Fully automated driving cars are newly hyped in this new era. But when i got cruise control and lane keeping assist, we were wondering.

Day by day development of AI, cruise control and lane keeping is becoming smarter than before. Our life is easier. But keep in mind that the human brain is more efficient than AI.

AI and our human touch make our journey on the road safer and effortless.

Without touching the pedals if I can, as much as possible without touching the steering wheel, self-driving is the best innovation. I talk a lot about driving fast and enjoying your car, but at the end of the day, a car is a tool for getting to places. 

There are the two main technologies I’m going to be talking about. Automatic radar-guided cruise control and lane-keep assist with self-steering. 

Let’s deploy all 120 brake horsepower of this car and get ourselves into some clear air.

Adaptive Cruise Control

So first of all, adaptive cruise control—this stuff is magic. If there’s no car in front of me, it will just act as normal cruise control and continue at the speed that I’ve set. But as we come up behind cars that are going a little bit slower, well, let me demonstrate: the radar picks up the difference in speed, and I’m not touching the pedals here.

It automatically maintains the speed of the car in front. 

Now, the car has moved out of the way, so it will attempt to get back up to speed, but now it notices, there’s another vehicle, and it will match the speed of that car.

This is important because it makes traveling long distances mindless. One of the most tiring aspects of motorway driving is keeping a consistent speed or distance from other vehicles. No human on planet Earth can keep a distance as well as this radar system. This radar system is ridiculous. Any small change in how the car in front is moving away from me or getting closer, the system matches that and makes me move at the exact same rate. Right, let’s stop doing 50 mph, and I’m not going to accelerate here. As soon as there’s nothing in front of me, the car knows what to do; it knows I want to go at 70 mph, and it’s going to bring me back up to speed. This also has some additional benefits that a lot of people do not think about.

Traffic

Do you hate being stuck in traffic? I sure do. Isn’t it nice not to have to worry about it? The car will do it. That’s not me touching the brakes. This is the most annoying part of long-distance driving for me. I hate this stuff. You just sit here, accelerate, and then slow down; it’s annoying. I always leave a long gap so I don’t have to stop and slow down. It’s just long, right?

The car is doing it for me.

If a car pulls ahead of me. It will take care of it. Everything is alright. It won’t matter if the van pulls in front of me.

It significantly reduces the tension and anxiety associated with long-distance travel. If you’re driving up and down the country, you’ll inevitably end up in this situation. 

This car will actually take you all the way down to 0 mph to a complete stop, if the car stops in traffic in front of you. I’m going to cover the brake because I’m scared.

I haven’t done that. I might be sure that over time you would learn to trust it and maybe not cover the brake, but I feel like it’s a good idea to cover it. 

Self-Steering

The second system we need to cover here is lane-keep with active steering. Now, lane-keep is just a simple system that stops you from veering out of your lane. The active steering part is very cool because the car will steer for you. Now, I’m going to take my hands off the wheel; this is what I wanted. The system is going to be unavailable soon, and it’ll start beeping. You have to actually make very minor inputs. Just from the weight of your hand to keep the system active.

You might say, why do I need this system?

If you want to have a drink or something snacks.

I’m in the middle of a 500 mile round trip for work. I’ve had to take many drinks while on the road, and this just allows you to do that. Whether you’re in a corner or on a straight, it really doesn’t matter. Even the straights on motorways have little bits of weave to them, and this active steering keeps you in the right place and keeps you safe. It even lifted off for the corner. 

Isn’t that just ridiculous? I was a bit worried it was going to try and send me around here at 70 mph, but it knew. There’s a corner coming up. I don’t think I could do that at 70 mph. So it sent me around at 42 mph. 

I love it.

Basically, if you think about it, this car does not need me here. It can steer itself, accelerate itself, and keep pace with whatever’s in front. It can keep itself in its lane. The only thing it can’t really do is navigate obstacles and slower cars the way a true self-driving system would. I wouldn’t try to use this on a roundabout or anything like that, but in any motorway situation where you’ve got defined lanes and all you need to do is follow them. Let’s be honest, on a long journey, that’s 90% of your driving. 

Having something that makes it easy to handle those situations is fantastic.

It also works seamlessly with me actually driving. If I put my foot on the accelerator, turn, and drive myself, it doesn’t interfere. And then, as soon as I want to return to cruising pace, I don’t have to press a button or do anything; I just let go, and it keeps driving. It’s brilliant. There’s a corner coming up, and it’s just going to handle it perfectly. Look at when someone cuts in front of me, it’s actually reduced speed a little bit and built back its distance. It’s so cool.

One of the most annoying parts of long-distance driving is exactly where I’m at right now: the middle lane is doing 68 mph, and the fast lane is doing significantly more than 70 mph. So, it’s very difficult to find your balance point and your happy place. I always found that when I drive cars that don’t have active cruise control, I never actually use the cruise unless the motorway is empty. If you set it at 70 mph, you’ll quickly catch up to someone and have to disengage it anyway to keep pace.

You could just sit here and think about whatever you want. It wanna be your business plans or the work projects you’re working on. I will say I don’t love this car’s lane positioning; it feels slightly too far to the left. I’m a bit close to the edge, and I wish there were a setting where I could bias it back toward the middle. I’ll say this too. It massively encourages middle-lane hogging. 

If I’ve got a car that’ll do most of the work for me and all I need is for people to get out of my way, then I’m inclined to just sit in this lane forever.

One thing I don’t like about the active cruise control is that it’s not aware of speed limits, so when you go through a speed limit change, you do have to manually adjust your speed, which is a bit annoying. I wish it would recognize the speed limit and automatically adjust.

But, if you’re feeling a little brave, you can follow someone who isn’t speeding; the active cruise will just keep pace with that car, and they’ll likely adjust for speed limits.