Adaptive cruise control / safety sense issue

It works very well for that, except for the extreme braking and the extreme acceleration and loss of fuel efficiency. I find it to be great for everything else.

 

Apparently NOT.

 

Back to the thread. I was using the cruise control following a car down a long hill about 50 MPH. He signaled for a right turn and slowed to turn into a driveway. If I wasn't using the CC, I would have just slowed with him and then gone around him. What the cruise control did was to suddenly slam on the brakes as it came upon him as he was making his turn off the main road. The wife asked "Why did you just slam on the brakes!" and I had to reply, "Sorry, just getting used to the car".

 

have observed similar behavior on multiple occasions ... I look at it 2 ways:
1. the system has its limitations, e.g. it has a "lock" on the car in front of you and "does not know" that car is exiting the road
2. it is working as designed/described - it is an assistant, not a replacement to/of the driver, posting another section of the manual, read the warning section - i don't mean to be the party pooper, but understand that the system has limitations

 

Just more evidence that you should ***NOT*** be using the CC in traffic that thick.
How many recommendations and examples do you need to stop doing that ??

Probably just ONE; the one that puts you on the hook of a tow truck.

 

I have found DRCC to be invaluable, but with clear limitations.

I drive long distances on freeways often, and it is great for that use case.

It seems to be too slow to respond to lane changes by other vehicles in front of it, including vehicles departing onto off ramps. Slow, stop and go traffic is a great use case, but the response time of the system is simply too slow. It is slow to accelerate when traffic gets moving, and it is slow to decelerate when I can clearly see traffic stopped ahead of me, which results in very sudden hard breaking(manual intervention has become the norm).

I rarely use DRCC in slow conditions anymore. It works, but lacks refinement, resulting in abnormally slow acceleration and abnormally fast deceleration.

I always use it for long distance freeway driving. Of the 11k mi so far, over 90% is that type. So I use DRCC all the time, effectively, but I don't get the full benefit of driving on electricity all the time like the guys that only drive around their towns getting 199 MPG. They on the other hand will not get as much benefit from DRCC. My lifetime fuel economy is just below 80 MPG, and I will most likely never get it higher since I burn so many miles on gasoline. I find it funny that I am complaining about not getting my lifetime FE above 80 MPG. For me, DRCC is a lifesaver.

LKAS on the other hand will most likely never be used by me in this vehicle. It cannot be relied upon. It triggers when I do not want it to, and does not trigger when I do. Even when it triggers, it is ineffective at preventing dangerous vehicle movement.

All of these tools are intended to help us drive our vehicles. All of these tools still require that we drive the car at all times. DRCC removes some of the burden, some of the time.

 

Fully agree. I have found that in really slow stop and go traffic (under 30 mph) setting the DRCC one bar distance and set PWR drive mode makes real difference - it finally keeps up with the slow traffic and maintain the distance from preceding vehicle within reasonable range.
In ECO drive mode DRCC response is way too slow which causes too hard braking when the traffic comes to next stop.

 

I had not considered that. I never take mine out of ECO mode. I will definitely give PWR mode a try next week.

Once again it is the little things that make a big difference. Like when I discovered that EV Auto going down a mountain would bring the ICE on during the short uphill stretches, but my EV range went crazy(85 miles of travel used 24 miles of EV range). 7000 feet of elevation drop can be turned into quite a bit of EV range by this car when use the right modes.

 

And your protests aside, even if it DID work as advertised (mostly), it still would NOT be a good idea.
And YES it is my business too because I might be right next to you in traffic.

 

That's not my motive at all but I'm not surprised that you don't get it.

The state of "automatic driving" technology is not NEAR good enough to count on it for things like you are describing.......unless your objective is to tempt fate and see how long it will be until you are seriously injured or dead.

AND when one driver takes unreasonable risks, for whatever reason, it puts the rest of us at risk too.
ESPECIALLY when he tries to defend his unsafe practices and "sell" it to others.

Promoting unsafe actions is worse than being useless. MUCH WORSE.

 

Sam, I think you should ease off a bit. I noticed your arbitrary tone also in other posts replies..... This forum purpose is to exchange observations and thoughts about the car behavior and it's features (at least it was my assumption, that's why I joined it). I see no point of 'tutoring' others what the should do with the car they own and judge how others use the available features.
At the end of the day it is the driver who matters isn't it? Better understanding of the car capabilities can only help right?
I believe majority of this forum users try to learn from others and contribute if that is going to benefit others.
By no means your approach add value here. Sorry to be blunt, but I thought bringing the subject to the merits of knowing the Prime is needed here.
Enjoy your ride , and when you own Prime - contribute to this forum.
Cheers