I’ve never understood the point of cruise control. You still have to drive and pay attention might as well do everything yourself.
Could someone share their experience?
Could someone share their experience?
(This is purely an aside but I have a temporary soapbox so why not. I'm skeptical of more advanced forms of cruise control, even simple things like adaptive. Anything that reduces your need to concentrate tends to leave you open to daydreaming (never mind actual distractions like phones); an example of the "TSA agent problem" where staring at a screen of benign bags all day turns out to be a bad way to detect guns in hand luggage. Better I think to have nothing, absent sci-fi-years-in-the-future autonomous cars where you can sleep while they're underway. Humans are awful at passively waiting for something out of the ordinary to occur; computers are great at that. Computers suck at common sense and detecting intention; humans are amazing. The current state of self driving cars plays to both actors' worst weaknesses!)
Adaptive cruise control is about my favorite “driver assist” technology though. Makes the constant speed changes of rush hour driving much less stressful when you use a large enough safety window. Also on open highways it is just wonderful as you basically never touch it (unlike traditional which constantly has to be disengaged for even a single other car in your lane).
Worth noting that my vehicle’s emergency braking system is distinct and active regardless of ACC status. Also I’m always ready to brake manually.
Top bicycle athletes spend many hours learning how to pedal to minimize accelerations due to cyclic nature of pedaling. With a car it seems easier (all you need is to keep your foot steady, not to maintain constant torque while switching from one leg muscle to another) but I cannot do it. Cruise control beats me every time.
To expand on this: it's about maintaining a specific cadence (usually in the 100-110 RPM range). You don't change your cadence for the terrain; you maintain your cadence and change gears to match the terrain.
Constant cadence and constant speed are different goals, the first one is about biology (how to get your body to do more), the second one is pure physics. Maybe it is even "anti-biological" thing, because human's legs are designed to push, not to pull and not to create force perpendicular to a leg. I even heard something about using gears that are not exactly circular, to help an athlete to maintain constant tension of a chain.
Amateurs (me for example) do not train for constant speed, though to some extent it comes naturally with practice. But world class athletes measure energy conversion inefficiencies in tenths of a watt, so they get a special training for this.
I've driven for hours with and without cruise control. I've never felt any discomfort in my lower leg muscles because of using pedals.
The worst drivers are "booger cars" - they maintain the same speed as you in the adjacent lane with their front bumper roughly adjacent to your rear bumper. I call them "booger cars" because, if you try to get them to stop sticking to you by speeding up or slowing down, they just match your speed. About the only way to get rid of them is to "rub them off" by passing a slower vehicle that is in their lane, breaking their fixation on your car.
The kind of driver that especially irritates me is the one that hangs out in the passing lane, driving slowly either at or under the limit, and then when you when you try and get around them, you can't without doing +20 over the limit.
I tend to despise most modern driving aids, but cruise control (just the very basic "maintain speed") is extremely handy and makes driving a lot easier. Maintaining a constant speed (to within 1mph) by foot over a 2 hour drive is almost impossible. It also seems to help my fuel economy.
for the latter, long drives it helps relieve some tension in my legs to not have to be pressing the pedal to maintain speed. i cant speak for the former as i havent used them
Your foot gets physically tired pushing the accelerator for that long. Cruise control prevents that tiredness from occurring.