Adaptive Cruise Control and Lane Keep Assist
These days I don’t drive long distances all that much – 20, 30 miles at most.
This past week plus I’ve been in New England visiting family and friends. I borrowed my sister’s car, a 2018 Honda, to drive to Lake Winnepesaukee, a trip of about 100 miles mostly on interstate highways. The car doesn’t have some of the safety features of 2025 models, but it does have adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist, both of which I find very helpful.
Lane keep assist is simple and very helpful. It keeps you awake and alert and helps stop drifting.
Adaptive cruise control is more complex.
My tendency on long highway drives is to get into a space on the highway where I can set the adaptive cruise control to allow good middle lane or, on highways that have two lanes in each direction, good right lane cruising speed and keeps me at a safe distance from cars in front of me.
It’s a mystery to me why drivers in contemporary cars simply fail to use cruise control. I’ve asked some driver friends who seem not to engage it why they do not. “I don’t like it,” they tell me, or “I don’t feel in control of the car.” When I suggest that their foot and personal sense of speed are not “control,” they’re puzzled. It’s not usually possible to reason through the issue.
On the road, getting behind drivers who do not drive to the speed of traffic can be maddening, since their speeds vary so much. So can encountering cars that move to the passing lane at speeds that are only slightly higher than that of the cars they’re trying to pass. Were all such drivers to have adaptive cruise control engaged at the speed of the faster traffic, they’d find that their passing and travel would be far smoother.
My counsel to drivers on highways is: upon entering the highway you’ll be on for a while, determine the ongoing speed of traffic in the far left lane – not that of the speed freaks, but of the traveling drivers – and set adaptive cruise control to a similar speed. Yes, you’ll have to pass some cars; yes you might have to speed up to get past a car that is not paying attention to ambient speed; yes, some drivers you’re passing will speed up as you pass them and, maddeningly, slow down once you’re past. It will all work out. Find a way to keep that speed you’ve set and just enjoy the drive. Don’t hit the brake or otherwise interrupt the adaptive cruise control. It’ll be a much more pleasant drive.
Line Painting on Highways
As automobile technology has advanced, general road infrastructure has deteriorated. Certain states and local communities have not kept their roads up in ways that assist drivers with their safety.
I spoke of lane keep assist above. The sensors for such a technology have only gotten better in the past few years. Unfortunately, the painted lines on roads and highways have not been kept up to allow the assist to work properly.
The “Live Free or Die” state, New Hampshire, proud of the low taxation that limits its services, has faded highway lines on many state roads, especially right-side white lines that separate the driving lane from the breakdown lane or the ditch. Lane keep assist requires those lines to be visible to sensors so that drifting to the right will trigger the steering wheel “shudder.” State Route 104 from Meredith to I-93 is one of the roads whose painted lines are poorly maintained. The lines painted on I-93 itself in New Hampshire, especially north of Concord, are no fine example either.
As the safety technology improves, our highway infrastructure – including that of local roads – needs to keep up to allow the technology to work as it is intended to work.
I plan to pay closer attention to roadways in Illinois, where I live, and to comment on their effectiveness with respect to car technology.
Edmund J. McDevitt
©️August 2024