How I learned to stop worrying and like distance-sensing cruise control

Cruise control. To listen to some people describe it, you’d think it was a scourge put upon us by evil doers. Most naysayers dislike it because they feel the system takes away their feeling of vehicle control. To me it’s a way of saving fuel (and keeping money in my pocket) and making my right foot happy.

I like traditional cruise control of the Ron Popeil variety: Set it and forget it. But the distance-sensing systems? Well they’ve always left me cold, unable (in my opinion) to balance a safe following distance with leaving too much room behind the car in front. They left an open space that literally beckoned other drivers to hop right in. Drivers cutting in then resulted in my vehicle throwing out an anchor and rapidly slowing down, taking away momentum and annoying me and the drivers following in my wake.

After driving our Infiniti FX35 and Volvo XC60, however, I’ve come around to giving the distance-sensing systems less of the Rodney Dangerfield treatment, even if I still can’t embrace them with open arms.

The XC60 treated me well on a long trip from Connecticut to southern New Jersey. It still had its annoyances, particularly when rounding a bend and passing cars. The radar would sometimes sense the cars in the other lane and immediately slow the Volvo, as if it couldn’t recognize steering input and thought I was mindlessly going to plow into them.

But on a limited-access road like the NJ Turnpike, the system worked well. I latched on to the car ahead of me and followed for miles and miles. It resulted in a comfortable trip and better than the alternative of not using cruise control at all.

Our Infiniti had a system I liked even better. It allowed the driver to toggle between both types of cruise. The initial setting was for distance sensing, but holding down the button activated traditional cruise control. This, I feel, is better for roads and highways with more frequent access points. The CT Turnpike has exits every mile (or more frequently) in some parts. The constant merging and dicing of traffic makes distance-sensing cruise frustrating to use in this scenario, where I find using regular cruise control to be comfortable.

While I won’t be running out to buy a car with a distance-sensing system anytime soon, a vehicle with a toggle-type system certainly wouldn’t turn me off.

—Jon Linkov

Comments

[Michelle]

Nice headline.