VW Adaptive Cruise Control

Will it stop the car by applying the brakes ? Haven’t had the bottle to try it yet.

Yes. You have to be going over 50 though.

yup (appartently): http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/technology/adaptive-cruise-control-acc

Yes! My wife’s Golf had it and I did test it one in traffic (with my foot hovering on the brake pedal).

Very impressive tech.

Me neither and I wonder the same 😮

Had it brake very hard, flash red lights and beep very loud; but I took over at that point.

But I do wonder if it will brake till ABS application in an emergency; just not brave enough to find out!

do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it

With Emma in the car. And make sure you film it.

Just read that VW link and I’ve experienced all those things, but it doesn’t say if it’ll brake till/through ABS activation?

Yes as part of the anti-collision system which works very well and not just over 50 mph.

http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/technology/proximity-sensing/front-assist

Yes it will brake from cruise. If you have a DSG box, it will also accelerate back to cruising speed – but you have to set the car in motion first.

The Front Assist is also very useful, and has beeped at me more than once which has certainly helped! I’ve not left it late enough to have the car brake for me – I might do a test with a big cardboard box on the drive one day!

Yes, in a DSG auto at least, it’ll keep a gap proportional to the speed and slow down to nothing if the car in front has.

Ta – I’ll be brave next time.

ACC is absolutely brilliant. In the manual box it will break down to about 15mph then warns you to take over.

On long motorway runs its superb. I even use it in traffic when there is no chance to overtake.

Front assist is also the reason the insurance groups fell so much with the GTI / GTD mk VII’s

I think it’s amazing. I use it almost all the time in town as well as cruising. It makes driving a lot more relaxing and judging by the insurance group a lot safer too. I’ve never found cruise control of any sought particularly satisfying with a manual box though, and can’t imagine this would be much better.

I’ve never found cruise control of any sought particularly satisfying with a manual box though, and can’t imagine this would be much better.

I have and even more so with ACC.

Be careful testing it though, it wont recognise stationary objects like tailbacks on the motorway. Its most effective when following a car coming to a stop. It will brake to 0mph and its weird!If it needs to apply FULL braking power it will assume pre-crash and alert you in every way possible, unknown to a few it will also open or close your windows to an inch of fully closed to allow for the air movement when the airbags goes off. Its a great system.

I’ve got it on my Golf R and it’s fantastic. Only thing to watch of is if you are turning your cruise speed up and there is a car in front it will accelerate to that speed – yes i set it to 120mph and it went for it !

I’ve never found cruise control of any sought particularly satisfying with a manual box though, and can’t imagine this would be much better.

Why? My car (with ACC) will do 35 – 135 mph in 6th, so why does it need to change gear?

Admittedly if it has to slow right down it won’t accelerate very quickly until it gets above 50 or so, but if the traffic’s that bad it doesn’t need to.

I had a A3 e-tron courtesy car a while back, and that takes it all onto a whole other level. Gave a real insight into the (frankly, can’t come soon enough) future of driverless cars.

Horrible to ‘drive’, but if you just put everything in megasuper-auto mode, the only reason I had to touch any control was because the car got nervous if I made no steering inputs at all.

As a commuting vehicle in crappy traffic, i could sit with my cofee in my hands and do absolutely bugger all. Amazing tech.

Sooner we take control away from idiots behind the wheel (me!), the better.

yes i set it to 120mph and it went for it !

Mine has a limit of 100mph…

It worked brilliantly in my Mk7, easy cruising on the motorway especially in heavy traffic. The gap it leaves is programmable however even on smallest, people will get in front of you (in fairness, anything over 2 car lengths and this happens anyway!). Mine was a manual 2.0tdi and 6th was easily capable for 40 – 120 mph so no need to change gear, although changing gear didn’t turn of the ACC. Oh, and cruise could only be set to 100mph max (In Germany before I get shouted at!)

I’ve had the emergency brake come on at lower speeds as it thought I was going to hit another car but this only happened when passing a line of parked cars and one was a little further out. Quite embarrassing when you’re being closely followed through bristol city centre…

big_scot_nanny – it steers for you as well?

Aye, and it did it very well too. So well, that steering yourself, and going somewhere it didn’t want to go, was sometimes worryingly dificult 🙂

Ay? They have lane assist as an option but it won’t try to counter act your steering.

After 4 years of driving with ACC it’s a big shock to drive a normal car with cruise its just not worth the bother to keep flicking it on & off

Narp, that wasn’t what it felt like to drive, Drac, it does strongly counteract steering input specifically if you go over a white line (changing lanes). Have you tried it?

A quite initialy worrying, then liberating, experience. 😯

You can vary the intensity, but as mentioned, if you put everything in strongest computer controlled mode, one becomes extremely close to a full time passenger that just has to nudge the wheel every so often to keep the computer happy that one is not fully asleep.

I only had it for a day, about 3hrs of driving, and mostly became obsessed with charging the battery whilst not using the engine. 😀

I’ve got it on a 2016 touran but to be honest find it quite unpredictable / dangerous.

On several occasions the ACC has incorrectly detected an obstruction and applied the emergency brake – it’s done it once on the motorway and several times on urban roads when rubbish has blown in front of the car ,metallic crisp packets seem to be the usual culprit.

I’ve also been the passenger in a brand new vw golf that did the same thing at about 50 mph on a dual carriageway – the driver was actually a VW salesman and it was a crisp packet that time as well.

I’ve also had problems with the VW city collision thing – on roads with shallow potholes it can “sense” those as obstructions and again applies an emergency brake. Having done some digging round I’ve found a case where a driver had the ACC apply coming round a bend into a motorway service station. The wheels locked and the car went sideways into a curb causing significant damage.

To all of these things VW come out with “if we can’t replicate it while it’s in our workshop then there can’t be a fault”.

I’ve never had a VW before and based on the significant number of software problems with our car and the attitude of their dealers wouldn’t think about doing so again. The contrast between VW and Nissan for reliability and dealer service has been very revealing.

I have it on my Audi.

s’ace.

It will brake down to 0mph, and when it has to brake heavily the seat “inflates” around me – i.e. the bolsters and sides pump up and the seat belt pre-tensions.

Models in Catholic countries play the last rites apparently….

There was an excellent video of a Volvo, I think, with adaptive something and auto emergency brake something else. It was for a press demo. Massive fail! Some simple error happened but it was fairly embarrassing for them!

Narp, that wasn’t what it felt like to drive, Drac, it does strongly counteract steering input specifically if you go over a white line (changing lanes). Have you tried it?

Yeah I have. Can’t say it argued with me if I wanted to change it let me but it does nudge if it senses a drift. It certainly isn’t anything like automatic steering.

Having done some digging round I’ve found a case where a driver had the ACC apply coming round a bend into a motorway service station. The wheels locked and the car went sideways into a curb causing significant damage.

Or he came off too fast not noticing his speed and crashes so blamed the acc?

ACC is generally excellent. Collision avoidance is somewhat less predictable. I’ve once had it think a car coming the opposite way on a bend was a potential collision and apply the brakes. The problem with this was it freaked the hell out of me as I had no other sense of impending danger (as there was none).

Where it’s jumped on the brakes before I could react, it’s been fantastic. In that situation your brain is only a fraction of a second behind, so the warning beep and application of the brakes barely registers as surprising as your right foot is already heading for the pedal.

I’ve never had any problems with the collision avoidance on my Golf.
Occasionally it does trigger a false alarm, but just the audible / dash warning. The only time it’s applied the brakes for me it was right to do so!

Snap and it didn’t nt get that far as I’d seen the hazard before the system so I was prepared already, that and the car that was going to pull out suddenly spotted me and stopped, so the anti-collision was happy.

Just ordered a Golf Match bluemotion, through the draconian company lease scheme, ACC is standard on a match but deleted on the bluemotion model. Gutted, I really fancied ACC, it sounds ace. 😥

Having had it, I wouldn’t consider another car without it.

I had a hire car this summer with some of this kit on it. It would keep between the white lines on a motorway ( sort of) itself but I hated the way the steering kicked at you when changing lanes as it tried to keep you in the lane and its warning / slowing / braking bit to keep the gap to the car infront let you get far to close.

I turned the system off

I like it (octavia 66 plate). Ace in “middling” motorway traffic (variable speed). Not so good with stopped traffic which is probably due to the sensor range.
Also lacks that intuitive thing we do of looking in front of the car in front… but it is the future, no doubt.
On a manual it will allow you to change up/down as needed while controlling speed. Also works with clutchless shifts 😉

We were test driving the new Mitiubishi Mirage, which has an auto brake system below 8km an hour in traffic, perfect for Thailand’s low speed number bashing.

The manager was prepared to secure the sale by driving the car at the wall to show me how it worked.

lso lacks that intuitive thing we do of looking in front of the car in front… but it is the future

Cars will start communicating with each other soon enough and that’ll be taken care of. They might even learn when its appropriate to use a fog light*

*standard winter rant

ACC is not as good as a human because it can’t see beyond the car in front and anticipate, so in use I find it quite jerky as it tends to react later than I would.

However if you’re stuck in traffic and your right foot is getting tired it’s nice to have.

Cars will start communicating with each other soon enough and that’ll be taken care of. They might even learn when its appropriate to use a fog light

Agreed, but I think we’re more than a few years off that happening. We can’t even get software to automatically sort out when an apostrophe is needed, FFS!