I recently purchased 2017 Honda CR-V. It’s my second car, and will be using it for long distance drives.
I’m so thrilled — Honda is throwing safety features in all models above base. These safety features can make our (highway) driving a less stressful.
For example Adaptive cruise control (ACC) will help you take your leg off accelerator for a while. Lane keep asset system (LKAS) will help you take your hands off the steering briefly. If you use both — your car will literally drive itself quite far.
Benefits:
In 2015, there were 3,477 people killed and an estimated additional 391,000 injured in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers. The biggest benefit of these safety features is by saving lives.
We can save money in flight tickets by driving more for vacation.
By letting machines take over routine and boring tasks, we can now laser focus on better problems.
Top 5 Safety Features:
1. Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC™) with Low Speed Follow (LSF™):
Helps maintain a constant vehicle speed and a set following interval behind a vehicle detected ahead of yours.
2. Lane Keeping Assist System™ (LKAS)
Provides steering input to help keep the vehicle in the middle of a detected lane and visual and tactile alerts if the vehicle is detected drifting out of its lane while driving between 45–90 mph (72–145 km/h).
3. Lane Departure Warning:
A camera mounted between the windshield and the rearview mirror determines if your vehicle begins to move away from the center of a detected lane while driving between 40–90 mph (64–145 km/h).
4. Collision Mitigation Braking System™ (CMBS)
Can alert you when a potential frontal collision with a vehicle or pedestrian is determined and reduce your vehicle speed when a collision is deemed unavoidable to help minimize collision severity.
5. Road Departure Mitigation (RDM)
Alerts and helps to assist you if the system determines a possibility of your vehicle unintentionally crossing over detected lane markings while driving between 45–90 mph(72–145 km/h).
Important Safety Reminder:
Like all new technologies, these safety features comes with their own share of problems. A complete dependency on any of these features is not advised.
For example CMBS is designed to reduce the severity of an unavoidable collision. It does not prevent collision nor stop the vehicle automatically.
Issue 1: LKAS has latency issues in curvey highway roads like below. Its gets more scary if there is a vehicle on the side lane.
Issue 2: Since LKAS is scanning for dotted lines, vehicle steer off road when exits come.
Honda does mention in its user manuals that driver is still completely responsible to operate the brake pedal and steering wheel appropriately according to the driving conditions.
Partial autonomous:
Highway driving is now partially autonomous after adding these safety features. Autonomous driving is around the corner. This is a huge step forward for humanity.
Conclusion:
Long drives will become more enjoyable. We can go more places by driving less.
I know this sounds little crazy. Test drive a Honda 2017 CR-V yourself to believe it. Ask your dealer for atleast 25 mile highway long test drive.
Originally published at www.eagerbeaver.tech on August 13, 2017.
