Adaptive cruise control could ease "phantom traffic jams" - or make them worse

Al said:
At the age of 79 I love it. It actually drives closer to the car in front and thats good bc reaction time is zero. I can't understand turning it off. Thats just me. Why would you use cruise WITHOUT ACC
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My Toyota is too aggressive. I'm sure systems have improved in the last 8 years. But I only use it with mostly flowing traffic. But you'll come up on a car going slower and when you got the pacing distance BAM! brakes slammed aggressively to slow. As a human, I can calculate and lightly lift off the accelerator and not even use the brakes in most situations that adaptive would be slamming brakes on.

If adaptive were a robot QB, instead of leading the receiver and throwing a bit early (smooth and natural looking) it'd wait until the receiver was basically on its spot and just launch a missile that would rip the arms off the receiver. At least on my 8 year old Toyota. I'm sure newer systems or premium cars (or Tesla) are much better, but Toyota's 8 years ago has a purpose, and it's not meant for heavier traffic, in my opinion. Unless you want to get car sick with all the acceleration and braking.
 
I love CC and use it anytime I can - typically on the highway. My base model VW has normal cruise while my wife's more optioned VW has ACC. When I drive hers it always requires an adjustment. What typically happens is that I don't realize it's ACC so a car in front will be going slower than what my ACC is set on and then I will slow down unknowingly at the given following distance until I figure it out. I've made some changes (coding) to allow it so that when I hit my turn signal, it starts accelerating towards the car in front for a smooth ACC-driven pass. Once I'm used to it, I really like ACC. Like all tech, you will have the get off my lawn/boomer/luddite BITOG crew here hating on it without spending the time to figure out how it works, testing, and then adapting to it. The VW system doesn't slam on the brakes, it just adjusts slowly to keep the same distance which is also adjustable - I typically keep mine set to have the closest follow distance. I've not really found any downsides to it over regular CC but again, you have to drive to the system a bit vs. blindly letting it work.
 
HowAboutThis said:
My Toyota is too aggressive. I'm sure systems have improved in the last 8 years.
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I really think they have. I drove a 2024 Corolla as a loaner for a few weeks and I thought it handled both lane keep and ACC a lot better than our Hondas (2016 Pilot and 2019 Accord). I saw that the 2021 Accord facelift also included smoothing of the ACC and LKAS.

The best cruise control would know the speed of cars beyond the one you are following and use that to inform whether to let the gap shrink or grow a little bit. I think that is how a good driver will drive.

I think the real problem with traffic is overly aggressive drivers who are following extra-close to keep from getting cut off by other overly aggressive drivers. Then they have to overreact to changes in speed by the car in front of them because they are following so closely. "To summarize the summary of the summary, people are a problem."

I have driven roughly the same commute route for about 20 years, but it is hard to me get a feel for how traffic has changed due to ACC. About the time the technology got popular, traffic disappeared due to corona. Then, they began construction on my route, so I am probably seeing worse jams than I normally would. So I'm still left wondering if ACC has helped reduce traffic jams or made it worse.
 
In manufacturing engineering, we have a term called "Linear Production Rate". It speaks to smoothing line flow; avoiding bottlenecks and shortages.
 
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