How Adaptive Cruise Control Can Help Keep You More Serene

What is adaptive cruise control?

Cruise control makes driving long distances easier, but the more crowded the road, the more often you’ll have to tap the brakes to slow down. Adaptive cruise control uses the sensors in the collision detection system and the automatic emergency braking technology that often accompanies it to scan the road ahead.

If a driver in front of you is going slower than your set speed, a car with adaptive cruise control will automatically slow down to ensure you stay a safe distance away. When you change lanes or the traffic ahead clears, your car resumes its cruising speed.

The idea is to keep a safe driving distance between you and the vehicle in front, so your car won’t need to use its automatic emergency braking to keep you from a collision. It doesn’t mean you have a self-driving car, but your new car is probably smarter than one you had a decade ago — and certainly smarter than my father’s Oldsmobile, a 2000 Intrigue that I inherited about 15 years ago.

Remie Geoffroi

Cruise control reduces the inclination to speed

Adaptive cruise control is useful if you tend to depress the accelerator a little too much, as I found myself doing on a drive alone in 2023 through a flat and sparsely populated part of the Navajo Nation in northeast Arizona. The police officer coming toward me on that two-lane road discovered my lead foot.

I didn’t want to get into that predicament again. So I found a safe place to pull over, got out my car’s manual and looked for the cruise control instructions. That’s when I discovered my car had adaptive cruise control and I started my experiment with it, following cars that slowed at stoplights in small communities and sped up on the open road for the 300 or so miles to Los Alamos, New Mexico.

I still test it on crowded U.S. 50 into work and congested Interstate 81 in southwest Virginia. And here’s what I’ve learned in 15 months of using adaptive cruise control nearly every time I drive.

My average miles per gallon have increased by about two in the past year because I’m letting the onboard computer do the braking and a lot of the accelerating. But it’s not a substitute for being alert.

My version of adaptive cruise control must be tapped to resume after every stop. Sometimes when rounding corners, it doesn’t see another car soon enough, which causes some white-knuckle moments for my husband when he’s in the passenger seat.

It can approach a stopped car too fast. It won’t brake when a school bus extends its arm on the other side of the road. It doesn’t know the speed limit in a residential area and can’t sense speed bumps.

Consider it a tool more than a fail-safe

“Everything we’re seeing tells us that partial automation is a convenience feature, like power windows or heated seats, rather than a safety technology,” says President David Harkey of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. His nonprofit educational organization, supported by auto insurers, released a study in July with the Highway Loss Data Institute looking at the crash rates of Nissan Rogues from 2017 to 2019 and BMWs from 2013 to 2017.

Consumer Reports’ Funkhouser, who has been part of her nonprofit’s vehicle testing program for more than six years, wants to emphasize that all these features — adaptive cruise control, another one called lane centering that keeps your vehicle from drifting, and emergency braking — have more benefits than preventing crashes.

“I sometimes hear the sentiment of ‘Why do I need these fancy features?’ ” she says. “But who doesn’t want a second set of eyes to help you?”

Her concern with the safety features is when someone tries to use them as if they have a self-driving car. With lane centering and adaptive cruise control together, you’re not in control of a lot of driving-related tasks anymore, she says. But you still must pay attention to the road.

“They’re not meant to replace a driver but to make driving easier and less stressful,” Funkhouser says.

Adaptive cruise control and its partners in driver assistance have saved my bacon a couple of times in Washington, most recently when streets around the White House and Capitol were blocked for NATO’s 75th anniversary. Wide rivers of drivers were condensed into one lane, and maneuvering was almost a contact sport. I came out unscathed after a more than two-hour commute, most of it spent in the 2.5 mile stretch between the Potomac River and the office.

Contributing: Chris Morris and Lexi Pandell