Vinfast VF8 Incident

The customer was traveling on a two lane, country road, which was missing lane markings on the sides of the road - only the middle line was properly marked. The speed limit on the country road is 35MPH. The customer noticed a pothole on the side of the road, swerved towards the middle of the road to avoid it, but the LKA assist engaged and moved the vehicle back in the lane. By doing so, the vehicle ran over the pothole, with both front and back passenger side tires and damaged both wheel and tires in the process. During our investigation, we determined that in this case the LKA worked as intended. The system is designed to prioritize a solid line, and can't detect a pothole, and since the road is very narrow (our estimate is less than 3m per side) the vehicle unfortunately ran over the pothole. LKA/ELK system limitations throughout the industry are similar: the LKA/ELK systems try to keep vehicle inside the lane, to prevent a vehicle from drifting out, and the system can't predict driver intention, for example: Is the driver crossing solid lane intentionally or by accident, is hard to distinguish. Relevant override conditions in this case are: - Steering wheel speed 200deg/s - Steering torque 3.5Nm In our application, the override force is limited by the EU homologation test and therefore, we feel that the vehicle behaved as expected and should have been over-powered by the driver to avoid the pothole, thus eliminating a costly replacement cost of two wheels and tires.