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I drove this morning, a new car with adaptive cruise control. Having never experienced this tech before, it was pretty amazing. It makes the cruise control in my own vehicles seem crude and dangerous by comparison. I venture to guess, if standard cruise control was introduced today, it would be rejected by the public as too dangerous. Is there any data on how many accidents occur with standard (non adaptive) cruise activated?

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Part of the safety of standard cruise control is the fact that it is clearly crude and dangerous - it keeps the driver engaged.

The things that actual “autopilot” does in aviation are also crude and dangerous: hold this heading forever, change flight level without regard to ground level, etc.

Good point. It was my first time, and as a result was very engaged. But I could imagine as I got used to and depended on the feature, how I could lose some of that attentiveness.

It was my first experience with lane departure warnings as well which was pretty neat but soon became a small distraction. I could see myself turning that off, if it was my daily driver.

The best feature of adaptive cruise control is how it keeps you a safe distance from the car in front (about 4 seconds) - whereas if I was using my own judgement, the spacing would probably be halved.

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