Cruise Control - threat or hazard?

That wouldn't explain his most recent issue w/sudden increase to setpoint of 68mph (which was successfully disengaged with application of brake). Now, if confirmed, that's really odd behavior...

 

I agree, I consider this ‘restore speed’ feature a safety problem. I would prefer to accelerate to speed and set the speed every time, as a rule. I apologize to the people who love this feature – this is just my opinion.

I wonder how many people forget that they have the cruise control ‘on’ after a while of paying attention to the traffic and after they had the cruise control deactivated by depressing the brake pedal, like for example getting ready to take a freeway exit.

Also there is nothing to say what speed the cruise control will resume to, you will have to first know what speed you had when you depressed the brake pedal (how many time one looks at the speedometer when depressing the brake?) and then you have to remember that number when you restore it, I think there is a good chance some folks may not.

The second part that really bothers me is the position of the cruise control switch. It is on the steering wheel (that moves while you drive) and close to the knee.

I can see the following use case happening with high probability: one is on the left lane, cruise control on, set at around 65mph, notices the freeway exit mark, depresses the brake to slow down, looks in the mirror to get on the right lane, notices traffic going faster, slows down more to let the cars pass by, gets on the right lane, takes the exit having about 35mph and while still steering to the right hits the restore button with the knee, then the car accelerates when they don’t expect. I agree that once they press the brake again the cruise control will disengage, but the element of surprise will introduce a number of seconds delay in the reaction. Why not get rid of this possibility all together?


I would like to see a poll about who likes the cruise control, but wants to have the restore speed feature removed on their car… Personally I would love for this to be a customizable feature, like the reverse beep … only have the restore to speed feature off by default. … Even better, if the cruise control is on, but disengaged and a higher speed is in the memory set that beeper on…