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Adaptive Cruise Control Systems See Curves as Their Ultimate Nemesis

According to a recent study by the Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), the number one issue with advanced driver assistance systems such as adaptive cruise control (ACC) is their ability to navigate curved roads.
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ACC and more advanced semi-autonomous systems that combine cruise control with lane centering will often disengage on certain roadways with sharp curves, either automatically or because the driver chooses not to trust the car’s sensors, and therein lies the problem.

“We know that advanced driver assistance features may help prevent crashes, but obviously they can only do so if drivers use them,” said IIHS senior research transportation engineer Wen Hu—the one who put together these findings. “This study suggests that these technologies will only be able to reach their full potential if drivers can trust them to handle curves.”

Unlike regular cruise control, ACC can automatically slow your vehicle down and maintain a preselected following distance to the car ahead so that the driver doesn’t need to brake and reset the system every time the lead car slows down. Lane centering meanwhile provides you with automated steering assistance meant to keep your car in the middle of its lane at all costs. It’s a very efficient combo, and over long journeys, it helps keep driver fatigue at a minimum.

During the survey, Hu used operational field data collected by MIT’s Advanced Vehicle Technology Consortium. Two 2016 Range Rover Evoque models and two 2017 Volvo S90 sedans driven by 39 drivers over four weeks provided all the necessary statistics, with the Evoques featuring ACC and the Volvos using both ACC as well as the Swedish brand’s Pilot Assist automation system (ACC + lane centering).

While looking at the data, researchers found that Evoque drivers were 72 percent less likely to use ACC on the sharpest category of curves (radius smaller than 2,292 feet), as opposed to straight roads. In the Volvo S90, drivers were 66 percent less likely to use ACC and 75 percent less likely to use Pilot Assist on the sharpest curves.

It’s clear that while these systems certainly need to become better, drivers also need to begin trusting them to do their job. A separate IIHS study found that front crash prevention will cut rear-end crash rates in half and reduce rear-end crashes that result in injuries by 56 percent. Adaptive Cruise Control should help boost those reductions even more.

As it stands now, the fact that such systems disengage when the driver touches the brake pedal is a testament to the “semi" nature of semi-autonomous systems.
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About the author: Sergiu Tudose
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Sergiu got to experience both American and European car "scenes" at an early age (his father drove a Ford Fiesta XR2 supermini in the 80s). After spending over 15 years at local and international auto publications, he's starting to appreciate comfort behind the wheel more than raw power and acceleration.
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