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My experience using ADAS on the 2023 Honda City during a test drive

29th March 2023, 13:13 by Dev Shah

Lane Assist is activated only post 72kmph and has a nice visual in the dashboard. One can feel the steering corrections.

BHPian arb recently shared this with other enthusiasts,

Had a day off and lack of chores made me have a look at new Verna, the Honda showroom happens to be a little ahead so checked New City as well. Nothing new to add on what has already been said about these cars, so I will close my observations as both have distinct character and will have its own set of suitors.

Now the reason for the post, while both the showroom folks attended fairly well what was interesting is in Honda showroom a gentleman from Honda India was around. And post my interaction and test ride with the sales person, he engaged in a casual discussion which turned a little detailed on Honda's ADAS offering. His words, paraphrased:

Radar+Camera based ADAS has been around for a while.
Camera based ADAS is an improvement of sorts on the traditional setup.
Honda's camera based ADAS is tuned for Indian conditions, and while there are limitations it is expected to work seamlessly.
Has three point action - Warning -> Nudge -> Act.
If at any stage human input is detected the system withdraws and lets the human control supersede.

Now the interesting part, while I have experienced ADAS enabled vehicles including the City, the ADAS features were barely noticed/ seen in action by me in my general driving course. In here he offered to demonstrate the ADAS in action, and had another ride with him in the driving seat. Except for Collision Mitigation thing, which is not advised by Honda or common sense to test in open roads I had first hand experience for all the remaining ADAS features City offers:

Slow speed follow.
Lane assist.
Blind spot monitor.
Lead vehicle departure.
Driver inattentive/ no continuous steering feedback.
Left Lane watch (Not exactly ADAS, but nice to have).

For all the above, ADAS functions in three steps Warn->Nudge->Act.

Slow speed follow:

Works as low as 22Kmph for ICE version and upto 0Kmph in HEV.
If the leading vehicle moves away, CITY maintains/attains the preset speed.
Can be controlled easily through dedicated steering buttons.
Visual representations in driver display is neat.

Lane assist:

Is activated only post 72kmph.
Neat visual in dashboard.
One can feel the steering corrections.
Does not work in unmarked, single lane highways with incoming traffic.
Prolong hands off the steering triggers notifications.

Blind spot monitor:

Comes as blinkers/ notifications when vehicle/anything gets too close to blind spots.
Missed to notice while driving and when on passenger seat, however my wife noticed blinking icons from the back seat. (Don't ask how, I didn't either).

Lead vehicle departure:

This is fairly easy to demonstrate, stay back at traffic signal and beep comes the notification.
Nifty but you may never need, fellow motorists honks are easily audible within the not so quiet cabin.
There is NO further action apart from notification in this case.

Driver inattentive/ no continuous steering feedback:

Prolong (Not minutes, lesser) hands off the steering triggers notifications.
Did not get to see what happens if no input is made, he course corrected post notification.