[Tanveer_2558]

I personally use cruise control a lot, Highways that i usually travel through allow me to use cruise control for a good period of time, Both on my MT XUV & my 530d, I am a big fan, I have also noticed using cruise control gives some sort of rest time for the driver offcourse that is when the road ahead has less traffic, The max i have used it has to be on the Baroda- Ahmedabad expressway, It has kms and kms of straight stretch at parts with almost no traffic & that's where cruise control comes in very very handy.

[whitesquall]

Highways + Cruise Control + Auto Gear Box is a pure delight!

[ashwin489]

Automatic transmission >>> Cruise Control

[Guite]

I don’t think it is practical in India. We have driven our Vento, with cruise control, on three road trips along our highways out of Delhi. Those trips were to Panipat (towards Chandigarh, for those who are not familiar), Jaipur and Agra. Only the Agra expressway offered proper opportunity for engaging cruise control.

[Dr.Naren]

I never got chance to use cruise control properly in my S-Cross 1.6. I remember using cruise control only to experience + button acceleration fun .

[roby_dk]

Last weekend went to Agra via Yamuna Express Way and can confirm that I was on cruise mode 90% of the time. I think we have only few highways which allow you to use this feature in India.

On a side note I didn't got any impressive mileage figures with cruise control mode. It was basically lesser than other outstation trips we had earlier. The overall fuel economy was 8.3 kmpl while I usually get 9-10 kmpl. Even in city I usually get above 8.5.

[jbpanda]

As rightly indicated by many on this thread, cruise control is seldom used on Indian roads. The most that I used was on my way from Gurgaon to Dalhousie and return. It is indeed a delight to use but open stretches where you can effectively use cruise control is very rare. As most of the time the car is used for office commute, usage is limited to outstation travel only and that too very rarely.

[sohu9]

I drive on many highways in Gujarat and Rajasthan where there are lot of open stretches with hardly any traffic. I miss cruise control on such drives. Apart from convenience, it would be a safety feature too as it is very tempting to speed up on those sparsely crowded stretches. Cruise control would bring in that discipline to not go above safe limits.

[Holyghost]

Originally Posted by Dr.Naren

I never got chance to use cruise control properly in my S-Cross 1.6. I remember using cruise control only to experience + button acceleration fun .

Originally Posted by Guite

I don’t think it is practical in India. We have driven our Vento, with cruise control, on three road trips along our highways out of Delhi. Those trips were to Panipat (towards Chandigarh, for those who are not familiar), Jaipur and Agra. Only the Agra expressway offered proper opportunity for engaging cruise control.

Originally Posted by jbpanda

As rightly indicated by many on this thread, cruise control is seldom used on Indian roads. . . . As most of the time the car is used for office commute, usage is limited to outstation travel only and that too very rarely.

I am surprised to see a lot of people with vehicles fitted with Cruise Controls finding it useless. Is it because these cars are MT or is it because of the wrong speed selection? Do note that you cannot set cruise speed above 100kmph on Indian highways.

I use cruise control a lot on highways. Atleast 70% of my highways drives will be on Cruise mode. I usually keep cruise speed between 80-90 and that works best for the highways down south. Also there is not much time difference while cruising at 80-90 and driving manually at speeds of 100-120. When you are in 100-120 range, you have to slow down more often for overtaking and avoiding obstacles, while doing 80-90 we slow down much lesser and get enough time to plan an overtaking move without slowing down.

[Santoshbhat]

Two of my recent cars have cruise control and I do find it quite useful. Before experiencing cruise control first hand I too was of the opinion that it is not that useful on Indian roads. But today we have a lot of four/six lane highways where cruise control can be used. Using cruise control gives your leg some good rest as maintaining a steady speed requires your right foot to maintain a particular angle and can cause fatigue.

One important thing while using cruise control is to not treat it as a kind of 'break' from the act of driving and concentrating and using that time for other distractions like fiddling with the infotainment console or looking at your phone screen or even bending down to pick up that water bottle. While using cruise control full 100% concentration on the road becomes all the more important because you are not coasting or decelerating as you would when you lift off throttle and the car is moving at a constant speed irrespective of happenings ahead. Whenever we spot something ahead our first instinct is to lift off throttle and put our foot on the brakes ready to brake if necessary. When you are on cruise control, your machine is blindly maintaining that steady pace. I find it scary to even pass slow trucks when I am on cruise control and prefer to deactivate CC, pass, and then reactivate CC.

[androdev]

I use cruise control a lot, not to cruise but as a speed limiting technique. If I don't use cruise control or speed limiter, I find myself steadily gaining speed without being aware of it. My commute has few stretches where traffic cops use speed interceptors and this technique makes it very stress free for me to drive under speed limit. Even when I am driving on highways, I find it a big hassle to keep looking at the speedo to keep it under control.

I think once you master how to set/cancel/resume/change-speed, you will find it useful even on busy roads like ours. One can't expect to set it and forget type of usage here. Sometimes it is entertaining to drive entirely using cruise control even in regular city traffic.

[SR-71]

Cruise control is very helpful in long drives, specially if you are doing one of those highways in the south late into the night. Gives my foot some rest. Infact its in my 'must have' list on my current hunt for a new car.

[Jeroen]

As I said earlier on in this thread I am a huge fan of cruise control, although admittedly all my driving these days is back in Europe.

During the last half year I have had three cars, (Jaguar, BMW, Ford) that all had some form of adaptive cruise control. Although there are some difference in implementation, the basic operation and use are similar.

You switch on the cruise control, set the speed. Next the car will maintain a speed appropiate distance to the car in front of you. On all three system I used you could vary that distance a bit.

All three cars I drove were automatics and in combination with this adaptive cruise control works extremely well.

Say I’m on a motorway with a maximum speed of 130 km/h. I will set the cruise control to 140 km/h. (The real speed as measured on my GPS is around 135 km/h and that is just around the threshold of the speed cameras.

Any car in front of me, my car will slow down and as soon as they move out of the way, my car will speed up again. All three cars can slow down to speeds of around 20-30 km/h before the cruise control disengages.

I find it extremely useful and very relaxing. The system works very well and very reliable. Snow can be a bit of a problem if it covers up the sensor. But you get an alarm and the system will automatically disengage with a very audible warning and red lights on the dash. Until you clean the sensor you won’t be able to use it. We are going through a bit of a wintery patch at the moment, so it happened twice to me already.

Setting the distance at which it follows the car in front of you is easy. The shorter the distance the more it uses the brakes, so to some extend it is a bit of what you feel comfortable with. One thing, even on the shortest distance there is a big enough cap for other cars to pull into it. So if you are looking for a driving style right on the other guy’s bumper, so nobody can cut in, this won’t do.

The distance, irrespective of the setting is also speed dependent. So the faster you drive the larger the distance, irrespective of the setting.

As I said earlier I use my cruise control almost always, not just on motorways. With this adaptive cruise control I have cruise control on even more!

Jeroen

[Amey Kulkarni]

I recently did Hampi to Pune in 10 odd hours in my Ertiga Diesel.

The roads post Hampi till Huballi is under construction and has a single lane running through-out with bad patches for about 150 odd Kms which sets an average speed of 50-60Kmph.

I was exhausted by the time we reached NH4. Felt the need of Cruise Control on NH4 badly. I was literally moving in my seat stretching often to cool off the fatigue.

Cheers,
Amey

[tilt]

Originally Posted by Holyghost

*SNIP* Do note that you cannot set cruise speed above 100kmph on Indian highways. *SNIP*

Are you sure about this? Do you mean this as a technical limitation, as in that it is not possible to set a cruise speed of over 100 kph; or do you mean this as a safety limitation, as in "one should not set cruise to over 100 kph"?

If you mean this as a technical limitation, you might be mistaken. I am able to set cruise at any speed I wish, and I have indeed done so on occasion.

Cheers