Cruise control is great where there's long stretches of open road, light traffic (LOS A or B [1]), and little need for frequent braking. The star usecase is to

Cruise control is great where there's long stretches of open road, light traffic (LOS A or B [1]), and little need for frequent braking. The star usecase is to set cruise to be very near the speed limit, such that after acceleration events like overtaking, you coast back to highway speed. It's a low-effort way of ensuring that one will be compliant with speed laws most of the time, yet maintaining a steady pace. I too prefer to be 'actively engaged' while driving, but in my opinion the reduction of constant acceleration input is a welcome convenience. 'Adaptive' cruise control, on the other hand, feels to me like riding on a tenuous rollercoaster. It's intended to let cruise control be usable in packed traffic, but it requires one to cede a lot of trust and control to the machine in ways that physically make me uneasy -- and it doesn't help that the exact behavior differs between models and manufacturers, so that trust doesn't automatically transplant into a different car. Part of the problem is, again, with terminology. Ever since Adaptive Cruise Control proliferated as a term, it drew a parallel to classic 'Cruise Control', which I think is a mistake. Classic Cruise Control is a fire-and-forget, non-safety feature that's simple to reason about: do I want the car to gun it at a constant 70 mph, or no? You can run a quick mental judgement call and decide whether to engage it or leave it off. 'Adaptive' cruise control fundamentally about maintaining following distance, i.e. tailgating restriction. It's a safety feature. It's a button to "proceed forward not exceeding target speed", but if it gets disengaged for any reason then you can easily overrun into the car ahead. It's a safety feature with the UI/UX of a non-safety feature, so it's always opt-in (!) -- which is simply horrific. All safety features in vehicles should be either always-on, or opt-out, and NEVER opt-in. On a modern car, tailgate restriction should be on by default, with a button unlocking the car into free-throttle mode. Braking -- alone -- should never disable a safety feature. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_service