... in short, not ready for prime time.
There are two kinds of errors such systems can make:
- Type 1: goes off when it shouldn't
- Type 2: fails to go off when it should
The lane drift warning has trouble with shadows, with curves, with tar strips running along the lane, with narrow lanes. It sometimes goes off (just a modest "beep beep beep") and you look up and wonder, "huh?" One a drive up PCH a few weeks ago it kept going off for one or another reason.
It also goes off if you cross out of a lane without signaling - or it should. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I guess it isn't supposed to fire under 30mph or so, so you can wander across an empty parking lot without a lot of pointless beeping.
I've only had the collision avoidance go on about three times now. The first two were both where a truck was blocking a left lane, and I had to approach and then change lanes to the right. The latest was when the car in front of me hit the brakes. In all three of these instances my foot was on the way to the brake when the alert goes off "a louder beep-beep-beep and some yellow warning lights". In these situations it was not useful. It could give a pre-warning a second earlier, or else it should wait half a second longer to see if there's really a problem. It seems to be in these three instances, it was just not properly calibrated - or not properly designed.
Now, in NONE of these situations was I snoozing at the wheel and looking for a useful reminder. I haven't had any such experiences yet, since driving the car only about two week so far. Of course just one of those, will pay for a lot of irritating misfires.
But at least so far, I would not recommend anyone upgrade to the EXL hoping that these features will prove really useful rather than, say, something between irritating and amusing.
J.