For what it’s worth, when I was on a business trip back in March 2024, my rental (a Toyota Camry, I think) had adaptive cruise control. It worked pretty well. I was able to set my speed (including a numeric indicator on the dash to see exactly what I set), and it would gradually increase and decrease my cruising speed based on the speed of the car in front. It rarely applied the breaks and certainly didn’t slam on them.
It sounds like Kia’s implementation needs some work.
I have a 2024 Kia Sportage Hybrid. You can set the following distance between your vehicle and the leading vehicle according to your preference, and of course if you set it to a close follow the car’s going to apply the brakes more suddenly than if the following distance were greater. (However, I find that if I leave the following distance at the default setting, other drivers see an opportunity to merge into the space in front of you.) I would also note that a quick brake operation always feels more disruptive when you’re not personally doing the braking.
As someone who rents vehicles frequently, I find these “smart” features can be terrifying if they engage unexpectedly or in ways that are not expected.
It’s one thing when you use a car long enough to learn/customize its behaviors, but it’s a very different thing when you drive different vehicles with different behavioral profiles. Every vehicle becomes a learning experience, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.
PS. I am not opposed to “smart” features, per se. I agree that they can be very good things that enhance safety. At the same time, unintended conseuences are very possible.
I had adaptive cruise control in my Toyota Prius Prime and it worked perfectly. It always kept the same distance between my car and the car in front. It almost felt like having an autopilot. It even came to a complete stop at the signal as long as there was already a car stopped. The only problem I had was a very slow acceleration once the car had slowed down or stopped. My 2016 Tacoma does not have the adaptive cruise control and I feel lost without it.
I did a 6K mile road trip 18 months ago – my first in a car with adaptive cruise control – and it was amazing what a difference it made. I purposely had tried to keep each day’s driving to about eight hours, though a few days were longer, but I discovered I wasn’t tired at all after that much driving. The reason was the adaptive cruise control.
On previous trips I’d use regular cruise control, but I was constantly having to adjust it for the speed of truck and other cars, going through towns, speed traps, etc. With adaptive, I set it and just relaxed. I didn’t need my foot on the accelerator or brake, because the car controlled all that. I could concentrate on the scenery, my audiobook, and watching out for bad drivers. Even after a long day I arrived fresh and not tired. I was stunned what a difference it made.
My main issue with ACC is that it assumes the vehicle ahead is doing what you want your vehicle to do such as travelling at an appropriate speed for the conditions (and speed limit). That may well be OK for an ideal motorway in good weather but there are plenty of times when this is not ideal. An example is that the vehicle ahead suddenly swerves to avoid a hazard on the roadway. The “smart” system lacks anticipation is these circumstances whereas I would likely have spotted other vehicles swerving. The ACC doesn’t see and react to a hazard, such as a slow truck, that is further ahead than the car in front. It doesn’t anticipate changing lanes for an upcoming exit or other reason. It will just keep blindly following the vehicle in front at the same speed until that vehicles is suddenly not there.
May one day ACC will come with the ability to know the road conditions hundreds of metres ahead (cars ahead feeding it that information?) and it will become more reliable and useful
As I have said in other threads, currently I much prefer to use a speed limiter to set a maximum desired speed for the posted speed limit and decide myself on an appropriate speed up to this set speed. I find this relieves some of the stress of driving by removing one of the factors that I need to monitor (maximum speed).
My Toyota’s ACC is a very predictable system. It flashes an icon to indicate it sees something ahead, and if you aren’t able to change lanes to pass it, it slows down gradually and smoothly.
In light traffic with plenty of advance warning, you can usually signal and steer into an open passing lane and the system will handle all necessary speed adjustments, bringing you back up to full speed as you pass.
(Note that ACC is separate from automatic emergency braking (AEB), which absolutely does slam on the brakes, and also sounds an alarm.)
Can confirm, Toyotas don’t break. That’s why you buy 'em.
It really seems like getting used to a new car, especially a rental, is a challenge these days. Besides different driver-assistance setups, you have strange shifters (pushbuttons or non-positional levers) and an overreliance on touchscreen menus. I’m hopeful that manufacturers will figure out what works and settle on common layouts like they mostly did from the 1990s-2010s.
ACC (a Level 1 automation) is an enhancement of regular cruise control, not a self-driving system in any way. It doesn’t “assume” anything, can’t anticipate anything, and its only function is to help you manage your following distance in traffic. You are very much still actively driving the car with ACC.
That moves you into Level 2 (Supercruise/Bluecruise/Teammate) territory. And that’s still very much a work in progress.
I think Kia’s system definitely needs work, but not much. It has all the pieces, just calibrated poorly.
I can set the distance, but the car just barrels ahead until it’s too close; adjusting “too close” changes the distance but not the reaction.
I can also set a sensitivity to deviation from the set speed. I have it set to least sensitive, and that seems to mean the car will let me get about 0.8 mph above the set speed (going downhill, for example) before it puts on the brake, and 0.8 mph below the set speed before it wants to go high throttle. As far as I can tell, it’s like the distance setting. The car’s reaction is the same; it’s just when the car reacts that changes. Gradual acceleration is not an option.
There is no flashing icon (that would be much better), but there seems to be something similar. A faint image of a vehicle will appear on the dashboard in front of the icon representing my vehicle when the gap between my car and the car ahead closes. I really need to concentrate to see it, which means taking my eyes off the road for longer than should be required. But that just warns me to pass or disengage the cruise control because it’s about to slam the brakes. If my car knows there is a car up there, why doesn’t my car just ease off the gas to match the speed?
I experienced it at highway speeds, I believe 55 mph because of the curves, but maybe higher. It was on a westbound interstate near Salt Lake City. (And is anyone else annoyed at Google Maps for not showing highway numbers in the default view?)
I can remember problems when I rented cars in the 1980s and found the hard way that the rental car didn’t do the same things my own car did. I took to testing key controls before I started moving, and driving around the lot to get the feel of the car. I haven’t rented a car in a dozen years and I would hesitate to rent one now because I don’t know what “smart” features to expect.
The 2022 Toyota Prius I got as a rental in the Keys worked the exact same way. I could still set cruise control to maintain a certain speed, but this distance setting could override that if necessary. Particularly nice was that it would slow down and then also speed right back up to cruise speed in stop and go traffic. I thought it worked surprisingly well. I couldn’t say I was equally satisfied with the lane assist though. It could get distracted by poor striping (admittedly much more a problem here in the East Bay than over in the Keys) and when it worked it always perfectly centered, which is of course not what good driving teaches you to do in all situations.
What I’ve never tried out myself is parallel park assist. I imagine I drive, see the spot, stop in the vicinity, push a button, and voilà the car parks itself in that spot with minimal back and forth while leaving exactly 2" to the curb and evening out the space left to the car ahead and behind. But perhaps that is just my naive imagination of a feature that’s half as good when you see it work in real life. OTOH if it’s as good as I’d hope, my wife will for sure make us get it when we buy our next car.
That’s a feature I will never pay extra for, and will never use if it’s present.
If the software doesn’t work right and the car ends up damaging another vehicle, I will be fully liable, not the car manufacturer.
And ever since back-up cameras became standard equipment, parallel parking has become pretty easy. It’s not like when I learned how, where I had to estimate distances by looking over my shoulder through the rear window.
That’s the case for all this automation. Just as it should be. Driver always needs to be in command and ready to step in before mayhem ensues. Morons “driving” their Model 3 from the back seat notwithstanding.
And that’s the problem. The car companies are advertising these features as if they’re completely perfect. I’ve seen several ads for auto-parking where they show the driver get out of the car, then push a button on the key fob and it parks itself while the driver enters the building - not even waiting for it to finish.
So they’re telling you that you don’t need to be in control. But if that software glitches and the car damages the two cars it is parking between, you can guarantee that the manufacturer will say “you should have read the fine print and not attempted what our commercial told you you could do”.
I don’t entirely agree with this. There are multiple cases where car manufacturers have been found liable for accidents due to manufacturing or design defects. That should apply to software as well as hardware, and in fact already has. In Toyota’s unintended acceleration case, at least one verdict and one settlement resulted because the software running the throttle control system was found to be buggy and poorly designed.
There’s obviously a balance, drivers do need to pay attention to what’s going on, but if they do, and the car’s software still causes problems, the manufacturer should (IMO) be held liable.
That is absolutely true. And it’s the correct approach IMHO.
But at the same time we have a road safety regulator who declares roadworthiness for vehicles that do not require drivers be seated in the driver seat when driving (unlike EU regulators, for example) or is A-OK with vehicles that advertise “autopilot” knowing perfectly well that this does not legally do what 99% of customers will expect a system called that to do. Add in then, as @shamino noted, MV manufacturers play with this in their marketing all the time. Their ads insinuate you can do things that are flat out illegal. And instead of the regulator shutting that down and fining them such that they cease these and similar shenanigans, we just let them go on because apparently in today’s US regulation = evil.
Well fine then. I know the CVC (CA MV code) and I can afford a decent enough attorney should I need one. If my fellow countrymen and -women believe not having common sense regulation is worth us having to pay higher insurance premiums and the increased risk of injury or death (no other wealthy developed country has such a high death toll per vehicle mile traveled, and ours is quickly rising too), good luck with that. I’ll be playing it safe (defensive driving), taking responsibility for my own MV, and I’ll continue to stay well lawyered up (in addition to having copious amounts of underinsured/uninsured motorist insurance along with an big fat umbrella policy).
Reminds me of a time many years ago that I rented a car for a business trip. They gave me a hybrid. Had never driven a hybrid before, and no instructions from the rental agency.
Pushed the start button. Nothing. The engine didn’t start. So I thought – what is going on here. Is this car broken?.
Then I had the “I should have had a V-8” moment. D’oh! It’s a hybrid, dummy! Pushed the “start” button again. Shifted into reverse to back out of the parking space. Car moved. Engine started a little later when it needed to.
My colleague that I was travelling with didn’t stop laughing for a while…
Tonya and I stopped at a car dealer the other day because they had a VW ID.Buzz, and we wanted to look at it. We couldn’t test drive it due to some recalls that put a stop-sale on it, but that didn’t matter—we were mostly curious about what it looked like inside.
When Tonya said that she’d be worried about parking such a large vehicle, the sales guy, who actually knew his stuff, amazingly, said that it had automatic parking. He then went on to say that automatic parking was the feature that scared the salespeople the most. They had to try it in every car with it so they could talk knowledgeably about it, but they were afraid of it damaging a new car. We couldn’t try it in the ID.Buzz, but a search finds this example video.
That’s dandy and all, but I’m specifically talking about parallel parking.
With backup cameras, regular parking has become trivial. Aim for center and back up as far as camera indicates. Done.
But when faced with a tight parallel spot, possibly in heavy traffic with impatient drivers behind, a neat automated assist could really lower stress levels. For everyone. (assuming it works reliably)
