A method for controlling a steering apparatus (10) of a vehicle produces an error signal (128) by subtracting a hand wheel torque (118) and a column torque (126) from a desired operator torque (112) to be applied to a hand wheel (14) of the vehicle. A controller (102) receives at least one vehicle condition signal (106, 108, 110) and determines the desired operator torque (112). The desired operator torque (112) is filtered into a low frequency torque component (112a) and a high frequency torque component (112b). The steering apparatus (10) is controlled based on the low frequency torque component (112a) and the high frequency torque component (112b).