Cruise Control - Turn it off in the rain!!!

[TheGrocer]

A friend of mine has an E320 12 months old fitted with Disctronic cruise control. M25 - heavy rain - outside lane - 50MPH due to poor visibilty and volume of traffic - Cruise engaged....

For those of you who dont know how disctronic works (I sense another u tube vid coming on) its like regular cruise but with a radar to maintain distance from the car in front and applies braking and or speed to maintain that distance

Anyway back to the M25....
The car in front of said friends car pulls into the middle lane leaving a gap of some 1500 meters and because the disctronic has been set to 70MPH the car races to reach the set speed..Result on a wet fast lane pf the M25 is that he loses control an side swipes the central reservation

Resulting in no injury but the Police did say that this is not the first time they had had a problem with this type of accident on the E320!!

Your thoughts??

 

[Dieselman]

He set the speed too high for the conditions and the car aquaplaned. ESP would have intervened at the onset of wheelspin, but inertia is a powerful force.

A work collegue did something similar but without CC on. Funny how it was the car/road fault, not the driver..

 

[television]

In these circumstances the Distronic is no different to normal cruise.

It has been discussed in other threads that the system works depending on how you have been driving the car, that is the bit where the gearbox remembers how you have been driving.

If you have been driving in a leasurly manner and engage cruise, then turn it off, slow down and re engage it the car will accelerate slowly up to the set speed.

Do the same thing after a fast run, and the car will accelerate as quickly as possible to the set speed.

Over 350 miles yesterday of motorway driving,my car just resumed in a slow fashion as I had not been belting the car at any point

 

[BTB 500]

That's interesting, I've wondered why the cruise control on my SL and Vito goes back up to the stored speed in such a leisurely way.

The cruise on my VW Sharan (manual gearbox) always accelerated it at the same rate.

I find it hard to believe though that any system would accelerate the car hard enough for ESP to be unable to keep it in check on a straight road??

 

[fredfloggle]

You can't win - an electronic system gets it into a pickle that another electronic system is supposed to get it out of -
Not a bug in ESP that deactivates ESP when cruise is resuming is there?

Would the car have crashed without these systems?

 

[mb240]

You can't win - an electronic system gets it into a pickle that another electronic system is supposed to get it out of -
Not a bug in ESP that deactivates ESP when cruise is resuming is there?

Would the car have crashed without these systems?

Well that's the thing - if it's safe to drive only at 50mph then having the cruise set to 70mph is pretty daft. It's a lucky escape for him and the other drivers but it's no different to him decided to drive at 70mph when conditions wouldn't be right for it.

Strange thing though these stories. There was that one from years ago about Audi 100's and Lexus in the US. http://autosafety.org/article.php?scid=173&did=907.

My experience in the pissing rain here on the Atlantic coast is that if the ESP detects slipping and traction loss, it won't let me put power down at all and will significantly restrict acceleration on wet roads. I don't see why it would be different with cruise on - but I don't have the new distronic system so maybe it's different. Just saying that in my car it cuts the ability to accelerate without any hesitation if it's being requested to accelerate and loses traction - and it does this almost instantly as I've been trying it out; it's difficult to get into trouble really.

I'm glad your friend is alright though, must have been terrifying to lose control on a motorway, and it could have been a lot worse.

 

[crockers]

Sometimes one just has to accept the facts....if the conditions are bad then it is the drivers responsibility to exercise caution and not rely on electronic gadgets....

Bottom line is that nothing can defy the law of physics........................

 

[television]

Well that's the thing - if it's safe to drive only at 50mph then having the cruise set to 70mph is pretty daft. It's a lucky escape for him and the other drivers but it's no different to him decided to drive at 70mph when conditions wouldn't be right for it.

Strange thing though these stories. There was that one from years ago about Audi 100's and Lexus in the US. http://autosafety.org/article.php?scid=173&did=907.

My experience in the pissing rain here on the Atlantic coast is that if the ESP detects slipping, it won't let me put power down at all and will significantly restrict acceleration on wet roads. I don't see why it would be different with cruise on - but I don't have the new distronic system so maybe it's different. Just saying that in my car it cuts the ability to accelerate without any hesitation if it's being requested to accelerate and loses traction.

In the circumstances put up in the original post, it was nothing to do with distronic just the cruise part when using resume.

Some people have no idea of what happens in the wet, this time of the year too, with all of the leaves

 

[Ade B]

Food for thought - the old school cruise on my CE will activate kickdown if its set for 80 and I click it on from say 50... (incidently my speedo reads over)..

It brings the car up to speed as if I had floored the throttle - fun but obviously dangerous in the wrong conditions.

As an aside, I've always been suspicious of acronyms and neologisms - they remind me of tv adverts for ladies' beauty products.


Ade

 

[A210AMG]

I have heared before not to use cruise in the wet,

Fact if the condition are bad enough to warrant 50mph max then I doubt it was a good idea to have cruise on.

Driver error, the CAR will do NOTHING without a driver behind the wheel.

 

[jaymanek]

You can't win - an electronic system gets it into a pickle that another electronic system is supposed to get it out of -
Not a bug in ESP that deactivates ESP when cruise is resuming is there?

Would the car have crashed without these systems?

of course it would, it was down to the driver not using the cruise correctly... all the systems aside, the driver set the cruise to 70, 70 too fast for the conditions, car aquaplaned... end of..

 

[TheGrocer]

of course it would, it was down to the driver not using the cruise correctly... all the systems aside, the driver set the cruise to 70, 70 too fast for the conditions, car aquaplaned... end of..

I agree with the comments that the speed shouldnt have been set at that level however consider this:

5:00PM on the M25 Not nice but in parts the distronic can handle it comfortably. You have been driving for several hours from Manchester down the M6 and the long straight M40 (best cruisng motoway IMHO)
Cruising comfortably at 70 in good conditions. Onto the M25 and the rain starts to fall heavily and everyting starts to slow to 50 and you adjust the distronic range to max to ensure you have a safe distance in front.
After a while you become distracted to the fact that the distronic is even set let alone set to 70..The cars clear in front and the car goes for it trying to hit 70 asap ....

Thats what happend to my friend. YES its his fault and YES he should have disengaged distronic considering the conditions however sometimes we get complacent and way too comfortable surrounded by our warm environment and sometimes we make mistakes.

 

[Rory]

I'm pretty surprised that ESP didn't stop the car getting out of line.

One thing about cruise that surprises me is that (unlike US cars) there's no indicator ro say it's on. Is it the same with Distronic?
I've had cruise on various cars for years and it's perfectly possible to forget that it's engaged especially if you go faster than the set speed, it can throw you that the car stops slowing down when it gets back down to the set speed again.

As for using it in rain - how long until it's linked into the wipers?

 

[jaymanek]

oh absolutely, but you still cant blam distronic, ESP, ABS or anything else as Fred implies...

Im starting think that Mr Floggle just doesnt like any technological advancement on a vehicle... maybe we should all just get rid of anything electronic in the car and drive to work Flintstone style...

 

[television]

I'm pretty surprised that ESP didn't stop the car getting out of line.

One thing about cruise that surprises me is that (unlike US cars) there's no indicator ro say it's on. Is it the same with Distronic?
I've had cruise on various cars for years and it's perfectly possible to forget that it's engaged especially if you faster than the set speed, it can throw you that the car stops slowing down when it gets back down to the set speed again.

As for using it in rain - how long until it's linked into the wipers?

There is plenty to tell you that distonic is engaged, much more than a basic cruise control

The fact still remains that the guy had been driving fast before he engaged distronic, as I said earlier, had the guy been driving in a less hurried manner, then the distronic would have taken him slowly up to the set speed.

My 350 mile trip yesterday, and ½ done in the rain mainly with distronic on did not change down once to resume to the set speed.

You should forget the distronic bit, it is the same thing had he used the resume on a CC car when the opportunity arose

 

[marcos]

A friend of mine has an E320 12 months old fitted with Disctronic cruise control. M25 - heavy rain - outside lane - 50MPH due to poor visibilty and volume of traffic - Cruise engaged....

For those of you who dont know how disctronic works (I sense another u tube vid coming on) its like regular cruise but with a radar to maintain distance from the car in front and applies braking and or speed to maintain that distance

Anyway back to the M25....
The car in front of said friends car pulls into the middle lane leaving a gap of some 1500 meters and because the disctronic has been set to 70MPH the car races to reach the set speed..Result on a wet fast lane pf the M25 is that he loses control an side swipes the central reservation

Resulting in no injury but the Police did say that this is not the first time they had had a problem with this type of accident on the E320!!

Your thoughts??

A load of old B######s. How anyone can say it is the fault of distronic/cruise etc is an idiot.
Does the car threaten him with a gun if he doesn't use it?
Pure and simple driver error I'm afraid and blaming the electronics of the car is a bit daft really.
Incidentaly if the cruise control started to accelerate hard and ESP detects a loss of traction then cruise is immediately disconnected so really shouldnt have caused an accident as stated.

 

[fredfloggle]

oh absolutely, but you still cant blam distronic, ESP, ABS or anything else as Fred implies...

Im starting think that Mr Floggle just doesnt like any technological advancement on a vehicle... maybe we should all just get rid of anything electronic in the car and drive to work Flintstone style...

Where did you get that from? - show me one place where I have ever said that - you can't . I have however asked if you can have too much of a good thing .

All these tools are great - But learn to drive the car properly without first . Why on earth the OP didn't just dab the brake pedal when it all started going very fast is beyond me .

 

[fredfloggle]

A load of old B######s. How anyone can say it is the fault of distronic/cruise etc is an idiot.
Does the car threaten him with a gun if he doesn't use it?
Pure and simple driver error I'm afraid and blaming the electronics of the car is a bit daft really.
Incidentaly if the cruise control started to accelerate hard and ESP detects a loss of traction then cruise is immediately disconnected so really shouldnt have caused an accident as stated.

That's what I asked , he didn't plough into the back of stationary traffic , how come the car went sideways into the crash barrier?

Talking to a couple of days ago - he had an S class in for a suspension repair and when they took it out for a roadtest it went all over the place because of an ESP malfunction (he wasn't that clear what the problem is) .

There can be too much reliance on a car that "won't crash".

 

[marcos]

All these tools are great - But learn to drive the car properly without first . Why on earth the OP didn't just dab the brake pedal when it all started going very fast is beyond me .

Exactly.
It makes you wonder if some of these donuts should be allowed to drive on public roads

 

[Dave Lewis]

Incidents like this are one of the reasons I don't want driver "aids" on my car. ESP didn't help much here, did it? It seems that distronic/cruise created the situation, and ESP failed to redeem it. So why is it such a must-have?