Adaptive Cruise Control and Lane Monitoring Question

"Trevor Slattery, ACTOR" (anacostiabikecompany)
12/27/2016 at 14:27 • Filed to: None

So exactly how safe are these things? What kind of “fail safes” are built into them?

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

So I was reading this C&D Long Term Road Test on the Kia K900. Decent car, nothing special. Then I get to this part:

There were occasional nits to pick even on the highway, such as the blind-spot monitoring system that would sound an alert on empty stretches of road, and the one time the K900—with cruise control activated—initiated full panic braking, even cinching the seatbelts tight, from 75 mph for no apparent reason. That never happened again, thankfully.

WHAT??????????????? Luckily it occurred on I-90 in southeastern Montana but suppose it was someplace not so remote with traffic following?

DISCUSSION (5)

TheHondaBro > Trevor Slattery, ACTOR
12/27/2016 at 14:34

Driver attentiveness is your failsafe.

Shankems > Trevor Slattery, ACTOR
12/27/2016 at 14:39

The sensors aren’t infallible, but they only have to be better than your average human.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Trevor Slattery, ACTOR
12/27/2016 at 15:49

I’ve had an Outback with these features for a couple of weeks. The lane monitoring is fine for the most part. It doesn’t work when it’s raining and it gets annoying on one road since a lot of swerving is required to miss potholes and it keeps alerting me that I’m out of my lane.

The adaptive cruise is less useful. It wants too much room, so every time someone moves over into my lane, it slows down. This makes the people behind me speed up and go around, further exacerbating the problem. I figure that if I let it do its thing, I’d be stopped on the freeway while traffic zoomed around me.

The auto-brake feature caught me by surprise the first time it went off. It doesn’t recognize when someone is turning, so it tries to slow down even though I know the “obstacle” will be cleared long before I get to it. If you are braking lightly, the system doesn’t seem to kick in as far as I can tell. I haven’t been brave enough to test the limits.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > Trevor Slattery, ACTOR
12/27/2016 at 16:09

I don’t know about other makes, but ours are fully capable of self diagnosis and continually monitor themselves. If something is amiss the system warns you and shuts down. Any movement the system makes on its own can be overridden by the driver simply via throttle, brake, or steering inputs. Or the system can be turned off manually. Cruise following distance can be manually set by the driver via steering wheel buttons or a knob on the cruise stalk depending on the car.

Ours are generally reliable. That being said they are touchy and sensitive to interference from external transmitters, excessive dirt/debris, and incorrectly mounted sensors (think low speed parking lot bumper dings that leave no external damage). Lane keeping assist won’t work if the lines on the road aren’t clear or it can’t see them (dirty cameras maybe, or Mrs. Johnson clipped the garage with her mirror and knocked the camera out of calibration). There are messages and indicators in the instrument cluster to let the driver know.

I’ve noticed a decrease of problems relating to these systems over the years as hardware and software are improved. But they’re still not perfect.

Phatboyphil > Trevor Slattery, ACTOR
12/27/2016 at 18:50

Well I’m glad there making a 100% autonomous car soon. These assistance features sound dangerous!./s