Cruse Control

reeac

I've never owned a car with cruise control but I've hired a few cars in the US that had it and always felt uneasy when using it. I happened to be sitting next to the head of RAF pilot training once and we discussed this. His view was that I was afraid that I'd be unable to locate the brake pedal in an emergency if my right foot wasn't in a well defined position such as on the accelerator and I think that he was probably correct. It's probably something that you can adapt to in time and I know that my son uses cruise control a lot on his XF.

david29dpo

Agreed.
After driving down the M5 at 2 in the morning for 4 hours its very easy to forget where the brake pedal is.

WellKnownSid

It's a Clio, not a sodding jet fighter...

zappahey

thescouselander wrote: »

That's just a myth, it doesn't work like that. The cruise control will keep the wheels spinning at a constant rpm that equates the to target road speed set. If the car starts to aquaplane/skid the actual speed of the vehicle might reduce slightly but as far as the car is concerned if the wheels are still spinning at the same RPM the computer won't be aware of any speed reduction. If the wheels start to spin faster because of the lack of traction this will be interpreted by the system as a speed increase and the throttle will back off to bring the wheel RPM back down to the target range.

Or, with my last car, the electronic stability control recognises that there's aquaplaning going on and switches off the cruise control.

I haven't hit any standing water in the current car to see if that is typical.

Strider590

Actually, despite what you may think, any driver that experiences tyres breaking grip will naturally ease off the throttle and regain traction, the cruise control won't do this.
The whole thing was blown out of all proportion, with claims that cruise control could cause a vehicle to go flying through the air upon hitting water. BUT there remains an element of truth.

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/wetroad.asp

reeac

WellKnownSid wrote: »

It's a Clio, not a sodding jet fighter...

Thank you for that erudite contribution. I will always value it.

zappahey

Strider590 wrote: »

Actually, despite what you may think, any driver that experiences tyres breaking grip will naturally ease off the throttle and regain traction, the cruise control won't do this.

I'm pretty sure that any modern car, rather than the North American tractors in the Snopes article, will sort it out just fine.

motorguy

david29dpo wrote: »

Agreed.
After driving down the M5 at 2 in the morning for 4 hours its very easy to forget where the brake pedal is.

Instinct should be telling you where the brake pedal is. If you're having to think about finding it with your foot, you're doing something wrong.

motorguy

Strider590 wrote: »

Actually, despite what you may think, any driver that experiences tyres breaking grip will naturally ease off the throttle and regain traction, the cruise control won't do this.
The whole thing was blown out of all proportion, with claims that cruise control could cause a vehicle to go flying through the air upon hitting water. BUT there remains an element of truth.

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/wetroad.asp

I've been using cruise control on cars for years. Never had any issues with it.

If you're at risk of skidding on ice or surface water then its because you're going too fast in the first place.

RichardD1970

Strider590 wrote: »

Actually, despite what you may think, any driver that experiences tyres breaking grip will naturally ease off the throttle and regain traction, the cruise control won't do this.
The whole thing was blown out of all proportion, with claims that cruise control could cause a vehicle to go flying through the air upon hitting water. BUT there remains an element of truth.

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/wetroad.asp

The "element of truth" is that when in difficult conditions, ie heavy rain, snow, ice etc, the driver should be in full control of the vehicle, not let an autonomous system take care of things.

How does the car and cruise control read the speed of the vehicle? By the turning of the wheels.

So, surely, if the wheels start to go faster, due to aquaplaning or loosing grip on ice, the cruise control will think the car is accelerating and ease off the gas.

Seems logical to me anyway.