I own a 2019 Forrester with EyeSight. While I dont hate it, and I like the adaptive cruise, I'm curious..
How exactly do you easily override the crash detection logic? I've had it slam on the brakes spuriously due to steam from manhole vents, and short of disabling the feature (which cant be done in a way that sticks between starts) I dont know how I would avoid this behavior, particularly easily.
Now I just wish I could have the EyeSight on my Subaru Forrester hacked so that the adaptive cruise control doesn't go off after three seconds of being at a full stop.
Yup, I love eyesight, but wouldn't really much extra features beyond what it currently supports, as that would be too autonomous and removing me from constantly driving the car. I actually find myself being a significantly better driver with the adaptive cruise control because I can focus my attention on steering and what is happening to traffic down the road instead of being constantly focused on matching the speed of the car right in front of me. It also prevents me from getting frustrated when someone is driving like a snail in the left lane...
Yes, my 2017 Subaru with EyeSight behaves this way.
A couple of other scenarios when adaptive cruise is on: cars changing lanes into the lane ahead of me at short distances do not cause it to react quickly enough. It seems there's too much lag in the time to capture the interloper; and, if I'm approaching a car quickly that is moving much slower than I and I signal a lane change but don't execute it, I'll collide with the slower car. (or so it seems to me, the system did not slow down and I had to apply the brake to avoid colliding).
Another related problem with vision-based systems, these random type of road artifacts that fool the system. This image shows a false left-side lane marker (formed by a partial re-paving and the shadow cast by the center barrier). It sounded a lane departure alert. If the car were autonomous, it likely would have swerved right trying to center: https://imgur.com/a/KnsXU
What? I have three cars with AEB/adaptive cruise control and I've experienced two of them doing exactly what you describe and saved me a bunch of damage.
We have a 2016 Legacy with the eyesight system and I actually use it a lot in traffic.
It's really useful in "stop" and go traffic where you're barely moving. I just set the adaptive cruise control and it makes driving feel a lot more relaxed. I'm not sitting there alternating between the gas and brake every 15 seconds.
It's a great system, I can't imagine having another car without this kind of system in place.
Both adaptive cruise controls and human drivers do this by default. If you're doing 60 MPH on a highway and something pops into the periphery of your vision that you don't recognize, do you slam on the brakes? No.
I wondered if the sensors are already there for emergency braking or other safety features.
I'm just glad you can buy adaptive cruise on its own. I remember seeing a vehicle recently that you couldn't even get adaptive cruise unless you paid $8k to upgrade to a higher trim level.
I've never had this happen on my 2017 Forester either in ~30,000 miles of highway driving with the adaptive cruise (the Subaru system is fully vision-based with no radar).
The one issue I've noticed is that it sometimes hits the brakes for cars that are obviously exiting the highway because a tiny sliver of the car is still technically in the driving lane, so I've learned to keep my foot over the gas pedal to override it in that case. The amount of braking isn't scary though, it's just annoying because there's no need to slow down at all.
There is a serious concern to keep in mind about adaptive cruise control or automatic braking, which is, their inelegant failure modes. For a simpler example, consider that new cars have started including blind spot sensors, which light up an indicator on the side-view mirrors if a car might be in the corresponding blind spot. The thing that baffles me about these is, if that system fails, then the indicator will be off regardless of whether there's anyone in the blind spot, which is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Likewise, if adaptive cruise control fails, you'll probably rear-end someone. So then you get into the same problem, that there's a rare situation in which the failure is potentially fatal. So then you have to pay attention for something that's unlikely, which we're pretty bad at, so what value is added?
Adaptive cruise control is a bit annoying in traffic, as the safety buffer causes cars who don’t care about tailgating to easily move into the gap causing my speed to jolt around a lot (and eventually get stuck behind some slow moving vehicle). It just doesn’t work well in heavy two lane traffic I guess.
I had the same experience with Subaru's EyeSight system. I drive very rarely (you can count the number of times I drive in a year on one hand) so after a day of driving I'm usually completely beat. But after a day of highway driving with the EyeSight lane keeping/adaptive cruise control I was remarkably less fatigued.
Agreed on the adaptive cruise. Glad to know there is a braking sensitivity. It gets very jumpy about oncoming traffic on curves and hits the brakes for no reason. The cars following me loved when it did that twice in ten minutes.
I just got a new Subaru Outback with their Eyesight Adaptive Cruise Control. I've gotta say it is fantastic and just the sort of fairly simple and safe technology that could ease traffic jams. Certainly outside the city where I live, the way it nicely follows cars at a safe distance seems to make a lot of sense. As soon as the lead car moves away, it neatly accelerates to the preset speed and smoothly decelerates on the engine braking (or even real braking if needed) when it sees the gap closing. It's very obvious on my long commute that probably only 30% of cars seem to be using just regular cruise control, based on how their speed varies on the clear open road.
My 2008 Outback 2.5XT has Eyesight adaptive cruise control including automatic breaking! Cost me US$6k a year ago with 55000 miles. Thirteen years old!
My 2019 Subaru Crosstrek has adaptive cruise control, and i've had it hit the brakes pretty hard when there's nothing in the way. Luckily it doesn't happen often.
Adaptive Cruise Control is wonderful - I recently did a long-distance drive across Europe (~1000KM), and I swear I went through 100KM of roadworks. Adaptive Cruise Control would have been amazing for that (plus the other traffic jams caused by accidents/etc).
I have seen a good implementation of blind spot monitoring, in a VW, where it was just a simple light on the appropriate side mirror. Unobtrusive, but obvious enough that you're unlikely to miss it.
The most recent car I drove (a Ford Mondeo, I think? It was a rental) had a number of those but I never really noticed them. The only time it beeped at me was when it thought I wasn't braking hard enough to avoid ramming the car in front (oh, and the proximity alert).
The reverse camera and related sensors were really useful because (a) I don't drive an awful lot, renting a car maybe once a year, and (b) because I only rent cars, I don't know them well enough to know if I'm gonna get through a gap or turn a tight corner, so having something that beeps at me to say I'm close to a wall is handy.
If I was driving the same car every day, some of these features would probably be a lot less relevant.
How exactly do you easily override the crash detection logic? I've had it slam on the brakes spuriously due to steam from manhole vents, and short of disabling the feature (which cant be done in a way that sticks between starts) I dont know how I would avoid this behavior, particularly easily.
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