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Alright guys, let's keep the discussion in check.

Regarding the nanny electronics, I suspect for better or worse, we can only expect more down the road, and probably mandated by the Feds (like killer airbags), whether we want them or not.

 

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I am replying to this on my phone while driving my Subaru on the highway with Adaptive cruise and lane keep steering set. You guys don't know what you are missing.

Lol! Good one.

 

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After a long night of flying freight, a friend of mine told me a story about climbing in his car to go home, turning on the radio, and wondering why the autopilot wasn't keeping the car in the road!

 

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I shopped for a new 2016 Acura RDX/AWD with Advance package recently for my MIL and bought it for her. Today, I had the opportunity to drive it for 100 miles or so. The nanny electronics were interesting.. and frustrating.

First, lane keeper. Actually does a pretty good job but will prompt you for driver input about every 15 seconds. While it does a good job, I can feel it at work, albeit subtly.

Second, ACC (adaptive cruise control): that does a good job too, but has some rather major irritations as well. It does a great job maintaining the distance you set from the vehicle in front (I like 2 bars). But there are times it does such a good job I'm not aware that the speed has dropped 5 to 10 mph while it keeps the distance. So where I would normally have recognized my overtake in speed and would have changed lanes to pass, I never catch up and if I'm not watching the speedometer, I'll sit back in contentment while poking along.

The really aggravating thing that I found with it is that when traffic merges from an on-ramp and moves in front of me, the car hits the brakes just as I'm about to move over which totally kills my momentum and shuts down my maneuver to smoothly move over while maintaining speed. I could see this causing a problem in heavy traffic.

What it sees as high closure rates prompt it to hit the brakes... smoothly, but firmly. And while I understand why it does it, it kills my normal move over into the left lane with speed which my brain is able to compute and execute without rapid speed adjustments. I don't see an easy way around this.

Now I obviously don't have much experience with it with only 100 miles under my belt. But it was enough to allow me to see issues that have no apparent resolution. And I think they are safety issues too.

On the plus side, lane keeper is really helpful if you get momentarily distracted/drowsy and begin to drift left or right. OTOH, if you drift slightly but still within the lane, you start getting soft but somewhat annoying alert tones.

I wish the issue were more black and white. While I see good benefits, I also see strong drawbacks to the nanny system as it currently exists.

 

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It appears that you can disable the adaptive part of cruise control:

"To switch from Adaptive Cruise Control to normal cruise control, all you need to do is press and hold the Distance button. On the MID display, you’ll see an indicator that says “Cruise Mode Selected”."\

Adaptive Cruise Control | 2016 Acura RDX | Acura Owners Site

I have no problem using it as long as I can disable it as desired.

Regarding the blind spot information (BSI) system, it's nice. However, when the side mirrors are properly adjusted, it merely duplicates what I see visually. So as long as the side mirrors are properly positioned and the driver is actually paying attention (is that too much of an assumption?), I see no benefit to the BSI system. (note: the RDX in this trim has memory functions that memorize the seat and side view mirror positions for 2 drivers. I noted my MIL has the side mirrors set as I usually see them... set so you can see the sides of the car and not set properly!)

Edit: I acknowledge that I do not have a full understanding of the nanny systems yet. Could I be mis-interpreting the ACC braking for a vehicle merging when it's really the CMBS (collision mitigation braking system) system that causes the braking?

 

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Hmm. Doesn't do that on the RDX. Interesting.

There are two features that I thought would be related, and yet they are separate. There is the LKAS (lane keeping assist system) and the LDW (lane departure warning). Both can be enabled or disabled independently of the other. The NAV screen is unaffected by either system (that I noticed during my 100 mile drive).

 

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Re: Electronic Nanny - First Death

Au contrair, mon ami:

Tesla Draws Scrutiny After Autopilot Feature Linked to a Death
Florida crash of semiautonomous Model S brings attention to driverless-car technology
By Mike Spector and
:
regulators and a Florida Highway Patrol report. Mr. Brown had earlier in the...
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Au contraire, aussi!

First link from that search:
Tesla Draws Scrutiny After Autopilot Feature Linked to a Death - WSJ

 

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Link to pics of the Tesla.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-friend-model-x-crash-bad-on-ap-yesterday.73308/

 

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Being rear-ended by a hit and run driver qualifies as news? Tell me when an AV collides with another AV.

I thought this was an interesting excerpt from the link:
"Google cars have been involved in nearly a dozen collisions in or around Mountain View since starting to test on city streets in the spring of 2014.

In most cases, Google's cars were rear-ended, and no one has been seriously injured."