[grep_name]

> I have a 2020 Forester and I've come to describing it as "I no-longer drive on the highway, I manage the car." Sometimes I'll get nervous and take over. But even in stop-and-go traffic, it has behaved perfectly.

I drive an old beater from 2001, but... I really don't think I understand why people want these in-between not-quite-autopilot features? To me it's like, it would be one thing if you could completely turn your brain off, or look at your phone, or rest. But since you can't, it seems like this stuff makes it more difficult to pay the appropriate amount of attention? For me, if I'm already driving somewhere, and have to pay enough attention to know if an emergency is about to happen, I might as well just do the driving.

[flowerthoughts]

As a technologist, I like lane-keep assist because it feels fundamentally more right that my car by default follows the road than keeps going with the turn radius I had previously input.

Cruise control with minimum distance helps me keep a sound distance even as other cars keep packing up and reducing distances on a busy highway. My previous car (Mercedes) was great at detecting if a new car coming in front of me was accelerating, if so it didn't adjust the distance as aggressively. Much better behavior than my current Kia.

Auto-break features are sweet as they react really fast. If that can avoid deploying an airbag in my face, I'm all for it.

I agree it's a lot like managing, with six buttons just to do the above, but from a bottom-up approach, each feature has value in its own right.

> For me, if I'm already driving somewhere, and have to pay enough attention to know if an emergency is about to happen, I might as well just do the driving.

Where do you draw the line? Would you prefer not having a steering and brake servo? Would you prefer sticking out your arms instead of having flashing lights? Would you prefer feeling every bump in the road to having suspension?

To me these systems just feel like natural evolution of the car concept, something that's been going on for 120 years. What Tesla failed at was putting their heads in the clouds and hoping something awesome would eventually pop out the other end. While the established car makers did incremental improvements.

[seszett]

> it feels fundamentally more right that my car by default follows the road than keeps going with the turn radius I had previously input.

A car shouldn't "keep the turn radius", they normally drive straight by default. The forces acting on the wheels do that automatically.

It doesn't seem like a wrong thing, to me.

> Where do you draw the line?

I think the line is quite obvious between the physical comfort features and the mentally disengaging features.

[flowerthoughts]

GP said s/he didn't understand why anyone would want these in-betweens. I gave an explanation as to why.

Based on what you're saying, it seems the divide arises from some drivers classifying these features as physical comfort, and some as mentally disengaging.

[hdjdndbdj]

The cognitive load is greatly reduced when using these features. Honestly, adaptive cruise control in the city is a godsend. Not having to deal with watching speed . start and stop traffic is also automated for me. Driving on a highway is also great .. You can drive much further without needing a break.

[seec]

Same. Even cruise control is kind of useless because people in front of you don't necessarily use it and are very inconsistent in their speed. So you end up constantly having to engage/disengage, rendering the whole thing moot.

I think something like autopilot could be implemented at the infrastructure level (sensors and emitters along the road), but people wouldn't like that because it would mean being unable to set your speed or overtake. The car exists for "freedom," but it is really an inefficient mode of transportation from both a time-use and energy-use perspective.

What we really need is a mix between rail/train and car/road.

[lbreakjai]

To your first point, that's what adaptive cruise control does. It will slow you down to maintain a gap with the car in front of you.

[scruple]

ACC generally has a 3-4 second time interval that it permits between you and the car in front of you. I live in SoCal, so a lot of my driving is on very aggressive routes. The 4-second gap is mechanically safe but it's practically unusable because it creates a void large enough to invite other cars to lane change in front of me. So when that car merges in, the ACC detects a violation of the safe braking distance and decelerates to reestablish the gap. I call it the "cut me off" loop when we're on trips.

And before anyone suggests that I start tinkering around with the settings, I have adjusted it and the damned thing just resets itself constantly.

[fragmede]

The beauty of ACC is it lets your disengage mentally. You can be aggro if you want to with it on, but I found it's just not emotionally worth it to get mad at being cut off anymore in a car with ACC. ACC just handles going forwards and I'm not having to touch gas nor brake. If I'm not touching either, I don't have to panic react to getting cut-off, just make sure the ACC is handling it, and if that's all I need to check, vs slam on the brakes, then eh.

[seec]

Ah yes, I never used that. My car isn't very recent (about 10 years old now), and I drive very little (about 2-3k per year; I take the train to go anywhere far) because I hate it. But the adaptive part would make it much more useful indeed.

However, something that is extremely annoying in France is that speed limits tend to change very often and abruptly. I just think that trying to solve the problem solely at the car level is always going to have too many limitations...

[Waterluvian]

The base 2020 Forester has adaptive cruise control.

[closeparen]

I prefer to steer, but radar cruise control takes a lot of the frustration out of minor speed fluctuations in front of me on the highway. I don’t feel as much need to pass all the time.