Adaptive Cruise (ACC) - How well does it REALLY work?

Adaptive Cruise (ACC) Overall

  • Very Useful on a Day to Day basis

    Votes: 41 41.0%
  • Pretty Useful

    Votes: 41 41.0%
  • Kinda of Useful, but annoying most of the time

    Votes: 15 15.0%
  • More of a Gimmick than anything

    Votes: 3 3.0%

  • Total voters
    100

kirkhilles

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Hi guys, I have to admit that I can't pull the trigger on a '16 Civic yet (still paying off one loan and have 2 workable cars to use otherwise), but it hasn't stopped me from obsessing over the Honda Sensing technology as I obsess about self driving technology (for some reason, weird as I like to drive and my stomach needs to drive).

I realize that this isn't Tesla technology, but could you guys give me real-world experiences of ACC in action? For interstate and highway driving, what percent of the time does the system work? Does it work during heavy traffic jams?

I'm just trying to get a realistic expectation before my (eventual) purchase as this would be what I would be most excited about. Is it a useful daily technology or is it one of those things that is cool at first but soon feels more like a gimmick later? Have their been any firmware updates to improve it?

Thanks! I've watched just about every video on it (including small time dealers showing it off) and searched around, but its tough to really get good experiences on how it really works.
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jeff925

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I would say it works well. Yesterday I drove 100 miles round trip in SF Bay Area with light to moderate traffic and I rarely, if at all, touched the gas or brakes. I set it to 70 and traffic slowed down to 55ish a couple times and it slowed and accelerated great. I also got 42.5 mpg for the trip
 
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kirkhilles

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Very cool, thanks! Did it do pretty much all of the steering too?
 

Arkbird

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Are we just talking the ACC or the whole suite itself?

I've used it in a few trips that have taken several hours. It's no tesla but it does very well. The ACC is actually pretty good. It'll occasionally brake for people leaving your Lane or break harder when people enter ahead of you unexpectedly but overall it does fine. I've had some moments where I was... Not paying attention to the road as I should have been and I ended up about five miles down the road without realizing it in pretty thick traffic thanks to some semi's.

Overall I'm happy with my EX-T with sensing as it keeps me a little less fatigued and in better mental health on the longer trips, especially when I'm trying to get some food or snacks from the passenger or rear seat.
 
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kirkhilles

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Thanks! Interesting stuff. To answer your question, I'm interesting in the whole package and really think of it as a whole package. Does it do a good stop of coming to a complete stop in heavier traffic?
 


bhorn

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ACC is great for its intended purpose: interstate or highways with no red lights/stop signs. Basically anywhere you would use a regular cruise control.
The Lane Keep Assist is similar: useful for higher speed roads (it only activates above 45 MPH) that are well marked (freshly painted lines).

This is not, by any means, a "self-driving car". These are features designed to assist your driving.
 

bhorn

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Thanks! Interesting stuff. To answer your question, I'm interesting in the whole package and really think of it as a whole package. Does it do a good stop of coming to a complete stop in heavier traffic?
If the ACC is tracking a car and it slows down, then ACC is fine. If you are approaching stopped traffic, then I would highly recommend slowing the car down manually. ACC will stop the car, but you (and the car you are approaching) will be terrified.
 

david1pro

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Answering the question about the AAC only (not lane assist, etc.), I have to say it works most of the time, and works much better when there isn't too much traffic and there are not too many curves in the road. On a curvy highway with traffic, it's really annoying more than anything else, and I have to turn it off. Sadly, this is my drive to work, so I can't make use of this feature in the day to day.

It's annoying because the car seems to only look directly in front of it, and when you're on a curve, or the road is curving ahead of you (let's say to the left), it's looking at cars in another lane. If those cars (let's say - in the slow lane to your right) are going slower than you in the faster lane, then the car will brake to slow down for those other cars that are not in your lane. This is annoying to you and everyone behind you who doesn't understand why you are slowing down when there is no one in front of you in your lane.

I wish this worked - and if I were to take trips on long straight drives, it would... but for my section of the highway I travel every day, this feature is more problematic than worthwhile, and I wish I could turn off the "adaptive" feature, but I can not - I can only reduce the distance it calculates, and that doesn't help with the problem described above. EDIT: You can, apparently, turn off the "adaptive" feature - by pressing down on the button for a couple of seconds instead of just pressing quickly to cycle through the distances.

I also agree with the above, slow yourself down if you see slow traffic up ahead (or suddenly stopped traffic - you'll terrify others otherwise).
 
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kirkhilles

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Answering the question about the AAC only (not lane assist, etc.), I have to say it works most of the time, and works much better when there isn't too much traffic and there are not too many curves in the road. On a curvy highway with traffic, it's really annoying more than anything else, and I have to turn it off. Sadly, this is my drive to work, so I can't make use of this feature in the day to day.

It's annoying because the car seems to only look directly in front of it, and when you're on a curve, or the road is curving ahead of you (let's say to the left), it's looking at cars in another lane. If those cars (let's say - in the slow lane to your right) are going slower than you in the faster lane, then the car will brake to slow down for those other cars that are not in your lane. This is annoying to you and everyone behind you who doesn't understand why you are slowing down when there is no one in front of you in your lane.

I wish this worked - and if I were to take trips on long straight drives, it would... but for my section of the highway I travel every day, this feature is more problematic than worthwhile, and I wish I could turn off the "adaptive" feature, but I can not - I can only reduce the distance it calculates, and that doesn't help with the problem described above.
Hmm, too bad, that's very disappointing to hear. I guess its more of a "dumb" sensor as opposed to being aware of what lane you are in versus others. This would probably be great on our trips from North Georgia down to Florida with straight sections, but would probably be useless on my commute where I have curves going around the mountain.
 

bhorn

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I wish I could turn off the "adaptive" feature, but I can not - I can only reduce the distance it calculates, and that doesn't help with the problem described above.
You can! If you hold down the ACC distance button for one second, it becomes regular old cruise control.

P428 in the manual.
 
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david1pro

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You can! If you hold down the ACC button until it beeps, it becomes regular old cruise control.
Holy carp? Really? Sweet! I've just cycled through and never thought to check otherwise. I'll give it a good press and see. Now if only I could do something about the windshield wipers to make them non-sensing!

Thanks so much for pointing that out.
 

jeff925

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The lane assist works well too. it will steer itself but if there is a big bend in hwy you need to grab the wheel. Its more intended to reduce driver fatigue which I find it does well.
 
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kirkhilles

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Good stuff, thanks guys! The lane assist does a good job of keeping you centered in the lane for the most part?
 

CivicNut

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Good stuff, thanks guys! The lane assist does a good job of keeping you centered in the lane for the most part?
The entire sensing suite works great for me, use it quite a bit... At first, it was kinda scary to leave it upto the car to adjust speed, brake, maintain distance, in lane position, etc. but once I saw it was doing what it's supposed to do, I started using it more and love it.

BUT, it's not supposed to eliminate driver sensibility and attention... I keep my foot hovering when I notice slowdown ahead and deactivate it when in traffic flow.
 
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kirkhilles

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Neat. I wouldn't expect it to be a fully self driving thing or even a complete highway driving, but it'd be nice to relax a bit.

So, does the system deactivate when you come to a complete stop in traffic? Is it useful there or just when traffic moves?
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