Adaptive cruise control / safety sense issue

That is scary. All these bugs need to be brought to the attention of Toyota. I would call my dealer's service department as well as calling Toyota direct. If nobody does this, these things will never be fixed. It probably requires a simple firmware update.

 

Are you talking about the dynamic cruise control on the Prime? Your avatar shows a 2010 Prius is why I asked.

 

If at any time the speed is below 28 mph, the adaptive cruise control will shutoff if the car in front changes lane. But I always expect to take over from adaptive cruise control in either or Prime or BMW i3. They are 90% OK but not perfect.

Bob Wilson

 

I tend to agree with one reservation: DRCC works OK only in Toyota presumed conditions. I wish there was another method to hold the car still at stop/red light other than engaging DRCC behind preceding car. DRCC works on HWY in steady predictable traffic ONLY. Other than that one's foot needs to hoover over the brake or acc. pedal depending on conditions.
Over my experience with Prime I am going to abandon DRCC other than when cruising on hwy.
We can wish for some decent DRCC, but for now we are left to stick to Toyota's recommendations.

 

Here is your problem. When the traffic slows down you need to adapt the set speed manually.

It happened to me several times, exactly the same scenario which the car in front of suddenly changes lane. The idea is that it looks to me the car wants to accelerate to satisfy the set speed first, THEN consider if the gap in between gets too close. If the speed difference between your set speed and the actual traffic is too big, it is a disaster waiting to happen.

The way to solve this potentially dangerous scenario is to manually adjust your set speed to match the traffic. Whenever you see most cars in front of you have their brake lights on, it is time to adjust your cruise control speed. It happens frequently when highway branches off or merges in.

 

take your time, we got all night

 

The entire point of adaptive "cruise control" is NOT for use in variable speed, stop and go traffic.
Dealing with traffic "slow downs" is not cruising.

As was pointed out, if your speed set point is more than 20 MPH above the current speed, I would expect the cruise to dis-engage.

I think you are using the system in a manner for which it was NOT designed.......and expecting them to re-engineer it to work the way you want it is......unrealistic.

 

It's been my experience that these are a fail-safe emergency braking system design to hopefully avoid a collision but if not mitigate damage. They are NOT auto-pilot type systems. It will be a few more years for those to enter widespread adoption.

I used a large empty TV box in an empty parking lot to test auto-braking. 2 out of 5 times it hit (barely) the box. Why? It was far beyond the systems capability to factor in loose gravel and the ABS kicking in thus making the stopping distance longer.

 

Interesting to know that the box trick worked.

 

manual pg 393:

 

Well, that 'splains it pretty well.

 

and i am not disputing that it does work, tried it myself in stop and go, jerky acceleration and heavy braking, it is not for me in that situation but ymmv.
Clearly Toyota is covering their rear, get in an accident during such situation and sue Toyota for it ... good luck, didn't you read the manual???
I would encourage everyone to read section 5.5 of the manual, while it is over 100 pages, pay extra attention to the "Warning" sections, nice pink heading, bet those were written by motor enthusiast lawyers

 

That is exactly why I don't use it for stop and go traffic.

 

Thread hijack alert: catching up on you on fuel-ups ... 8th fuel up yesterday, 8.4 gas for 1150 miles or so, 135.9 according to Fuelly and lifetime now at 103.1 ... but it's going down from now on as my Chargepoint is expiring tomorrow so no more charging at work for some time ...

 

... Can you charge at home? I wish I could charge at work. Then I would have the "problems" some of these guys have with worrying about stale fuel.

 

yea, i typically charge over night, and sometimes during the day on weekends if needed. I wish i had the "stale fuel" problem but with a 100 mile roundtrip commute - not happening with the Prime, but that's fine, loving that car, still