I normally use cruise control on the highway but recently rented a car with adaptive cruise. it seems everyone has this now and it was slowing traffic down to the point where I could not use it. It was clearly visible other cars also just stuck in the left lane holding the wrong speed spaced out behind other cars by thier computers. The drivers were all asleep. I did about 2500 east coast miles in a week. One advantage is once you turn that crap off you can pass as there are holes in front of people who are in the wrong lane. This is an example of technology that sucks. I wont be able to use cruise control on any new cars. This nissan maxima would not allow me to turn it off. Is this the same with all new cars or can this crap feature be defeated on some brands ?

 

Adaptive cruise control works extremely well in the 911. It will bring the car to a complete stop if need be and is very accurate.

ACC works great in traffic and I wish more cars had it installed. It really avoids the caterpillarring that winds up happening when people tailgate at high speeds and then are forced to slow down suddenly (creating "phantom traffic jams"). Keeping proper spacing is safer and traffic flows better.

This video explains it pretty well:

 

I don't use cruise control at all. I like to drive and be in control. The way adaptive cruise control systems are aggressive on braking and passive on throttle means you're driving like a grandma and people hate you for it. Doing this in a sports car is blasphemy.

Self driving features don't work well today. Even in Tesla adaptive cruise not as good as a driver. All these features get turned off for me. The most annoying is 'lane keep assist' stuff that jerks your steering wheel one attempts to inaccurately ping pong you in lane. The only nice features are ones that deal with safety... automatic emergency braking or stuff like that. Otherwise humans are better than computers today...unless there we're comparing to a really bad driver.

 

Can Porsche (or any other) adaptive cruise control’s adaptive feature be turned off allowing the driber to use it in the “traditional” mode?

 

Yep I agree with this statement. I always keep a decent distance to the car in front of me and can't stand when people tailgate. Less rock chips, braking, smoother drive, and you're out of the way of people who want to go faster. Really if slow traffic went right, everything would be better.

The reason traffic is slow though is because someone ahead is braking and this cascades down, multiplying effect and everyone slow down even more by tail. Another way of thinking about it is you're slowing traffic by increasing gap between you and car up front, which is what people tend to naturally do also because they're going to feather throttle when speeding up. Adaptive cruise control will do this too. If everyone keeps tight distance and speeds up/slows down at same speed, traffic would flow smoother... its the people who aren't doing this what's causing delays. Larger gaps between cars 'buffer' this out better.

 

Tailgaters are the dumbest people on the roads. I just keeps getting worse too. People pissed and in a hurry risking their lives and the lives of others to save 30 seconds on their commute, and not realizing they are making traffic 10x worse.

 

When I make my OH. to FL. run and back I can always tell the drivers that don't use CC. One minute they are passing you at 10 mph faster then you are going and the next they are driving 55 in a 70 zone. I have a friend that I have road tripped with that doesn't use CC. When I asked why he said "I can hold my speed better than the CC can", as I watch the speedo vary by 15-20 mph. Now I know that wouldn't be you.

 

Not sure about Porsche as I haven't tried it but I had a 2018 Toyota Tundra with adaptive cruise and the way to override it and just use regular cruise was to hold down the cruise control power button for about 3 seconds. So if you just pressed the button to turn cruise control on, it defaulted to active cruise; but holding the button down for a few seconds would just turn it on in "regular" mode. I would imagine that all cars with active cruise have functionality for regular/non-active cruise control also.

 

I mostly agree. Tailgaters may or may not be the dumbest people in general; but they're definitely behaving very stupidly when they tailgate.

There's almost no situation in which driving closely behind another car makes any kind of sense whatsoever. The only exception is very brief closeness due to switching lanes, where there is at least some reward for the very slight risk.

Drives me nuts when people tailgate on single-lane roads. All it does is greatly increase the potential for a bad (and entirely avoidable) accident with absolutely zero potential benefit. Simple physics and statistics.

 

I have adaptive cruise in my Golf R and sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. If people are driving properly, it works flawlessly. However, if there is heavy traffic on the highway, I find myself on the throttle closing the gap to the car in front of me, otherwise the system will keep such a gap that cars wishing to move into the fast lane will just continually move in front of me, with the system slowing my car down each time to get the car back to the defined following distance.

Where I absolutely love ACC is when it's a reasonably empty highway and you've found someone to follow as cop bait. You just set your speed to something higher than what the other person is traveling, set your following distance to the least aggressive possible, and then just relax while they lead the way to a ticket.

 

I find it stressful being tailgated in a 911, knowing the braking capability we all have. I had a guy towing a trailer who had to swerve around me at a red light and he ended up parking himself on the median in the process. The worst part is a police truck happened to see this and they did nothing.

 

Adaptive cruise is awesome and I won't buy a car without it. They key is to set the distance to the shortest possible. The default starting position is way too far. Doubtful that you are witnessing a wave of adaptive cruise changing traffic patterns for the worse. Although it is becoming more common in new cars, it is still quite rare. I would guess less than 1 percent of cars on the road have it. It is even still relatively rare in high end cars as evidenced by my searches in the past few years for recent model BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, etc. I had a real hard time finding it. It is an expensive option on most cars. Though it is becoming standard in some mid tier brand new cars. Still a tiny fraction of cars on the road.

I think you are simply experiencing typical east coast traffic with some dumbass doing 60 in the left lane and many others stuck behind him and can't pass due to heavy traffic on the right. I experience this almost every day. Frustrating but not related to adaptive cruise. By the way, if you touch the gas pedal you can close the gap even further. That overrides the distance maintenance feature until you get dangerously close and an audible and visual warning will flash.

 

Problem is the shortest following distance is still enough room for some jerk to take that space from you. Only riding the *** of the person in front of you can avoid the system constantly letting people in.

 

It sounds like adaptive cruise control still has the same practical issues it had back in 2007 in my AMG E63. Bummer.

 

I agree with the OP. I have tried adaptive cruise controls in a variety of cars and they are NEVER doing what I would be doing. The minimum allowable following distance is two to three times as long as it should be, allowing people to continually cut in in front of you in the city. On the highway, as you are approaching a slow moving vehicle, the system slows yo down imperceptibly until you are crawling at ten mph below the limit. Infuriating. You can avoid this problem by staying in the left lane, but then you're driving like an *******. The only place where they have any value at all is in a construction zone with one lane, where it can maintain a decent following distance without any downsides. Fortunately, many cars with that have adaptive cruise control allow you turn the systems off. But that's not true for most German brands. In those cases, I wouldn't accept a car with adaptive cruise control with a $5000 discount.