Highway Driving Assist, a characteristic of the Kia brand, lessens highway driver weariness and promotes peace of mind. In some situations, it lessens the driver’s involvement when using the steering wheel or when accelerating and decelerating. Additionally, it keeps displaying important information on the LCD head-up display.
In This Article...
How does drive assistance function?
On split, restricted-access highways, such as Interstates, Highway Driving Assist uses a forward-facing radar unit and camera, GPS technology, and the navigation system’s map database to give Level 2 driving assistance. Highway Driving Assist won’t function unless the car is on an authorized road. Only at speeds under 95 mph is it usable.
The adaptive cruise control system uses the radar unit to maintain a safe following distance from oncoming vehicles. Drivers have the option to adjust the adaptive cruise control to the posted speed limit for automated speed regulation. As an alternative, you can manually change the velocity while setting a lower or higher speed.
Once the speed has been chosen, the adaptive cruise control automatically changes the following distance to narrow or widen the gap between the car and traffic in front of it.
The Genesis, Hyundai, or Kia will automatically slow down to maintain a safe following distance if another vehicle closes the gap. Highway Drive Assist will automatically rev up the engine to the posted speed limit or a different pre-set speed if the car in front switches lanes or pulls off the road.
Highway Drive Assist can also automatically slow the car down to more safely negotiate freeway transition ramps and curves in the road if the posted speed limit changes.
A camera recognizes the road’s lane markings to keep a Genesis, Hyundai, or Kia centered in its designated lane of travel, and the steering automatically makes small modifications to maintain the car as close to the center of the lane as is practical. This technology must be manually turned on by the driver via a button on the dashboard or steering wheel, a menu in the infotainment system, or both.
As long as the driver indicates their desire, Highway Drive Assist II’s steering assistance can also enable a lane change. The technology’s next-generation version also has machine learning capabilities that try to match how adaptive cruise control works with the driver’s usual routines.
When Highway Driving Assist is on, drivers can know by looking at icons in the instrument cluster or the head-up display. The system is in use if the “HDA, steering wheel, and lane-keeping assistance icons are green.
Highway Driving Assist is not a Level 2+ hands-free system like Ford Active Drive Assist or General Motors Super Cruise. Keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times. If you don’t, Highway Driving Assist will switch itself off after three requests for you to take over control of the vehicle.
Additionally, certain driving conditions, such as snow or heavy rain, prevent Highway Driving Assist from functioning.
Drive Assist: Is it worthwhile?
- According to a research by the American Automobile Association (AAA), driver-assist systems in modern cars are frequently faulty, which could undermine the safety advantages they provide.
- The association looked at five different 2019 and 2020 models, and discovered that the systems had problems roughly every eight miles.
The investigation came to the conclusion that these technologies’ safety advantages are unreliable. When drivers rely too heavily on technology and fail to notice when the systems disengage, as they frequently do with no warning, the devices become especially dangerous, according to AAA. During open-road testing, 73 percent of the errors made by the systems involved lane departure or irregular lane positioning.
How do I activate the help for motorway driving?
Activate the highway drive assist.
- On the dashboard, press the SETUP button.
- Pick the Vehicle icon on your touchscreen first.
- After that, choose Driver Assistance from the menu options.
- In order to activate or deactivate HDA, check or uncheck the Highway Driving Assist checkbox.
Is driving on the highway good for a car?
Overall, highways are easier for your car Your brakes work considerably less frequently because you have fewer stop signs, junctions, and vehicles in your path. Highways are frequently well kept, so your suspension encounters fewer bumps and potholes, which is very easy on a system that can be expensive to repair.
What dangers might there be if I use a driver assistance system?
Drivers may become overly dependent on the technology when ADAS takes over some fundamental driving functions, including as parking and maintaining lane position, and as a result may miss more possible road dangers nearby.
Can driver assistance be disabled?
Thank you for the new automobile! It always takes some time to become acclimated to a new car, so don’t panic if you don’t understand everything right away. Follow these easy steps to disable lane assist in your BMW:
- then choose Driver Assistance under Settings.
- Choose Lane Change Warning under Safety and Warnings from here.
- Now you should have the option of selecting Early, Medium, Late, or Off.
- To turn off your lane assist, select Off.
You can drive a little more easily now that you have successfully disabled the lane assist option on your BMW. To learn how much you can save on your auto insurance, download the Jerry app before you get back on the road.
After you download Jerry, simply respond to a few questions that should take you no longer than 45 seconds to finish, and you’ll receive car insurance rates for coverage that is comparable to your current plan right away. Customers of Jerry save $887 year on average.
THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND IT
To function, this feature needs painted lane markings. These comprise the lane separations and the outlines of the road. This function may also help stop you from veering off the road in some versions.
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
Always pay attention to your surroundings and the traffic in the adjoining lanes as you drive. However, if you do veer off course, your dashboard will display a warning, you’ll either hear a sound or feel vibrations in your seat or steering wheel. Your lane departure warning is now active. If you don’t react quickly enough, lane keeping assist will then gently steer you back to the middle of the lane.
TIPS FOR USING
- To function, this feature needs painted lane markings. It is not intended to operate with markers that are extremely complex, faded, covered, or in disrepair.
- The lane keeping assist may not be able to recognize the lane markers on the road if it is covered in snow, leaves, fog, or debris.
- Once activated, you can disable this feature by turning your wheel.
Lane assist does it function in the rain?
- Ahead of crash caution (FCW). The system keeps track of an object’s proximity and speed of approach. The algorithms compare speed to how rapidly the car’s shape fills the field of view, even with a single (not stereo) camera. Your car decides it is approaching dangerously close if the car shape in front suddenly becomes larger. Both the phrase “Brake!” or “Brake Now!” and a red warning light flash.
- detection of pedestrians and city braking At speeds up to roughly 20 mph, the camera and processors spot pedestrians in your path and automatically apply the brakes (safely). They also do the same for cars you didn’t notice coming up ahead. Some vehicles might employ radar for city braking.
- control for the windshield wipers The algorithm speculates that rain hitting the windshield may be the cause of any identified blurriness in the image. Your wipers’ delay is adjusted for more frequent swipes if they are set to intermittent operation. Since most cars have intermittent wipers, most automobiles also have independent rain sensors, however lane departure warning is still in development.
Autonomous cruise control The stereo cameras used by Subaru Eyesight are spaced about a foot apart, on either side of the rearview mirror. They are precise enough to take the place of radar in systems that pace the car in front of you, such as adaptive cruise control. They don’t have the broad coverage of radar-based ACC, I discovered, but if you’re traveling at the legal speed limit on the highway, it’s not a problem.
- Recognition of signs. The car can inform you the posted speed limit, a temporary construction speed limit, an accident or fog notice from an overhead sign by feeding the camera feed to a pattern and optical character recognition algorithm. There are very few cars that have this feature. Europe has an advantage over the US in terms of signage since it is more straightforward to distinguish a traffic sign from a billboard or a message on the back of a truck in Europe. There is now information about posted speed limits on several navigation systems (not all automakers show it). Temporary speed limits could potentially be transmitted to the automobile if it has telematics. In theory, you could increase the cruise control setting on highways by, say, 7 mph from the present speed.
- recognition of traffic lights. In case you’re not paying attention, a color camera in the windshield can show you when the light turns green. Combining this with a telematics system that communicates information about traffic lights, such as when the light ahead is likely to change phases, has the potential to be useful (that is, green to yellow to red, or red to green). The car can suggest that you slow down and conserve petrol if you can’t make the next light before it turns red.
Lane departure warning vs. blind spot detection
Lane departure warning and blind spot recognition are two features that are frequently combined into one package. They diverge in the following ways:
A camera that scans the horizon utilizes lane departure warning to determine if you are moving out of your lane. It warns you if your turn signal is not on.
Sonar or radar sensors that look behind and to the side are used for blind spot identification. It warns you when vehicles approach swiftly and enter your blind spot. A automobile in your blind area is shown by the notification on your outside mirror or on the A-pillar. In the rearview mirror, an emblem of two cars parked side by side illuminates. In contrast to a lane departure warning, you only receive a haptic or audio alarm if your turn signal is on. The emblem for the illuminated side mirror also blinks.
Why LDW doesn’t work 100% of the time
There is no perfect machine vision system. In the rain or snow, lane departure warning performs less well, and when visibility is poor, it will switch off and alert the driver. It is obvious that it is ineffective when the road is covered in snow or when there are no lane markings at all. The system must rely on the single lane marking that remains on highway exits where the markings diverge (and also scan the road ahead for where the right-side marking picks up again). On occasion, the automobile may give you a false alarm and claim that you are drifting across the lane even if you are still in the center of the road. But compared to five years ago, this is noticeably improved.
When lane markers are outdated or are raised dots rather than 20-foot painted stripes, LDW is less effective. Drivers with poor eyesight, machine vision systems like LDW, and all drivers in inclement weather would all benefit from a strong campaign to replace worn-out road surface markings before they disappear. America’s infrastructure is no longer of the highest caliber for this one very little reason.
Should your next car have lane departure warning?
Lane departure warning and blind spot recognition are near the top of the list of available driver assistance aids in terms of importance for enhancing safety. Within five years, it’s feasible that the Department of Transportation will require LDW and BSD on cars when the cost decreases. If it had to pick just one, blind spot detection would be it. But it’s possible that that won’t happen in the next four years given that the Trump administration wants fewer rather than more regulations.
Driving a lot of highway miles makes sense if you use lane departure warning. To prevent you from veering across lanes, lane keep assist makes more sense, and lane centering assist is even better.
What if LDW doesn’t reduce accidents?
One fundamental belief regarding lane departure warning is that it brings comfort, lowers accident rates, and decreases fatalities and serious accidents. Is it real, though? LDW might avert 7,500 fatal accidents, according to the Insurance Information for Highway Safety, a group backed by the insurance business, in 2010. Then, in 2012, the Highway Loss Data Institute of the insurance sector came to the conclusion that lane departure warning systems may be connected to slightly higher accident rates. According to one argument, drivers who use driver assistance systems become overconfident and drive too fast.
The IIHS stated that although they make up a significant share of fatal crashes, crashes in which vehicles slide off the road don’t happen frequently are a contributing factor in the disconnect.
About 97 percent of crashes reported to the police would not be affected by lane departure warning.
Since then, numerous studies have demonstrated that vehicles with driver assistance features typically had fewer collisions. A more intriguing finding was that two-thirds of the drivers in a recent IIHS poll of 184 motorists in Virginia and Maryland had lane departure warning turned off. Although the IIHS didn’t mention so, it’s possible that drivers dislike loud, frequent warning beeps. It would be useful to distinguish between the use of LDW in vehicles with haptic (quiet) and loud notifications.
Recommendations: By all means, get LDW
All lane departure warning systems perform admirably. Except in snow or heavy rain, I’ve never driven a car with LDW that didn’t recognize road markers and issue some sort of warning, day or night. That’s great. Having driven more than 100 vehicles equipped with driver aids, including lane departure warning, the following are my suggestions:
- Look for vehicles that include adaptive cruise control, blind spot detection, and lane departure warning in one package. As an illustration, the Honda Sensing System adds only $1,000 to the cost of the car while providing all three. With Toyota Safety Sense-P, several models come standard with lane keep assist (“lane departure alert with steering aid”) and a pre-collision system.
- Choose lane centering help if you can. It is superior to lane keep assist, which is superior to lane departure warning.
- You’ll likely prefer haptic alerts than beeps. The rationale is straightforward: Passengers won’t hear if you get too close to the edge of the lane, which frequently results in snide remarks about your driving prowess.
The use of adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, and forward collision alert may prevent careless drivers from getting into accidents. It’s likely that someone trying to type while moving along will be saved from their foolishness: If you allow the automobile to stray from its lane, you will receive a warning before it returns. Allow the driver in front of you to apply the brakes, and your vehicle will do the same. Saving us from ourselves is not how lane departure warning and adaptive cruise are meant to be utilized.
There are devices available for drivers who want to add lane departure warning electronics to their automobiles, including dash-top units that occasionally include a traffic camera, GPS, FCW, and LDW, as well as lane departure warning phone apps. It’s unclear how well the gadgets I’ve tested compare in terms of accuracy to those built inside the car. Additionally, because they have no way of knowing your turn signal is on, they warn you every time you purposely change lanes.