For Driver-Assist system enthusiasts

Yeah, good call on the bluetooth. I think every women on the road uses their phone in speaker mode while in the car instead of bluetooth.

I didn't want to go down the woman angle but yes, it is always the ladies!
 
I know its the future ( well actually the present ) with all the driver assistance and I guess people now want self driving cars. Personally I think its a bad trend. The quality of drivers on the road today is already terrible (mostly because of all the distractions ( primarily their phone) and now the lane centering and active cruise will possible encourage or aid in taking your eyes,hands and feet off the road . I don't know. The active cruise control is a great feature and can actually save gas but I still drive with my foot hovering the brake and would not trust it on it's own to come to a full stop. I know it will but depending on it is just not for me. Same with the lane keep. I's glad the CX-9 does not jerk the wheel back in to the lane. That could actually make things worse. You might be swerving suddenly to avoid a tire dropped in your lane.. then what? I turned that off immediately.
 
I know its the future ( well actually the present ) with all the driver assistance and I guess people now want self driving cars. Personally I think its a bad trend. The quality of drivers on the road today is already terrible (mostly because of all the distractions ( primarily their phone) and now the lane centering and active cruise will possible encourage or aid in taking your eyes,hands and feet off the road . I don't know. The active cruise control is a great feature and can actually save gas but I still drive with my foot hovering the brake and would not trust it on it's own to come to a full stop. I know it will but depending on it is just not for me. Same with the lane keep. I's glad the CX-9 does not jerk the wheel back in to the lane. That could actually make things worse. You might be swerving suddenly to avoid a tire dropped in your lane.. then what? I turned that off immediately.

When you need to swerve suddenly to avoid something in your lane

you simply do exactly the same thing as you currently do (Manually Swerve)!

(Speaking as the old man I am, when I was younger and buying a new GM car every year (Say about in the 1960s - 70's), they always needed a front end alignment - they would always pull to the Left or Right, never drive perfectly straight and make it easy to effortlessly stay in the middle of your lane.
In the last 20 years or so, the domestic auto manufacturers finally were forced (by the competition) to produce vehicles that are almost perfect - my CX-9 truly tracks perfectly hands off - only of course, slight imperfections in the roadways (or crosswinds) eventually cause it to eventually drift out of the lane. I look at a good "Pilot Assist" or "Lane Trace" (Or whatever they want to call it) as just a newer little extra gadget that makes my driving even easier by helping me stay centered in my lane with less effort. I still have my hands mostly lightly on the wheel, and I'm still driving the vehicle - only it's so much nicer.

(PS - Of course I'm speaking of my experience driving a Volvo with "Pilot Assist", since Mazda still doesn't offer anything like it. But with Honda, Toyota, and about every other manufacturer offering it in their basic models, Mazda has no choice but to offer it in 2020!)
 
Thanks for the link * but here*s the problem*

That link states that Mazda has *Lane Trace* * (Madza does say that it has this in one of its websites).

But I have asked this group in previous posts does anyone have *LANE TRACE" on their Mazda? (And never received any answer).

So if this Wikimedia webpage is so wrong on Mazda, what else is it wrong on?

It also states that Honda sense has it * (and maybe it now does) * but when I test drive a Honda Pilot (and also Acura MDX) * both of them simply ping-ponged me from side to side and were (like my Mazda) USELESS.
 
Have just returned from 6 week road trip; logged over 3,600 miles with 24.3 average mpg. Average price paid for 93 octane was close to $3.00/gal, making cost to operate less than 12.5 cents/mile. I could not be more satisfied with those numbers. I also spent the entire trip evaluating the ACC performance under every condition along the way. Overall, I still find the capabilities both impressive and desirable. Most importantly, Ive come to recognize conditions and circumstances where its limitations yield less than optimal performance or results. Not so much from a safety perspective, but rather from fuel consumption and brake wear.

One piece of information that is sorely lacking is some indication when braking is occurring versus simply coasting with no accelerator. (The simplest fix would be an indicator that could change from green to yellow when acceleration lets off, and turns to red when brakes are being applied.) Without this piece of the puzzle, I had to rely on my own perception and whether I could outperform the ACC in terms of smoothness of travel. In some cases I was actually able to see and verify my results by watching the average mpg increase. With braking on the other hand, I had to rely on feel, but the results there also come thru into the mpg calculation.

No surprise that driving conditions with multi-lane traffic begin to adversely impact performance at any speed. With only One Eye on what is directly in front of the vehicle, it is not a surprise that over acceleration and over braking will occur. (This will be an issue with ANY system that cannot see vehicles beyond the one directly ahead, or the light that has changed to red a quarter mile down the road beyond the 7 cars in front of you.)

Another problem is system lag when changing lanes to avoid something moving slower in front of you. I found it incredibly frustrating that I would change lanes only to have the system apply brakes once in the other lane. Yes, it is important to be aware of your distance setting, but the system still has some significant lag once it has processed a slowdown. Most importantly, in traffic at Interstate highway speeds, it is crucial to learn to hit cancel when overtaking a vehicle under acceleration; failure to do so results in extreme over-braking the instant you let off the accelerator, creating a very unsafe situation.

My most important take-away was learning to more quickly determine the appropriate times to engage and disengage the ACC. It is great technology, but has limits. I also believe that any reliable and comprehensive, truly self-driving tech for the consumer market is a long way off, but Im not one holding my breath.

As for lane recognition and related control, there is a lot of hope for more robust capabilities here, but it too may never be 100% failsafe. We did have some fog and humidity conditions that actually gave a warning and automatically turned off the ACC. At least twice that I was aware of, the system could not discern lanes in serpentine portions of Interstate causing the Eye to latch on to the vehicle in the other lane, and reacting as if it was in front of me.
 
I know its the future ( well actually the present ) with all the driver assistance and I guess people now want self driving cars. Personally I think its a bad trend. The quality of drivers on the road today is already terrible (mostly because of all the distractions ( primarily their phone) and now the lane centering and active cruise will possible encourage or aid in taking your eyes,hands and feet off the road . I don't know. The active cruise control is a great feature and can actually save gas but I still drive with my foot hovering the brake and would not trust it on it's own to come to a full stop. I know it will but depending on it is just not for me. Same with the lane keep. I's glad the CX-9 does not jerk the wheel back in to the lane. That could actually make things worse. You might be swerving suddenly to avoid a tire dropped in your lane.. then what? I turned that off immediately.

I will back up Hockeye very much with his summary.

I have it on my volvo now, it does not 'jerk' back into the middle of the lane, it simply slowly pushes you out of the other lane. You can very much feel it in your hands as it occurs and can very much counteract it if you so choose.

Similarly with the pilot assist on and it guiding you along the road, if there is a pothole or similar in the road, it will not fight your inputs, it only applies its own force to the steering when it senses that you are not applying active input yourself.

You're right though that people need to view the current generation of aids as 'assists' and not 'pilots' because that is what they are, like the Adapative Cruise Control, they make life easier, they don't drive for you. Having used it for 18ish months now, I will confidently say it is excellent tech and certainly does not reduce safety in anyway, if used as an 'assist'.
 
On my first really long road trip up from Florida to West Virginia using all the CX-9 driving assists.

I love the Adaptive Cruise Control, actually used it pretty much 100% of the whole freeway cruise. I use the farthest setting, and go for hours without using the gas or brake * it makes long distance driving so relaxing. I like that it often detects that vehicle in front of you is starting to slow * before you even realize it because you can feel your de-acceleration.

But as usual the Lane Keeping is pretty much useless. It really doesn*t apply enough torque to the steering wheel to move the vehicle away from the lane that it is drifting across (unless the road grade or the cross wind is enough to help it out.

I do GET IT! I understand that a Mazda is a *drivers car* and therefore it is trying to offer *Lane Keeping* in a way that is least intrusive for all you fan-boy "drivers" who really can't stand the idea that the steering-assist system should interrupt your *driving skills", but that is exactly the problem.

If you want to be a *Driver*, you can simply turn it off. But if you (like me), want real steering assist over long boring freeway drives, it needs much improvement. It really needs *Lane Centering" like almost all of its competitors now offer. And Mazda finally gets around to offering it, hopefully it won't "timeout" every 5 seconds or so and command you to take control of the steering wheel, but allow 15-20 seconds of uninterrupted assisted cruising at a time like the new Telluride does.

On the brighter side, my CX-9 cruises almost perfectly on straight stretches of freeway, it tracks so perfectly straight and true that it will stay in the center of the lane all by itself for much longer periods (30-45 secs) than if Lane Keeping is on and it is bugging you every 5 seconds.

My last surprise was how cool the Nav system is, living in flat Florida, this is the first time I have ever seen the beautiful 3D colorful display of the West Virginia mountains - very nice!
 
Adaptive Cruise

Re Adaptive Cruise -

Got my 2019 CX-9 Touring 2 weeks ago, did a 700-mile vacation round trip. Set the ACC distance at 3 out of 4 on interstate. Works very nicely, and gives enough distance to not make me nervous about trusting it. Still kept my foot over the brake pedal (wink)

But the most impressive part of ACC, to me, was when a passing car pulls back into your lane just in front of you (well inside the set distance), the ACC doesn't brake - apparently it says "oh, this car is moving faster, so will soon be no problem and there's no reason to brake". I thought that was pretty clever. Haven't seen anybody else mention this.
 
Re Adaptive Cruise -

Got my 2019 CX-9 Touring 2 weeks ago, did a 700-mile vacation round trip. Set the ACC distance at 3 out of 4 on interstate. Works very nicely, and gives enough distance to not make me nervous about trusting it. Still kept my foot over the brake pedal (wink)

But the most impressive part of ACC, to me, was when a passing car pulls back into your lane just in front of you (well inside the set distance), the ACC doesn't brake - apparently it says "oh, this car is moving faster, so will soon be no problem and there's no reason to brake". I thought that was pretty clever. Haven't seen anybody else mention this.

in NYC whenever someone pulls in front of you, it's ALWAYS because they are cutting you off and braking...it's never to speed up haha.
 
Overall the radar cruise works okay on calm highway roads. In traffic it is quite useless and dangerous. When a car cuts in front and slows down, the radar doesnt pick it up quick enough and does not brake in time. I have to manually brake. Same thing goes for when a car gets out of the way and there is a slower car in front. The radar doesnt see it quick enough. It's definitely not something you want to trust using. You still need to be aware of everything on the road and keep your foot next to the brakes just in case.
 
Overall the radar cruise works okay on calm highway roads. In traffic it is quite useless and dangerous. When a car cuts in front and slows down, the radar doesnt pick it up quick enough and does not brake in time. I have to manually brake. Same thing goes for when a car gets out of the way and there is a slower car in front. The radar doesnt see it quick enough. It's definitely not something you want to trust using. You still need to be aware of everything on the road and keep your foot next to the brakes just in case.

That's just common sense. All of these convenience systems are driver aids. They're meant to assist with driving, not replace the driver.

Radar cruise works perfectly for me. I use it almost exclusively on highways, and sometimes I even use it on my commute home. It's really quite easy to use, and it works very well.

With regard to the scenario you listed above (car cuts in front and slows down), the car does respond immediately in my experience. Maybe you're just not comfortable with your current distance setting (is it set too low)? Have you tried adjusting the radar cruise distance at all?
 
Overall the radar cruise works okay on calm highway roads. In traffic it is quite useless and dangerous. When a car cuts in front and slows down, the radar doesnt pick it up quick enough and does not brake in time. I have to manually brake. Same thing goes for when a car gets out of the way and there is a slower car in front. The radar doesnt see it quick enough. It's definitely not something you want to trust using. You still need to be aware of everything on the road and keep your foot next to the brakes just in case.

Wow In my experience the very best use of the Stop-n-Go Cruise control is in heavy traffic. (I love it so much I made a video about it).


But yea, youre so right, youre driving; you need to have complete control.

Yet, in my experience, even though the Adaptive Cruise doesnt always adjust fast when youre letting it brake for you (and at the last minute the car youve been following pulls out of your lane), still

The good news is, in my experience with my 2018, a different Mazda system (Advanced Smart City Brake Support) takes over and warns you and automatically applies the brakes (if you dont).

Im pretty sure that is the way it works, however in my 1.5 years of driving so far I have always applied the brakes myself but Im relatively sure that if the vehicle is smart enough to detect the danger and flash the warning, it likely would have braked for me if I hadnt already done it.

(Still, I dont really want to be the poor soul who finds out the hard way that that is not how it works.) Ive asked other owners in this forum before about this and got very few responses. Given the poor quality of the Owners Manual relative to these safety systems, I dont feel very comfortable that the guys who wrote the manual clearly understand how these separate safety systems play with each other?
 
But yea, youre so right, youre driving; you need to have complete control.

Speaking of keeping yourself in control, l have 'discovered' a flaw in the ACC/driver loop: After coming off the highway into city traffic and getting off the cruise control, I almost crashed into the car in front waiting for my car to apply the 'cruise brakes' (headshake - so now I try to remember that, hey, I'm back in charge...
 
I also found that the radar cruise control was most useful on congested highways, where traffic speed varied a lot and regularly from 65mph to 40mph and back. It was working extremely well in that scenario. On long clear highway drive, I almost prefer the regular cruise control because I sometime forget that it is adaptive and realize that for the past 10 minutes I have been following a slow driver and have been driving slower than I wanted to.

Talking about keeping control, another scenario to be careful about is when traffic is slow on radar cruise control and you take an empty off-ramp, the car suddenly speeds up down the off-ramp because the road is now clear, usually not a big issue but something to be aware off.
 
In my experience, ACC works great but I do not seem to get the SBS - smart brake support and it seems to do a poor job. When I see a car that is coming up close in front of me, the system will not brake for me but I apply the brakes before it does. I really do not want to test the system with no application of brakes from me but I would think the system would be more cautious and apply slight brakes for us??. Am i understanding this correctly?
 
In my experience, ACC works great but I do not seem to get the SBS - smart brake support and it seems to do a poor job. When I see a car that is coming up close in front of me, the system will not brake for me but I apply the brakes before it does. I really do not want to test the system with no application of brakes from me but I would think the system would be more cautious and apply slight brakes for us??. Am i understanding this correctly?

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Basically, the system monitors a bunch of parameters (throttle input, brake pedal input, steering, distance to object in front, etc.) and if it decides that it needs to intervene, it will throw up a big BRAKE! warning, and if no action is taken, it will brake for you. It brakes pretty hard.

Also note that there is SCBS which functions at speeds of 4 - 30 km/h, and SBS which functions at speeds of 15 -145 km/h. Read this: https://www.mazda.com/en/innovation/technology/safety/precrash_safety/sbs/
 
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Basically, the system monitors a bunch of parameters (throttle input, brake pedal input, steering, distance to object in front, etc.) and if it decides that it needs to intervene, it will throw up a big BRAKE! warning, and if no action is taken, it will brake for you. It brakes pretty hard.

Also note that there is SCBS which functions at speeds of 4 - 30 km/h, and SBS which functions at speeds of 15 -145 km/h. Read this: https://www.mazda.com/en/innovation/technology/safety/precrash_safety/sbs/

This one seems a little difficult to understand when it would brake for you !. I guess Level 3 automation might be needed here !!
 
This one seems a little difficult to understand when it would brake for you !. I guess Level 3 automation might be needed here !!

It's not needed. You might prefer it though. Mazda's systems leave the driving to the driver. They only intervene when necessary, which means panic braking, wandering over lane markers, etc. This isn't automation, it's safety.
 
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