So I’m in the market for a recent used car and I have a couple of options (Kia K5 vs Hyundai Sonata) that I like pretty much equally well. The main difference is that one has adaptive cruise control and the other has Cross-traffic alert. I’m planning on going out to try to buy it tomorrow so after today it just becomes an academic exercise.
Anybody have experience or advice about which option they found be more helpful?
Adaptive cruise control. It can be actually useful. Cross traffic alert is useless if you back into parking spaces, which you should do. If you don’t back into parking spaces now, it will be much easier when you have a backup camera.
I miss the Adaptive Cruise Control that was on my Highlander. I now have a $50K Mercedes and it doesn’t have it.
Another vote for adaptive cruise control. I’ve got two Volvos with both, and use it all the time.
This isn’t meant as a threadshit, but I’m not a fan of either.
With the ACC, from behind, it looks like you’re riding your brakes. I always worry that someone that’s getting close to me is going to think I’m brake checking them.
The other thing I’ve found is that if you’re going below the max speed you’ve set for it and the car in front of you changes lanes, your car will suddenly speed up to close the gap between you and the next car. Similarly, if someone moves in front of you, your car will quickly try to re-establish that gap by slowing down.
I’m sure it’s fine once you get used to it, but it always catches me off guard.
It should be noted that I’ve never really cared for cruise control in the first place and rarely use it anyway.
That cross traffic thing I could take it or leave it. There are times when it beeps and you realize there’s a car there. But, for me, it’s annoying more than anything. It rush hour traffic, having that alarm blaring at you while waiting for a spot to open makes it hard to concentrate on what you’re doing. Or at least it makes it hard for me to concentrate on what I’m doing.
I’ve also found myself turning off my left blinker when I’m pulling into the right side of a double left turn lane. It goes off as I’m driving past the already stopped traffic next to me.
Personally, for me, neither of these two features would sway me one way or the other.
Adaptive cruise control
Thanks all for your input, so far it sounds like cruise control is the clear winner, which as luck would have it is also the car I was slightly leaning in the direction of for other reasons.
This is definitely not a threadshit. I appreciate all of the input even, or perhaps particularly, if you don’t like it.
Regarding you comments on the cross traffic, what your describing sounds more like blindspot monitoring, another option that I was strongly interested in.
I’m not a fan of adaptive cruise control.
First, I’ve noticed strings of cars on the highway all slowing down and nobody doing anything about it. I can’t prove those are people ignoring ACC and creating a parade, but I sure suspect it in some cases.
But mainly, I don’t want my car taking a lot of un-commanded actions. While there are some instances where it makes sense, in the case of ACC I don’t see the advantages if you’re a driver who is paying attention. The way I look at it, automation is there to HELP you drive, not take over. You should still be driving the car, with some chosen level of automation assisting.
When I’m using cruise control I want the car to stay at the speed I’ve selected until I effing well tell it not to. And if the interface is designed sensibly, it should be easy to change speeds with the (basic) cruise control engaged. If I need to, I’ll turn it off and take over manually. I’d much rather control spacing between cars myself than let the car decide (and yes, I know the spacing can be varied in ACC). That’s how I drive, but I suspect I’m in the minority.
Fwiw, i have cross traffic monitoring and i love it. Yes, it sometimes beeps when I’m backing up in a parking lot and it sees cross traffic on the street. But that’s easy enough to ignore. It’s great every time i back out of my driveway. It sees traffic well before i can.
I have never used adaptive cruise control. But I’ve had regular Christ control for years and i never use it. I don’t miss adaptive cruise control.
I think it depends somewhat on how often you drive on highways, and how much you like cruise control. But i see cross traffic monitoring as a valuable safety feature that works well.
My car has “Subaru eyesight”. Different models sometimes work differently.
I have both and I use ACC much more often. I guess if my driveway backed out into a busy street, I would use cross-traffic alert, but I back out into a dead end, so it never alerts me. Once, it alerted me in a parking lot, but I saw the car coming pretty clearly.
Does your driveway back out into a busy street? If not, go with ACC (which it looks like you’re doing, anyway).
Cross-traffic alert. That definitely comes in handy.
I rarely drive highway speeds, so no need for the adaptive cruise control for me.
Fwiw, my street isn’t especially busy. But the sight-lines aren’t great, and the back of the car has a much better view than i have. So it probably beeps one time in 10 that I’m backing out. And that’s absolutely enough to be useful.
We don’t drive much in heavy city traffic so ACC doesn’t appeal to me. My first experiences with it was driving a rental car across rural Wyoming where you set the cruise and just go. With ACC I’d be driving and all of a sudden the car would start slowing down when coming up behind a slower vehicle in front on me, when there was plenty of passing space and opportunities. It made driving less safe in that case, because it lost speed needlessly.
What would you prefer it to do? In that scenario, with standard cruise control, you’d just rear end the car you’re approaching. The only alternative I can see (other than not using it) is for the car to handle the lane change on it’s own which is getting into self-driving territory.
As long as you see the car, why not just move into a different lane before your car begins to slow down? You’ll zip right past it and can move back over.
Driving on a two lane highway, if I see that there is no oncoming traffic, I would stay at speed, come up behind the slower car until a few lengths behind, signal and move to the oncoming passing lane without slowing down or speeding up. You’re supposed to stay in your lane until you begin the passing maneuver. The alternative to ACC is to stay awake and actually drive the car, as you say, not to use it at all.
I guess I’m not understanding what’s preventing you from passing a car you’re approaching while ACC is on.
It’s usually in the left lane this happens and you don’t want to pass on the right. It slows you down till the person in front of you moves out of your way.
I didn’t like it slowing down when it wasn’t necessary since it did so long before I would normally start passing. Instead of closing the difference between vehicles until we were close enough to start passing, all of a sudden we dawdling behind the slower vehicle, and then we had to accelerate to pass. Mostly-empty two lane rural highways probably aren’t what ACC were designed for.
On my version, you can adjust how far away from the other car the ACC will approach before slowing down. If you shorten that distance, it would give you plenty of time to pass.
Yeah, it was a Toyota Camry rental, so the first time it happened I was like “What the heck is going on?” If it was my personal vehicle I would definitely play around with the settings.