Do you know when and when not to use cruise control?
from Goss' Garage by Pat Goss
Do you know when to use cruise control? More important do you know when you should never use cruise control? A client of ours had an accident a while back which totaled their car. It was raining lightly so the driver did what many drivers do in the rain --- set the cruise control to maintain speed and hopefully better control on the wet road.
But rather than help, the cruise control caused this accident. Because cruise control doesn't know when wheels are spinning or have lost their traction it does not know when to release the accelerator pedal. So when this car hit a pot hole one wheel lost traction and began to spin. In this case it was a pothole that caused the wheel to bounce off the road surface and lose traction but the loss of traction could have been from hydroplaning or a slipper spot or???
No matter the cause, cruise control doesn't have the ability to know when a wheel has lost traction and therefore can't reduce engine power to compensate like a human driver can. So when the wheel regained traction as they always do the combination of engine power and the wildly spinning wheel instantly regaining traction there was a violent jolt in the steering wheel. So violent it yanked the steering wheel out of the driver's hands causing the wheel and the car to swerve to the right and off the road.
In this case the car veered to the right and it was totaled but fortunately no one in the car was seriously hurt. But here's an alarming thought. Suppose the loss of traction had been on the left wheel and when the car regained traction the force had caused the car to veer to the left, headfirst into oncoming traffic. Those are the accidents that often lead to multiple fatalities. It's a sad but horrific accidents routinely happen for no better reason than the driver never took the time read or didn't understand their owner's manual.
There are some very basic don't about cruise control.
- Don't use cruise control in the rain!
- Don't use cruise control when it is snowing!
- Don't use cruise control when roads are icy or slippery!
- Don't use cruise control in hilly country!
Using cruise in any of these situations can lead to loss of control and possibly an accident. Find the details in your owner's manual.
© Copyright 1/8/2009 Pat Goss. All Rights Reserved.
