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Having driven a car with Toyota's smart driving features... I view them as a negative. Cruise control keeps me too far back from whatever vehicle is in front of

Having driven a car with Toyota's smart driving features... I view them as a negative. Cruise control keeps me too far back from whatever vehicle is in front of me. Dealbreaker with no clear way to disable. I'll stick with my 7 year old Yaris (which also has shitty Bluetooth)

DevoidSimo 7y ago
I rented one once, you can adjust the follow distance for the adaptive cruise control. Annoyingly it resets each time you turn on the car though.
- SECProto 7y ago
  In my experience, none of them are a reasonable distance back. If it gave an audible chime first or something, it would be fine.
bashinator 7y ago
How far back is that? I generally try to leave at least 10 car-lengths in fast traffic, 3-5 in heavy traffic.
- SECProto 7y ago
  I leave quite a reasonable distance. The issue to me is it slows down before that with no cue, so I occasionally look down to find i'm somehow going 20km under the speed limit, a hundred meters behind whatever is in front of me.
saalweachter 7y ago
That's called a SAFE FOLLOWING DISTANCE.
- SECProto 7y ago
  > That's called a SAFE FOLLOWING DISTANCE. Hi. Safe following distance is the distance required to safely stop at whatever speed you are going. At a typical speed of 90km/hr (that's usually when this "feature" gets engaged - slowing me to 10km/hr under the limit because that's what someone in front of me is doing), the safe stopping distance is around 80-90 meters (perception+braking in good conditions). The shortest follow distance setting I seemed able to find was around double this distance. tl;dr: I do not find that the adaptive cruise control is engaged at a safe following distance. Indeed, I think it makes me less safe as a driver, because it slows me down arbitrarily without any visual or auditory notification.
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    The LONGEST following distance maintained by Toyota's adaptive cruise control is 50m (at 80 km/h). The short and medium settings are 30m and 40m. So either (a) the car you drove was defective or (b) you are radically misjudging your following distance. I know you are inclined to assume the former, but keep in mind that humans are terrible at judging distances when moving at high speeds, and most people leave way too little space between them and the car in front of them.
    - SECProto 7y ago
      I make a habit of counting seconds between cars (particularly in light traffic, which is also the only time I'm using cruise control), aiming for the standard 5s follow. At 90km/hr (25m/s), you're telling me Toyota's cruise control has a maximum follow distance of 2 seconds? That is incorrect from my experience (and unsafe from standard driving practice). Where did you get that number?
      - saalweachter 7y ago
        I looked it up in the owners manual for the Toyota Corolla available online. (While I haven't driven a Toyota Corolla with adaptive cruise control, I have driven a Subaru Forester, which uses roughly the same following distance; I find it to be a little closer than I'd prefer on my own, but accept it for the convenience and because I assume it can get away with a shorter following distance, since it is not reliant on human reflexes to stop in an emergency.)

DevoidSimo 7y ago

I rented one once, you can adjust the follow distance for the adaptive cruise control. Annoyingly it resets each time you turn on the car though.

SECProto 7y ago
In my experience, none of them are a reasonable distance back. If it gave an audible chime first or something, it would be fine.

bashinator 7y ago

How far back is that? I generally try to leave at least 10 car-lengths in fast traffic, 3-5 in heavy traffic.

SECProto 7y ago
I leave quite a reasonable distance. The issue to me is it slows down before that with no cue, so I occasionally look down to find i'm somehow going 20km under the speed limit, a hundred meters behind whatever is in front of me.

saalweachter 7y ago

That's called a SAFE FOLLOWING DISTANCE.

SECProto 7y ago
> That's called a SAFE FOLLOWING DISTANCE. Hi. Safe following distance is the distance required to safely stop at whatever speed you are going. At a typical speed of 90km/hr (that's usually when this "feature" gets engaged - slowing me to 10km/hr under the limit because that's what someone in front of me is doing), the safe stopping distance is around 80-90 meters (perception+braking in good conditions). The shortest follow distance setting I seemed able to find was around double this distance. tl;dr: I do not find that the adaptive cruise control is engaged at a safe following distance. Indeed, I think it makes me less safe as a driver, because it slows me down arbitrarily without any visual or auditory notification.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  The LONGEST following distance maintained by Toyota's adaptive cruise control is 50m (at 80 km/h). The short and medium settings are 30m and 40m. So either (a) the car you drove was defective or (b) you are radically misjudging your following distance. I know you are inclined to assume the former, but keep in mind that humans are terrible at judging distances when moving at high speeds, and most people leave way too little space between them and the car in front of them.
  - SECProto 7y ago
    I make a habit of counting seconds between cars (particularly in light traffic, which is also the only time I'm using cruise control), aiming for the standard 5s follow. At 90km/hr (25m/s), you're telling me Toyota's cruise control has a maximum follow distance of 2 seconds? That is incorrect from my experience (and unsafe from standard driving practice). Where did you get that number?
    - saalweachter 7y ago
      I looked it up in the owners manual for the Toyota Corolla available online. (While I haven't driven a Toyota Corolla with adaptive cruise control, I have driven a Subaru Forester, which uses roughly the same following distance; I find it to be a little closer than I'd prefer on my own, but accept it for the convenience and because I assume it can get away with a shorter following distance, since it is not reliant on human reflexes to stop in an emergency.)