Does Adaptive Cruise with Low Speed Follow actually work at low speeds?

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Omz2302

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So I bought a 2018 Honda Clarity about 3 months ago and am absolutely loving it!
I have a concern about the Adaptive Cruise Control - one of the things mentioned on the Honda website is "low speed follow." Has anybody tried using this in an actual traffic situation? Like with stop and go traffic on the highway? When I tried this it seemed to leave a TON of room between myself and the car in front of me before it would start to accelerate - so much so at times I would either get honked at because it looked like I wasn't paying attention or somebody would just change into my lane which then of course makes the ACC re-calibrate and the car suddenly breaks to go even slower. The sales guy at the dealership told me the low speed follow function was made for traffic jams, but with the amount of time it takes for the car to decide to move forward, I would never use it. Is anyone else having this problem? I think the ACC works really well at high speeds when I want to stay a safe distance away from the car ahead of me. Do I have to press a certain button to do a low speed follow?

Thanks in advance for any advice!
 
When you turn on the cruise control, it sets the distance (indicated by bars under the car icon.) The button on the right-side of the cruise-control cluster changes this: 4 to 3, 3 to 2, 2 to 1, 1 to 4, repeat.

I generally set mine to 2 bars, but in heavy traffic I switch to a single bar (each bar represents added distance to the car in front of you.)

I use this - the ACC w/LSF in stop-and-go traffic, and it seems to take care of me better than I would. I used it this morning on my way to work in heavy traffic. Once you get the hang of it, it is really nice. The first few times can be rather nerve-wracking as you try to figure out what the heck it is doing. It will actually bring you to a complete stop. You can resume, once traffic starts again by either press the RES button or tapping the accelerator pedal.

Start with the 4 bars to learn how it works. :-)
 
When the car comes to a full stop if you look at the LKAS indicator it will look the same for about a second then it will say "Stopped". If the car in front of you starts moving before it says "stopped" your car will start moving again on its own. But once it says stopped it won't start on its own, as David in TN said you then have to either press resume or tap the accelerator.

I find that there is what I guess you would call the "magic moment", hard to define how long that is, but it's the exact moment when most people expect you to start moving, some number of fractions of a second. In acting and comedy they refer to "beats". Clarity LKAS seems to start one beat too late. It starts moving at almost the exact moment that the person behind you starts to go around you.

A similar problem is that for the first second or two it accelerates excruciatingly slow, but after that the acceleration becomes more normal. Some of this depends on the mode. But the problem is people judge you by that first second of movement, they assume you are going to continue to accelerate that slow, and by the time a second or two later that the car starts accelerating normally it is too late they are already changing lanes.

A similar situation occurs when the car in front of you slows down just prior to changing lanes or exiting, LKAS slows down also as it should. But when the car in front of you is clear of your lane LKAS waits a couple of seconds before starting to accelerate back to speed, I guess to decide for sure that the car is gone or else trying to make sure that there are no other cars in front.

I have worked out a deal with my LKAS that I let it handle deceleration and braking, meanwhile I handle starting off and acceleration. Everything works out fine that way. Now if no one is behind me I will let it handle acceleration also, unless I get impatient like everyone else!
 
You can hit the accelerator without disengaging the adaptive cruise. In really heavy Boston traffic (terrible drivers), I’ll manually accelerate initially then let cruise take over.
 
Hi Everyone,
Thank you so much for your responses, this was incredibly helpful. I have yet to try these as (of course) I'm flying out this evening and wont be using the Clarity this weekend, but I think this may have addressed my concerns. Let me also say that I was aware of the 1-4 bars when it comes to ACC - I always keep it at 1 bar. I was NOT aware of the need to press Res or the accelerator once you come to a complete stop which may explain why I got worry. So if I understand correctly, if I am in rush hour I can turn this baby on, set the cruise control speed to 45 mph, and even if we're inching along at 10 mph the car should be able to do it on it's own? But, if it's stop and go traffic, every time my car comes to a complete stop (assuming I again turned on ACC and set the speed to 45 mph), I have to press Res or just tap (not hold) the accelerator and the car will move ahead and continue with cruise control?

Hopefully my explanation of your explanations made sense.

Jeez I love this forum. I spent so much time reading the posts here before I bought my Clarity and it has been so awesome.

Thanks again!
 
Omz2302 said:
So if I understand correctly, if I am in rush hour I can turn this baby on, set the cruise control speed to 45 mph, and even if we're inching along at 10 mph the car should be able to do it on it's own? But, if it's stop and go traffic, every time my car comes to a complete stop (assuming I again turned on ACC and set the speed to 45 mph), I have to press Res or just tap (not hold) the accelerator and the car will move ahead and continue with cruise control?
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Yes and yes.

Also, it might just be my imagination, but I've found that the ACC becomes much more aggressive if the Clarity is in Sport Mode. So if it's taking too long to bring you up to speed, try punching the sport button.
 
The Gadgeteer said:
Also ACC is more responsive in Sport mode but also more "jerky".
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Note that Fast Eddie B showed pretty conclusively that when manually driving (ACC not on), the car can accelerate to 60 mph in about the same time in any mode, by simply more aggressively operating the pedal across its range. Meaning that modes are mostly the pedal angle "re-mapped" for apparent sensitively to pedal motion. (There's the whole click to ICE in econ mode, but less important here.)

However, there is definitely a difference in how the car operates in ACC between Econ - Normal - and Sport modes. In Econ, ACC changes are smooth, sluggish, and slow (turtle mode). In Sport mode, for example if you are following someone doing 60 mph and have ACC set to 70 mph, if you pass into an open lane with no one immediately in front of you (or, someone past gap distance doing 70+ mph), with ACC on, foot off the pedal, the Clarity takes off to reach 70 mph (rabbit mode).

(Also, in econ mode, you can "help" it along by pressing on the go pedal.)
 
Thevenin said:
but I've found that the ACC becomes much more aggressive if the Clarity is in Sport Mode. So if it's taking too long to bring you up to speed, try punching the sport button.
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Yes, I and others can confirm your findings. And ECO mode is the opposite, it's a little more, umm, lazy.
 
You can also get improved acceleration in ACC by hitting the ECON button to temporarily enter “normal mode” (if your already in ECON) and then once more to go back to ECON.

It definitely helps, but I don’t know if it gives less acceleration than SPORT since I never use SPORT based on @insightman’s advice that it leads to a life of degeneration, debauchery, smoking, loose women, tattoos, biker gangs, and eventually crime and incarceration. I’ve kicked my gas habit (fossil fuel sober for 18 months!) and ain’t going back to the petrol slammer.
 
I found that Sport mode definitely handled ACC acceleration better, basically pretty close to how I preferred it, but it was way too aggressive in decelerating. Setting the distance to maximum didn't seem to help. I'm not saying it was unsafe it just wasn't how I prefer to drive. At least for the brief period of time that I tried it, maybe someone who has spent more time in all the modes can confirm, most comments on threads like this tend to be only about acceleration. Normal mode seems to work best for me, deceleration is just about how I like it. The acceleration is sluggish but I can easily manage that with the accelerator pedal. But overly aggressive following you can't do anything about other than shutting ACC off or using a different mode that is less aggressive.
 
Yes, that is also helpful because I almost always have it in eco mode (in contrast to the previous post, I don't necessarily only feel a change in the peddle but an actual increase in thrust from the engine, even without the ICE being activated). Will definitely try this in regular mode and sport to see the difference. I have found that I have a little bit of a lead foot and the heft by which the clarity pounces when I was in sport mode would cause me to have to slam on the breaks pretty quickly in stop and go traffic. I didn't want to wear out my breaks so I let Eco temper the power and the peddle for me. I understand the 0-60 is not super impressive on this car but the 0-40 definitely feels like it is.
 
I've found ACC low speed follow, with Sport, is great. We've been in freeway congestion which lasted over 10 miles and 30-60 minutes or so with ACC doing almost all of the work. In those conditions the car in front would rarely actually stop so the ACC just followed along. Then when the car in front actually did stop a simple tap on the Resume button would restart the Clarity in the follow mode.
 
I must be the only lucky one in the bunch because I don't need to hit Resume or tap the accelerator to get the car moving again if it stops completely. When in stop-and-go traffic, I'll switch to Sport mode and set the following distance to one bar. My car will start up on its own when the car in front has moved beyond whatever arbitrary distance one bar represents. Putting the car in Normal or Econ mode increases the time before the car starts moving again, but even then it will eventually start by itself.
 
Sometimes wrong. That may be desirable behavior but for safety reasons the car should not start up by itself. It should after just a couple of seconds but not after 5 seconds of being stopped.
 
jdonalds said:
Sometimes wrong. That may be desirable behavior but for safety reasons the car should not start up by itself. It should after just a couple of seconds but not after 5 seconds of being stopped.
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It only starts moving if the car in front of you that stopped you in the first place starts moving. I'm pretty sure doing anything like opening the door, even unfastening your seat belt would disable it, so other than the driver literally falling asleep during whatever number of seconds they are waiting for the car in front to start moving, it seems somewhat low risk.
 
rodeknyt: A segment of page 405 of the Clarity manual below. This is the programmed operation of the Clarity. If your car differs you should have it checked. There is a slight delay after the car in front stopped, and your car also stops, before the Stopped message appears. If the car in front starts up before Stopped appears the Clarity will resume by itself.

■ A vehicle detected ahead is within ACC with LSF range and slows to a stop Your vehicle also stops, automatically. The Stopped message appears on the driver information interface. When the vehicle ahead of you starts again, the vehicle icon on the driver information interface blinks. If you press the RES/+ or −/SET button, or depress the accelerator pedal, ACC with LSF operates again within the prior set speed.
 
jdonalds said:
■ A vehicle detected ahead is within ACC with LSF range and slows to a stop Your vehicle also stops, automatically. The Stopped message appears on the driver information interface. When the vehicle ahead of you starts again, the vehicle icon on the driver information interface blinks. If you press the RES/+ or −/SET button, or depress the accelerator pedal, ACC with LSF operates again within the prior set speed.
Click to expand...
I don't remember the blinking, probably because I have already started moving by the time it would blink. I will try waiting longer if no one is behind me and see how it works.
 
Since I don't sleep behind the wheel, and notwithstanding what the manual says, I like the behavior of my Clarity using ACC+LSF.
 
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