in the dark is not a fun introduction to the Gen 4.

The earlier test drive with the Gen 1 owning salesman was during daylight.

 

Yes you can turn that off. You cannot turn off most of the radar cruise alerts.

 

Those distracting alerts at night in a new car is exactly that situation.

 

I've driven mine many thousand miles in the dark with the big screen. It's never distracted me nor did I feel distracted. I like the large screen because of the things on it that I "do" look at, I can quickly glance at them and get my eyes back on the road. My gripe about the album art not being shown is I could quickly glance at the album pic and know exactly which album I was on, but instead, I have to search for the small words saying what it is. The bight LED headlights are sooooo much better than the previous GEN's.

I do hate all the popups though. My right thumb lives hovering over the return button. Yes, that part is distracting.

 

The only time I ever got that was in 50 mph cross winds. I wasn't crossing the line, but I sure was working the steering wheel. That was NASTY!!

 

It was a good reason. Those full screen alerts were distracting me!

 

That is what I do now. My very thorough salesman did not warn me of that though.

 

I have gone over an hour without touching the steering wheel of my 2020 using OpenPilot.

I tried closing my eyes once and could not make it to 10 without opening them. Even on a straight flat road with no other traffic I could not do that.

On average my hands are off the wheel 98-99% of the time. I am usually on freeways for a long time.

 

Definition of an oxymoron . . . .

The last time I relied on a salesman to give me meaningful info was way back in . . . um . . . . it was a long time ago.

 

This is a knowledgeable Gen 1Prius owner who spent 45 minutes in the car explaining and demonstrating features before our test drive. He knows the Prius.

 

Not trying to be judgmental, just curious, but why do you drive with your hands off the wheel most of the time?

 

Because I can. OpenPilot keeps the car perfectly centered in the lane, Tesla smooth, even in the mountains. OpenPilot uses a cell phone mounted to the windshield that has cameras looking forward, for seeing the lane, and backward, for seeing where my eyes are pointed. It also has a connection to the car's CANBUS at the Lane-departure-with steering assist camera on the windshield. The special software that the phone is running is able to see the lane, and control the steering through the CANBUS connection. I have been using it for about 2 years now, with over 30k miles, and it is a true godsend for long distance driving. As long as the rear facing camera see's me looking in the correct direction, it steers the car for me. I mostly use it on the freeway, or large roads.

I still rely on DRCC for longitudinal control.

Because I am not physically interacting with the car, and I schedule extra time so I am not in a rush, I can "park" the car behind a semi in the slow lane, and sit back and watch. It would have driven me nuts to drive like this in my 20's and 30's. But it is really easy to do when you can sit back and listen to the music. Google Comma.ai. They are the company making it. There is a lot of community effort assisting with it as well. I have lived through the process of it growing from barely usable, and worrying about getting pulled over because it looked like I was driving drunk, to so smooth that it now drives the car better than I can.

In the most simple terms, it extends the cruise control to now include both longitudinal(DRCC), and latitudinal(OpenPilot), control of the car. It is not yet full self driving, but it nearly is. You use it like you would a traditional control. Just like a traditional cruise control, you are driving the car, but automation is managing some of the physical interaction which takes workload off of the driver. You are still in control, it is just doing the work. On the freeway it does 99% of the work. That is more than good enough for me.

 

Sounds like the definition of a first world problem. In order to get my car to nearly drive itself, it will no longer turn on the windshield wipers by itself.

Mine is an XLE, so it is not effected by that diminished functionality.

 

Is it street legal in the US?