Moto26
Well-Known Member
Okay, so here we go. In a nutshell: ACC makes everything worse.
Here's why. When you talk about the "idiots" around you, one of the biggest problems with those idiots is that they don't use cruise control at all, and whether they realize or not, they can't keep their speed constant, and this is what causes annoying fluctuations in the traffic flow. This has always been an issue, but when you have cars out there using ACC, those cars will automatically slow down and speed up along with the "idiots", often unbeknownst to the drivers using ACC, because it can be subtle.
Then, when they realize that they're going 10mph slower than they intended, they have to jump back into an open lane to resume their speed. Now this creates yet another fluctuation. The more ACC equipped cars on the road, the worse it will be. One of the benefits of "old fashioned" cruise control is that you set your speed, and it will stay at that speed until you tell it otherwise. That kind of control is what I absolutely prefer when I'm driving. I don't care if I have to use the brakes sometimes. Geezus, I'm the one driving the car, not a computer. I've never, in probably 40 years of owning cruise-equipped vehicles, and logging hundreds thousands of highway miles in them, thought to myself, "Gosh, I'm getting so fatigued using the brakes every time I come up on a slower vehicle. I wish the car would just do that for me, no matter what speed we end up doing."
Yes, it's annoying as hell when people are parked in the left lane and not overtaking other traffic. Speeding up from behind, only to get in your blind spot and stay there. Or passing you, and as soon as you follow in behind them, they slow back down. Stuff like that aggravates the hell out of me, but I want to know if it's me that's the problem, and with ACC you might not even realize it unless you monitor the speedometer constantly. In which case, why not just drive the car? If the whole idea is to relax and let the computer do the driving, why would you be paying attention to the gauges?
Real world example: I had to drive my mother's Subaru from Colorado to Michigan, and later from Michigan to Arizona. Her car has all those electronic "aides" and I hated driving it. There's no option to use a "regular" mode on the CC (If the Ranger has that option, great), so if I used CC at all, it was Adaptive. I spent more time trying to see what it was doing than I would have if I had just been using regular ol' CC. So many times, I would find myself in a line of traffic that gradually slowed down, and before I knew it I was going well under the speed limit, not even realizing it. With standard CC, I would have known, either I'm going the speed I set, or I'm not, because I hit the brakes and shut it off. I would then find a lane where I could resume my original speed, and set it again. It's really easy.
Another issue with ACC that I noticed is that the system maintains a pre-set gap to the vehicle in front of you. Guess what happens when drivers notice a gap? They gotta be in it, man! So they jump in, and what does your car do? Slow down even more. Which opens up another gap in front of you. Rinse and repeat. Pretty soon you feel like you're going backwards. With regular CC, you can close up a little to "dissuade" people from trying to jump in the gap. If you have ACC and try to do that, you'll be arguing with the brake system of your car and getting beeped at by your computer.
Also, the Subaru had "lane departure" that you can not turn off. Every time you touch a painted line, the thing beeps at you incessantly. Well guess what? I often crowd the line - on purpose! If I'm coming up on an entrance ramp and there's a truck coming onto the freeway, I'll give him as much room as I can, which usually means sticking my left side tires over the white line for the service lane. "B-BEEP! B-BEEP! B-BEEP!" All the damn time. Oh, and if you change lanes, you better use your turn signal every time, even if you're the only car in sight, otherwise "B-BEEP! B-BEEP! B-BEEP!"
Another "feature" is automatic lane-centering, where it's supposed to correct course for you if you touch a painted line. Fortunately, this one you could choose not to use. But I played around with it just to see how it worked. I suppose it's fine if you're distracted, looking at a map, or reaching for something in the back seat, and you start to drift out of your lane. At least, as long as the road is straight. If there's a curve, you might get one correction, but if you don't start steering right away, the second time it's going to cross the line at a different angle, and it's going to keep going. So rather than use these electronic aides, I like to do this old, ancient technique called, "paying attention and just driving". It's worked for me since 1979.
TLDR:
I don't like the fact that the more computerized cars get, the more they do for the driver, which means the drivers are paying less and less attention to what they're doing. How is this a good thing? These systems are NOT foolproof, and you're supposed to still pay attention, but people just don't. It's human nature.
Ever watch that show "Air Disasters"? It's astonishing how many times a plane has crashed because there was some kind of electronic glitch or failure, and the pilots never even noticed because they're just cruising around like passengers, letting the plane do all the work. And these are trained, professional pilots. If it can happen to them, you know it's going to happen all the time to regular joes driving around in semi-automated cars...
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