Adaptive Cruise control and Lane helper

[peteracs]

Hi All

This is very off topic, but I found it interesting and not sure how many folk have actually experienced it.

Background is that my wife changes her car for a new one every 3 years or so via Motability as she uses a modified car with hand controls. All pretty standard stuff nowadays and she has had one since the early 90s. Using hand controls is hard over longer journeys, so we always have cruise control as a required feature of any car. The last 3 cars have been Sharan/Alhambras ie the same car, just different features. The first two had old style ‘normal’ cruise ie set the speed and away you go until you brake or cancel it. The latest one however which we took delivery of two weeks ago has adaptive cruise which is a complete revelation. Not only does it control the speed it senses any vehicle in front and adjusts the speed accordingly to avoid a coming together which means it also controls the brakes. Ie if someone suddenly changes Lane to in front of you the result can be quite severe. What this means is that you can drive for prolonged distances on motorways etc without touching the brakes or accelerator. Overall my reaction is positive, obviously this is one small step towards autonomous vehicles as is the next feature.

The other feature on the car is a Lane sensor, ie looks for the Lane markers and tries to warn you if you are deviating over these markers. The feature is cancelled if you are indicating. The thing which I found really annoying as did my wife, is that not only does it let you know it also takes control of the steering. This not outright take over, but does provide an annoying effort on the steering to try to counteract the wandering as it sees it. It makes changing lanes on a road when not indicating really annoying. This feature has now been disabled.

Others experience on this and other modern controls would be interesting to know.

Peter

[Neil-yaj396]

At work we had a 56 plate BMW 325M with one of the earliest adaptive cruise controls and I really liked it for long journeys. I still recall a Leeds/Staines/Leeds drive that would have been tiring in some cars but not in the Beamer.

I've only come across lane control in a Volvo I rented, and that just gave a warning. I imagine it is something that you can get used to with time.

[Nigel]

I borrowed my sisters Jeep Cherokee [2018 i think] along with a hired trailer to collect
my HPE from Devon.
This thing had lane assist installed, and it was very disconcerting and annoying.
Every now and again I'd feel a kick from the wheel, and a graphic display telling me I'd drifted
about 3 inches off the centre of the lane.
Luckily, the trailer was well weighted and balanced unladen.

A poorly balanced tow, with a less experienced driver, could so easily result in
an overcorrection and blue sky facing down. 

For the return, loaded, journey I 'RTFM' and found the disable function.

Nigel

[smithymc]

Caroline's V70 has lane departure and adaptive cruise. The former can be annoying on a twisty road and but can be switched off- the adaptive cruise is great.

Ours is nearly a decade old now, so lane departure doesn't act on the steering.

Mark

[WestonTB]

Lets be honest, any car made after 1999 is pretty much the work of satan & it ain't getting better!

[mangocrazy]

Lets be honest, any car made after 1999 is pretty much the work of satan & it ain't getting better!

I agree. The amount of unnecessary, intrusive, surveilling nonsense in modern cars is totally over the top. And adding Internet connectivity to cars and thereby making them hackable was the last straw as far as I was concerned.

[HFStuart]

I had, briefly, a 2019 4th Gen Mazda 3 which was a lovely car but not as much fun as the previous generation. It had adaptive cruise but it's lack of pre-emptive ability drove me nuts. When I'm driving I can see car is about to pull out and when it's going to pull back in so can can slow down or start to speed up accordingly. The computer can't do that - the car is either in front or its not so its behavior is dumb and not particularly smooth either.  I could see it being handy (if you have an auto) in a traffic jam but otherwise it just annoyed me.

The lane departure also wasn't well implemented as it tried to operate in town at 30ish and the emergency brake triggered twice for no good reason when pulling up to the back of a queue.

The worst 'smart' tech I've encountered was on an Insignia  rental car - it when driving round a bend it would conclude anyone walking on the pavement on the outside of the bend was about to be run over and scare the crap out of me with warning gongs.

Tech is great but poorly designed tech or implemented tech worse than not having it. Douglas Adams had that right, I suspect Theo does too!

[squiglyzigly]

I’m really not a fan of modern computers on wheels. My primary concern has always been maintenance and trying to fix the damn things when computery type stuff goes squiffy.
Now having read this thread with adaptive ‘this’ and lane control ‘that’ scares the hell out of me.
I just want to get in my car and drive without interruptions from systems that suggest I’m not capable of doing it sufficiently on my own.
My only experience of driving new cars is little rental cars with none of these options fitted.

I have to agree with WestonTB. Post ‘99 cars are the work of Satan.

[WestonE]

Hi Chaps I own a work of Satan BMW 5 series that was a dealer demonstrator so packed with bizarre options including adaptive cruise control head up displays lane control internet connection adaptive suspension etc etc. I spent a whole day in it after delivery just to get a grip on the instructions.
The head up display is now a handy sunglass storage space which is far more useful and voice activated cruise control was turned off long ago.

I get into the Lancias for real world therapy.

Eric

[Clifford]

For my sins I drive a Mercedes E class daily.
The first time it beeped and then displayed a message suggesting I needed to have a coffee was a bit bizarre.
It was early hours of the morning and I was a bit tired though.
I waited another half hour but it didn't produce one. I was a bit disappointed with it then.
C

[HFStuart]

If it's any help a colleague of mine has just taken delivery of a Tesla 3. Only the indicators are a manual switch, even the wipers are voice activated. Pointless.

[rossocorsa]

I drive a modern Abarth and aside from having Bluetooth it's pretty much neanderthal in it's design and the way it drives, perfect for a grumpy old fart. I can't be doing with all this modern forget you are driving stuff.

[peteracs]

Hi

I thought I would add a follow on to this thread. So 5 years on from getting the Sharan with its ACC and having found it really useful, it had to be changed and elected for a new Skoda Kodiaq this time. We were told it had cruise control, which it did, but assuming it had ACC given it has so many bells and whistles, but no just old style cruise, you have to go into the car's Shop menu and ACC is a £269 option...... so not too amused on what is a £40k car.

Anyway ACC is a must especially for Karen with hand controls, so after a bit of a false start I managed to buy it and then the fun began. This ACC is VERY different to the old Sharan. When you set a speed on the old car that was it and it just looked out for other cars etc regardless of the road etc. This version adjusts automatically to where it is, so if you enter a 30 mph zone, it will change to 30, then change to 60 on unrestricted or 70 on.a dual carriageway etc. Also if it senses a significant bend coming up it reduces the cars speed. I have to say I found it somewhat disconcerting at first and yes you can turn of the auto speed change so it acts more like the old ACC, but having played with it, I quite like it and you can tweak the speed manually if you wish. One last thing it also does is in France the motorways have dual speed, 130 for dry conditions and 110 for wet. It switches speed automatically depending on if it detects rain......

No idea what other cars now have this system, but I guess this is all about the push to autonomous vehicles which I guess will start to appear before my days are out.

Peter

[Ferrit]

Our Merc EV (for years old now) has it. 

I must admit at the start it was annoying but now I am used to it.  We had a Pole-les-ter (joke name for Polestar) for a few months before the Merc and it was far more annoying to drive.  If you were trying to park and someone walked with 10 meters it would slam the brakes on like you hit a wall, and don’t start me on on all the annoying noises it made!  Apparently the Asian market love these and they are deemed more acceptable because these markets are less mature as drivers so appreciate the help.

My van has an ABS fault so drove to Mark’s today fast down the 303 in the rain old school.  The rebel I am ;-)

[deks]

Hi

I thought I would add a follow on to this thread. So 5 years on from getting the Sharan with its ACC and having found it really useful, it had to be changed and elected for a new Skoda Kodiaq this time. We were told it had cruise control, which it did, but assuming it had ACC given it has so many bells and whistles, but no just old style cruise, you have to go into the car's Shop menu and ACC is a £269 option...... so not too amused on what is a £40k car.

Anyway ACC is a must especially for Karen with hand controls, so after a bit of a false start I managed to buy it and then the fun began. This ACC is VERY different to the old Sharan. When you set a speed on the old car that was it and it just looked out for other cars etc regardless of the road etc. This version adjusts automatically to where it is, so if you enter a 30 mph zone, it will change to 30, then change to 60 on unrestricted or 70 on.a dual carriageway etc. Also if it senses a significant bend coming up it reduces the cars speed. I have to say I found it somewhat disconcerting at first and yes you can turn of the auto speed change so it acts more like the old ACC, but having played with it, I quite like it and you can tweak the speed manually if you wish. One last thing it also does is in France the motorways have dual speed, 130 for dry conditions and 110 for wet. It switches speed automatically depending on if it detects rain......

No idea what other cars now have this system, but I guess this is all about the push to autonomous vehicles which I guess will start to appear before my days are out.

Peter

Peter have you tried turning off the sign recognition that tells the car the road speeds to stop it altering the cruise?  I have ACC on my Lexus cant say Ive noticed mine adapting to speed but then the furthest Ive been is Yorkshire and the was on the A15 and back roads. I will pay more attention when I do use it next. Mine like everyone's these days bleeps constantly when exceeding the speed limit but if I turn the sign recognition off it doesnt. Obviously have to operate that every time you turn the car on. I agree though all this automation is heading towards autonomy. For me it also takes away some of the skill of driving and makes us lazy

[SanRemo78]

The Skoda Superb (2021) has ACC, lane departure etc and it took a bit of getting used to but once you understand how the controls work it's very good, especially on the long journey to Gerrys, I only usually get a warning from the car at around Clackett Lane services, 250 miles into the trip, to stop for a coffee! Not a fan of the shaking steering wheel but that's easy enough to switch on and off, generally it's on when I'm driving down at 3am...

The Alfa 159 (2008) also had cruise control but that would happily drive you into the back of a truck if you weren't concentrating all the time!

The Fiat 126 (1974) also had "cruise" control.... Sort of a choke lever (for those of you who remember them!) that was attached to the top of the throttle pedal. Trouble was, it couldn't adapt to hills (so you had to press the accelerator going up for more power (yeah, right...) and down hill the car would run away. I once had 80 on the clock going downhill on the M62 towards Rochdale. Scary.

[peteracs]

Hi Steve

Yes, you can turn it off, but I actually like it now I have had a few miles of using it. The Lane assist which you get is not so welcome, but appears much less intrusive than on the Sharan.

Also the speed warning although on each time I start up, is easily turned off thankfully as I hate having lots of bongs going off.

Peter