Table Of Content

For this category, we judged how well each system’s lane centering assistance (LCA) kept the vehicle in the center of the lane, as well as how smoothly and intuitively the adaptive cruise control (ACC) could adjust its speed behind other cars. BlueCruise is what’s known as an active driving assistance (ADA) system. In the simplest terms, ADA is the simultaneous use of a car’s adaptive cruise control (ACC) to control speed and lane centering assistance (LCA) to control steering.
How ADAS helps truck drivers stay safe and drive efficiently
Cruise Control Explained: How It Works, And When You Should Use It - SlashGear
Cruise Control Explained: How It Works, And When You Should Use It.
Posted: Sat, 30 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Although most brands use it, some have their own names for the same type of system. Here’s a list of some alternative names you might come across, but rest assured, they’re just adaptive cruise control. The big challenge is mastering full self-driving in complex urban environments. While ACC handles long boring highway drives, crowded city streets require an entirely new level of autonomous driving expertise. Aftermarket systems provide a taste of ACC and advanced driver assist capabilities.
ACC Availability Across Vehicle Makes

Automatically speeds up and slows down your car to keep a set following distance relative to the car ahead. The lane keeping assist detects lane markings via video camera and actively supports the driver to remain in the marked lane. Front radar sensor is employed to realize driving functions that enhance comfort, convenience, safety, and enable automated driving. BMW and Mercedes ranked at the top when it comes to allowing the driver to give their own steering inputs (known as “collaborative driving”), for example, if you need to swerve out of the lane to avoid a pothole or give some berth to a cyclist.
ACC + Lane Centering
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll give you an in-depth look at ACC – how it works, different types, key benefits, limitations, and what the future holds for adaptive cruise and autonomous driving. When shopping for a new car, be sure to have the salesperson walk you through the details of how these advanced technologies work and how to adjust any specific settings. Ford’s BlueCruise is the best at discerning when a driver is being inattentive, thanks to its DDMS.
ACC Calibration Warnings for Drivers
Mercedes was the first automaker to bring ACC to the U.S. market in 1999. Twenty years later, automakers are still working to improve their cruise control offerings. In the meantime, ACC technology has become one of the building blocks of autonomous driving. As drivers are getting more and more comfortable with using ACC while driving, the expectation for an even longer duration of continuous operation time for the system is rising. As new enhancements are made, the market is shifting to a new standard in ACC, called intelligent cruise control.
Similarly, Subaru’s system also shuts off the LCA but keeps ACC on at the set speed without slowing. The Mercedes and Lexus/Toyota ACC systems scored top marks for their well-tuned following-gap distance settings. Our testers found the closest setting to be comfortable in high-traffic areas while still not allowing so much space that other vehicles would continually cut in ahead.

When you set cruise control, you can select from up to four present following distances. EyeSight watches ahead and if it detects traffic is slowing, adaptive cruise control adjusts your speed accordingly to keep your selected distance. Once traffic starts moving faster, it can automatically accelerate back up to your set speed. According to SAE, Driving Automation Level 1 driver support features provide steering OR brake/acceleration to the driver while the jump to Level 2 requires features that provide both steering AND brake/acceleration to the driver. On its own, ACC is a Level 1, but when combined with another driver assist feature that steers, your vehicle reaches Level 2 on the Driving Automation scale – a step closer to fully autonomous driving. Tesla’s Autopilot system has attracted its share of controversy, and the name is a bit misleading considering that a human driver must be kept in the loop, but it’s still one of the most advanced systems of its kind.
Cruise control is an automotive feature aimed at providing convenience while assuring top-notch safety. It lets you set your preferred vehicle speed and controls your car’s movement so it doesn’t collide with the vehicle in front of it. If your vehicle has this available feature, Adaptive Cruise Control† allows you to set a cruise control speed and automatically follow a detected vehicle ahead at a driver-selected following gap. If no vehicle is detected in your path, the feature works like regular cruise control. On most vehicles, Adaptive Cruise Control can follow a vehicle ahead to a stop.
The driver can set their preference regarding certain factors, such as the distance to the car in front, driving mode – for example, economical, sporty or comfortable – and others. Together with information about speed limits, road curvature, accidents data and more, these choices influence the automatically selected speed. Essentially none of the ACC systems on the market today are standalone systems. Instead, they're integrated into suites of safety technologies and systems, often cooperating with features like lane-keeping assist to provide further driver assistance by doing most of steering for you (but you do need to keep a hand on the wheel). “Systems like BlueCruise are an important advancement that can help make driving easier and less stressful,” says Jake Fisher, CR’s senior director of auto testing. For instance, it can allow drivers to relax their grip and even periodically let go of the steering wheel, while the car maintains a safe distance from other vehicles when driving on a straight, boring section of highway or when stuck in a traffic jam.
“If an automaker is going to equip a car with an ADA system, they should put in adequate safeguards—or not include both lane centering assistance and adaptive cruise control at all,” says Kelly Funkhouser, CR’s manager of vehicle technology. Adaptive cruise control or Active Cruise Control (ACC) is an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) that automatically adjusts a vehicle’s speed when there are slow-moving vehicles ahead, with the aim of maintaining a safe following distance. When the road ahead is clear, ACC automatically accelerates to your pre-set speed. Subaru’s EyeSight system uses cameras instead of radar, bringing down its cost and making installation of the hardware a bit easier. EyeSight bundles adaptive cruise control with lane-keeping assist, a “pre-collision throttle management” feature that cuts the throttle ahead of an anticipated collision, and low-speed autonomous emergency braking. On some models, Subaru has also added a driver-facing camera to ensure the driver stays alert while these features are in use.
Combining them into either a single control or a multistep activation removes the freedom for drivers to use each feature on its own. It also implies that the system is more capable than the sum of the two features alone. Our testers evaluated how easy it was for drivers to engage the systems and make adjustments to the settings. They also reviewed the types and amount of information displayed to drivers, and how easy it was to know and understand what the system was doing. Our testers saw significant improvements with Hyundai’s Highway Driving Assist 2, which scored 12 points higher than the original system.
CR Rates Active Driving Assistance Systems - Consumer Reports
CR Rates Active Driving Assistance Systems.
Posted: Tue, 17 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Automotive engineers tweaked around the edges of cruise control for the next 35 years. However, cruise control didn’t evolve much beyond the first system that found its way into the 1958 Chrysler Imperial. Kelley Blue Book® Values and pricing are based in part on transactions in your area. Your ZIP code also helps us find local deals and highlight other available offers.
A camera system could notice driver behavior such as brake lights and/or a turn signal. BMW’s Driving Assistance Professional and GM’s Super Cruise have a driver monitoring camera that ensures the operator is looking at the road ahead when the ACC system brings the vehicle to a full stop, for up to 30 seconds. This provides the convenience of a stop-and-go feature in most traffic jam situations, without the hassle of having to re-engage ACC once traffic ahead starts moving forward again. The camera is there as a safeguard to ensure that drivers are watching the roadway. Most of the other systems change the ACC mode to standby after the vehicle has been stopped for just a few seconds, which eliminates the benefits of using ACC in stop-and-go traffic.
For example, Mercedes-Benz packages the radar behind the upper grille in the center and behind a solid plastic panel that has painted slats to simulate the look of the rest of the grille. The automatic emergency braking on vulnerable road users helps to avoid collisions, particularly with cyclists and pedestrians. As these systems become available on more new cars, it’s important that consumers understand their limitations. No matter what the automakers might imply in their marketing, none of the systems we tested here are capable of doing the driving for you.
One example is automatically pressing the acceleration pedal, which enables drivers to take their foot off the pedal for a few moments when they are on a motorway with low traffic. The need to remain vigilant remains, so they can brake whenever required. Camera-based systems use a totally different operational method, using computers to attempt to recognize objects and features from their visual representations, rather than using time-of-flight of a beam of directed energy like laser or radar. This can make the systems more robust against problems like inclement weather, but can also lead to new problems, like distinguishing between real objects and images of objects, or their shadows. The Subaru Eyesight safety suite, which includes ACC, is a dual camera-based system. Early systems didn’t allow for presetting the maintained following distance.
No comments:
Post a Comment