Your thoughts on this issue related to cruise control

You may have seen this before as an e-mail forward. What do you think of it?

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This is DANGEROUS....I wonder how many people know about this ~

A 36 year old female had an accident several weeks ago and totaled her car. A resident of Kilgore, Texas, she was traveling between Gladewater & Kilgore. It was raining, though not excessively, when her car suddenly began to hydro-plane and literally flew through the air. She was not seriously injured but very stunned at the sudden occurrence!

When she explained to the highway patrolman what had happened he told her something that every driver should know - NEVER DRIVE IN THE RAIN WITH YOUR CRUISE CONTROL ON.

She thought she was being cautious by setting the cruise control and maintaining a safe consistent speed in the rain. But the highway patrolman told her if the cruise control is on when your car begins to hydro-plane and your tires lose contact with the pavement, your car will accelerate to a higher rate of speed making you take off like an airplane. She told the patrolman that was exactly what had occurred.

The patrolman said this warning should be listed on the driver's seat sun-visor - NEVER USE THE CRUISE CONTROL WHEN THE PAVEMENT IS WET OR ICY, along with the airbag warning. We tell our teenagers to set the cruise control and drive a safe speed - but we don't tell them to use the cruise control only when the pavement is dry.

The only person the accident victim found who knew this (besides the patrolman), was a man who had had a similar accident, totaled his car and sustained severe injuries.

Reply to
Auto Tech
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Our Avalon has the laser cruise control. At the first few drops of rain, it shuts off.....an annoying, but probably safety minded, feature.

If you are of a mind to do so, you can activate the traditional cruise control and it will function in the rain. I have done this a number of times, but now have learned a lesson.

Reply to
hls

This warning was printed in the owner's manual of my '63 Oldsmobile, the second car I had that was equipped with cruise (the first was a '60 Chrysler Imperial), back in the days when the owner's manuals weren't yet 90% CYA lawyer inspired warnings. I thought everybody knew this. I always told my kids to never use it in the rain (or ice, or snow).

Cruise control was a thrill on the '63 Olds anyway. That was the model with the Perfect Circle unit that would occasionally simply grab the accelerator & yank it to the floor, even when it was supposedly turned off. One of the first safety recalls if I remember correctly, after a few little old ladies got launched through their garage walls by their Cadillacs.

Reply to
E. Meyer

I think another thing to consider here is whether the car has traction control. If it does not, then indeed do not use cruise control in rain.

Now, if the car has cruise control, the issue is whether the control system for the cruise control invokes traction control. It may be hard to find this out, however. If you are not sure, again it is probably better to avoid using it.

One has to use some judgement, though. Hydroplaning happens if there is standing water, not just a damp surface. So if it is just a sprinkle- no standing water, then merely keep an eye on it and if you see puddles forming turn the CC off.

Auto Tech wrote:

Reply to
Don Stauffer

So, we get traction control so that we can safely use cruise control in the rain. Are we going to get some kind of steering control so that we can safely use traction control?

Sooner or later.. it all comes down to paying attention or not.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

That one is worthy of a .sig

As for the original story, it has the air of an urban myth (car "taking off like an airplane??" Get real!) But the truth is that s'pose you do hit a puddle while the cruise is on- the front wheels hit first and slow the car (neglecting whether or not they hydroplane for the moment). The cruise applies a little more power to maintain speed about when the rear wheels hit the water, so that now there is added engine torque trying to break them free just as they meet a great risk of hydroplaning. Once they start spinning, the cruise will keep them turning the same RPM regardless of the car's actual speed, making sure they *keep* spinning.

So the odds of losing control are definitely increased because of the action of the cruise control, but "take off like an airplane?" That's a bit ridiculous.

Reply to
Steve

Hyperbole is not unusual to this group.

Reply to
hls

Auto Tech wrote in news:b19f8874-dff9-4c08-9596- snipped-for-privacy@z34g2000vbl.googlegroups.com:

Cruise control should be banned. It's there simply because the auto makers make a bundle off it and the idiot public has been brainwashed into thinking they have to have it.

Reply to
Speeders & Drunk Drivers are MURDERERS

Don Stauffer wrote in news:4a9d2633$0$48223 $ snipped-for-privacy@news.qwest.net:

That is of course completley wrong! the first rain drops combine with the natural film of oil on the road and make it more slipery than after a good rain. at the first sign of moisture the cruse should be off. KB

Reply to
Kevin Bottorff

If it doesn't have a date and information on the periodical it was originally published in then it's a rumor, and not something you should give much weight to. _Any_ unattributed email or news posting should bring the needle of your BS-O-meter well off of zero.

And if the car is "hydroplaning" it can't have "literally flew through the air" -- the two are mutually exclusive, for a variety of reasons. Given that, This statement should bring the needle of your BS-O-meter pretty close to the peg.

So why are you forwarding material that pegs the needle of your BS-O- meter? Or, if your BS-O-meter needs a new battery, why are you forwarding material at all?

_Any_ closed-loop feedback control system has a process variable that the designer _really_ wants to control, a measurement of the process variable that the controller can see, and a command variable that the controller actually pushes around. In the case of cruise control the process variable is the speed, the command variable is (directly or indirectly) the throttle setting, and the measurement of speed could be taken from a variety of sources.

A cruise control that regulates the speed of the car by sensing the speed of the driven wheels won't run away like that, although it may surge to an astonishing degree if the wheels lose enough traction. The reason is because the measured speed is the driven wheel speed; if the car was going to go faster than the wheel speed then you're in deep **** anyway. The only way that a closed-loop system could run away as described would be if the system is sensing the speed of the non-driven wheels, _and_ if those non-driven wheels are going slower than the actual speed of the car

-- then the controller will 'try' to increase the speed of the car even though it's already correct.

What _is_ sensible is that in slippery conditions you shouldn't be driving at a constant speed! If you start to hydroplane and you're the least bit sensible you take your foot OFF the gas, GENTLY, and let the car slow down. Cruise control won't do this -- it'll maintain speed like it's designed. That's not "running away", but it's certainly going much faster than it should be, and would seem like running away to someone who slows down on slippery roads without really thinking about it.

So don't forward any more BS, but don't trust your car to drive for you in the rain and snow.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

Cruise control can actually improve fuel consumption numbers.... I've ridden with people that unconciously move their right foot ever so slightly in time to music. Also, for most corrections cruise control is quite gentle - sometimes nearly transparent.

I can assure you that I am neither idiot nor brainwashed and I find that cruise can be a Godsend on highway trips... especially when we consider ones natural tendency to increase pressure on the throttle as time passes.

FWIW... as much as we both abhor them, speeders and drunk drivers aren't murderers until they've actually killed someone. But you would like to ban a device that helps reduce the incidence of speeding by making it easy to maintain a preset speed.

Reply to
Jim Warman

"Jim Warman" wrote in news:tKcnm.42082$Db2.85@edtnps83:

BS. The drivers are in a 60 and set cc at 80. How does that stop speeding???

Reply to
Speeders & Drunk Drivers are MURDERERS

This is a help and discussion forum, and his post was not out of line.

Reply to
hls

In a case like that, it is hardly the cruise controls fault now, ain't it? If someone is going to go faster than the posted speed, I'm pretty sure they will do it with or without the aid of cruise control.

Flawed logic has gotten the world into far more trouble than it will ever get the world out of

Cruise control can reduce or eliminate unintentional speeding... If someone is determined to speed, cruise control plays no part what-so-ever....

My God,,, people like you are allowed to vote....

"Speeders & Drunk Drivers are MURDERERS" wrote in message news:Xns9C797B894A6E8riemann1850yahoocom@216.168.3.70...

Reply to
Jim Warman

Oh it did. This has been floating around for years. Someone sent it to me yet again recently and I've been debating them over the merits of what strikes me as cartoon physics and auto-tech issues within the story that ignore certain realities of how CC generally works, what the overall road environment is likely to be if hydroplaning or slipping on ice is an issue. I decided to post it in some auto forums to see what kinds of feedback it inspired so this other party would see that it's not just me that sees a degree of b.s. in it.

My position is that the primary problem isn't cruise control but not adjusting for diminished conditions. If you're hydroplaning you're going too fast. You lose a small amount of time to decel with the cruise on that would otherwise happen as soon as your foot comes off the gas but you should have been slowed to begin with. The story demonizes CC without really addressing the fundamental issue, and actually obscuring it. The story indicates she was driving at a "safe speed" but apparently not.

Reply to
Auto Tech

It sounds like something that would come up in Reader's Digest.

I didn't see the original publication info in your post, so I assumed you just got it anonymously.

I think we agree on that point, then. The problem with cruise control isn't what it does to the car, the problem is that it takes away the deadman switch, and lets the car go full speed while the driver's attention wanders. About the only time I use it is when I'm on flat empty road and I'm constantly exceeding my comfortable speed (and I'm driving someone else's car) -- then I'll use it just to keep me from a ticket.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

It can be termed running away. This just happened to me a couple of years ago. I never gave a thought about using cruise control on wet pavement until my blazer did go out of control.

I was just cruising along at 50mph down the right hand lane of a five lane highway. Puddles were forming in the right hand lane. Evidently I started to hydroplane. The truck slowed and turned slightly sideways. The wheel speed seemed to increase also.

After passing through the puddle the combination of a slightly sideways truck and over speeding tires took hold of the road, but not evenly. One rear tire seemed to grab the road and send the truck into an immediate turn. I tried to correct, but with the cruise control in charge of the accelerator and me in charged of trying to straighten the truck out it became a perpetual right/left, right/ left over correction fight between me and the cruise.

I only gained control by quickly shutting the cruise down. Once done the perpetual right/left, right/left could be stopped.

Reply to
tnom

Which forum is that?

Last week a CHP officer, off duty and driving a loaner Lexus, was killed along with others of his family. Early reports were that the driver could not control the speed of the car. Someone actually called

911 from the speeding vehicle just before the crash.

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I never paid much attention to cruise control, even though I had two cars with the option. Then it became something of a habit, in my most recent three cars. It still scares me, but I use it only in fair weather, on long, uninterrupted stretches, with little traffic. And it still scares me.

Nice motive for the original post. My view, you ought to take it for what it was: a warning to be careful who and what you depend on. Try not to be so technically literal. Find the value, and say "Thanks", offer a careful, thoughtful, calm suggestion if you have one.

Reply to
Frank ess

If this happens, it is a defect in the cruise control and the affected vehicles should be recalled and fixed. Normal cruise controls do not behave that way, and it's not worthwhile for drivers to take any precautions against it.

Reply to
John David Galt

The forum that you are reading right now. That is what these newsgroups are. He was not out of line.

This was crossposted to a number of newsgroups, all of them having to do with automobiles and driving. There is nothing wrong with that either.

If you dont like it, dont read it.

Reply to
hls

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