Adaptive cruise control / safety sense issue

Today I was in my Prime on a freeway with DRCC following the car ahead. Speed was below 25 when a car on the right merged in front of me and the DRCC stopped working. The car in front immediately moved to the left of me, and I quickly moved the control up to reset and was again following the car ahead with DRCC working. I think, but am not sure, that I was going below 25 when it reset.

 

Dynamic cruise control will bring the car to a complete stop. When the car in front moves forward, hit 'resume' and the Prime will follow.

Bob Wilson

 

According to the manual you can also press the accelerator pedal, which I assume means just a tap of the accelerator and then DRCC will take over.

 

I've commented on this before, so forgive the horse flogging.

LDW w/SA IS useless. I can say that based on the fact that my 2010 ATP package had true LKA. In combination with DRCC the LKA was wonderful. Yes, it disconnected a lot for no apparent reason, but on the whole, it made long freeway trips MUCH less fatiguing.
I was an early adopter, and I didn't test drive the system on the freeway, but in reading the feature list and manual, I assumed (I know) that the new LDW w/SA was an improvement on the already pretty good LKA that I had on my 2010 Prius. But no. Toyota, instead of carrying a great idea forward to their new flagship Prius, removed LKA. If I knew then what I know now, I possible would have looked at other alternatives, or kept my 2010 to see what improvements the 2018 models would bring. Honestly, this is the one (lack of) feature that makes me unhappy. I love the way the car drives, it is more comfortable and quieter that my previous 2 Prii and the sound system is better and has more options. And I'm one of "those" people who actually likes the way the car looks.
This is especially troubling because of the large screen and touch buttons that really requires you to look away from the road to even check the map, or change the audio source, or change the temperature. So, IMHO, the removal of true LKA constitutes more of a safety hazard that just leaving the LKA feature as it was, let alone improving it.

I have often said, I would really like to personally speak to the actual human being that made that decision and come back with one piece of my mind missing.

Sorry, rant off.

 

Has anyone actually reliably get the "Steer Assist" working and driving the car back into lane? How did you get it to work to be "active"? Any tips/advice/hints for the rest of us?

 

It seems to work for me but it is extremely weak and only on a very level straight road does it have a perceptible effect on the steering. There are a couple of indicators to inform you when it is actively doing something.

 

The critical fact that you don't seem to be able to grasp here is:
The fault lies with the ADVERTISING and not with the hardware.
You are bitching about the wrong end of the stick.

Take them to court for false advertising or fraud. Don't expect them to re-engineer the systems to match what their brain dead marketing people came up with. And yes, I think most "marketing" people are essentially paid to lie.

 

I was on a divided road with two lanes each direction and recently paved and lined. No traffic. I just kept my hands close to the wheel. The car slowly went to the right a little over the line and then corrected itself and drove back into the lane. I continued to keep my hands off the wheel to see if it would correct itself when it approached the left (center) line. It didn't, and seemed to keep the slight left turn until I had to steer it to keep from going into the median space.

 

Did you notice whether the Steering Assist indicator (In the multi-function display area) or the one in the Radar/lane warning display showed that it was actually attempting to steer? Or did it lose sight of the lane marker?

kevin

 

It is not suppose to steer the car. It just bumps the steering wheel in the direction it wants you to go.

 

I found it bumps back to the lane but it does not recenter 'bump' to maintain the lane. So the car drifts to the other side and gets a 'bump' back. Depending upon the speed, the car soon goes divergent.

Bob Wilson

 

Personally I find that feature of no use.

 

No. My eyes were glued on the road.

 

I heard the sense of loss and disappointment some of you who experienced LKA. For those who have not experienced it like me, LDW with SA is a vast improvement over a car that did not have such function as someone had mentioned previously. Demonstrating this point, one of my coworkers was so impressed with the LDW beeps when I gave her a ride, she declared that she will buy a car with it next time she looks for a new car.

However, I understand that it is not easy for anyone to expect less when you had more.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

I am not a technical person and often feel that I do not have much to contribute to the group with set of data. However, I just wanted to share how useful the data driven information you guys have provided on the DRCC matters. I just came back from a little over 600 mile trip, vast majority of the miles were driven on the 10th and today (going up to Fort Bragg and coming back home to Central Valley of CA, each leg 280 miles with one change before departure. MPG was 73.3 on 10th and 73 today, average speed of the trip around 39 MPH).

Between Williams and Willlets on CA Hwy 20 (about 95 miles), there are many hills (in the view of flat-land dweller of CA Central Valley), part of which I was able to play with DRCC set to 60-65 mph. I used HV on ascent and switched to EV on descent. DRCC kept the speed on steep decent without my interference just like some of you indicated it should! I did not switch to B mode on EV until I had to disengage DRCC when turns became too tight to maintain the speed. I was trying not to use HV mode because some of you mentioned that Prius will use engine breaking to control the descending speed when HV mode. However, I started to wonder if I really needed to switch to EV mode on descent because Prime automatically turned ICE off and went into EV mode when descending. Is it that simple as "Just drive" to let the car do its things?

 

I tried to use it several times and found out that the steer assist serve the same function as vibrating steering wheel on other makers LDW systems (e.g. Mercedes) it adds the steering wheel moment on top of acoustic and visual(dashboard) warnings.
During my many tests it never managed to bring the car back to the lane.
In real life driving when I pay full attention to the driving task this feature has no practical use for me.
In fact I found it annoying when on numerous occasions I deliberately needed to cross the lane (e.g. to avoid debris, potholes, changing lanes etc.)
Nevertheless I will give it a try at some empty HWY night cruse driving and see if it can be of any value.

 

Just my two cents. I just picked up my Prime Premium from Maine and drove it 2100 miles back to Colorado. I was very impressed with the DDRC in particular. It made the drive much more comfortable and auto-braked me several times before I reacted which was cool. I really loved using the DDRC whenever the traffic was pretty light. I don't think that I will use it on my daily commute as its response time to resume acceleration is quite slow. Still, for a loooooong road trip like this (where I was the only one in the car) it definitely helped when my attention would drift. It also never failed once to notice a car in front of me when I got within range.

The LDA was nice to get the beep and help me refocus, though it was certainly not foolproof. Several times it did not beep when I veered out of my lane. Still, I would say that it correctly identified me drifting out of my lane about 90% of the time.

The SA was, like everyone else reports, very hit and miss. I estimate that it worked about 25% of the time. Also, sometimes it would correct almost perfectly, other times when it engaged it felt very weak and would not correct my course at all. I did lots of tests (at 3AM on abandoned interstates) and really found no rhyme or reason as to why it worked sometimes and not others. At any rate, I really liked the features DDRC and LDA, however coming from a 2007 Hyundai it probably wouldn't take much to impress me!

 

I use the DRCC on a good part of my commute -- I was spoiled by my 2010 having it, so much so that I would never buy a car without it ever again. It's great at reducing traffic stress! I don't use it in stop and go traffic, but anything moving close to normally.

 

Driving 2100 miles impressed me. Perhaps more details?

What is "SA"?

Thanks,
Bob Wilson