Thoughts on Lane Assist/keeping system

[lsherlockl]

I have seen some pro’s and cons of this system, being a complete noob to the FFH and high end features like this I thought I would share my experience or thoughts.

First off I “probably” wouldn’t have wanted this feature except I wanted blind spot warning, and figured it was an extra safety “helper”, not feature in my book because a safety feature is something that should like always be in effect or “always” work like BLIS or backup camera, the lane system does not. Now onto use and performance.

 

Just messing around with it on straightaways it is creapycool when it senses the lanes it will gently pull you back into you lane in general I would say it always will keep you out of collision distance if another car was in the adjacent lane. If sort of purposefully drifting the wheel will vibrate saying err hey your bad at driving do something about it or I will (note you can still over power it). Using the 3 blink lane change directional seems to disable it for a bit longer than directional duration which is good because I don’t snap between lanes.

 

As far as accuracy, I would say its okay I mean it picks up the lanes, but as its using a camera I would expect sharp turns etc to throw it off, similarly some worn back roads it loses the center or fog line. But overall its relatively impressive how good it does with not a lot.

 

Now to cons. It yells at you, sometimes it will pick up on like a passing lane for turn and freak out because you crossed a dashed white line… its okay I know what I’m doing. If it’s windy or you end up bouncing between lines for whatever reason you will get yelled at more (maybe rightly so). You CANT count on it to always work. EDIT: SNOW sometimes it can mistake snow for the fog line and yell at you for driving over it while you’re still in your lane (only time that it actually bugs me)

 

Overall I leave it on, I feel like to an extent it adds some additional safety when driving, now that may not always be active but at least 50% of the time I would say it is, and to me that’s definitely a positive in my book. Has it saved my life? No I hope it won’t have to, but there is a chance it can help avoid accidents and I don’t want my shiny FFH hurt :play:

 

 

Also one interesting thing I noticed when on like a sloping right curve I usually stick close to the inside and the indicator goes yellow I can feel the car like controlling the wheel a bit it feel like I'm magnet-ed to the fog line… has anyone else experienced this?

[nv rick]

Just curious. What is a "fog line"?

[murphy]

Just curious. What is a "fog line"?

The solid white line at the right edge of the road.

[Easy Rider]

In general, I don't like it and it stays off most of the time.

I think that it might get you into more trouble than without it.

 

So under what conditions is it useful ??

Driver is dozing off ?

Driver is distracted with something else for more than a couple of seconds ?

 

Regardless, it is the CAUSE of the drift that should be "fixed" and not rely on a crutch to keep you on the road.

[lsherlockl]

In general, I don't like it and it stays off most of the time.

I think that it might get you into more trouble than without it.

 

So under what conditions is it useful ??

Driver is dozing off ?

Driver is distracted with something else for more than a couple of seconds ?

 

Regardless, it is the CAUSE of the drift that should be "fixed" and not rely on a crutch to keep you on the road.

 

I would say its useful under driver distractions, lets face it no one is ever 100% focused could be a road side, navigation, listening to tunes, a billboard, scenery, passengers, MFT. It doesn't really matter what it is the point is it happens and is an inevitability that it will happen to the best of us so why not try and help protect against it?

 

Couldn't agree more point is is you drive how you should it should never be used and therefore will never bug you so why not leave it on. But it is there nonetheless as a additional backup or safety albeit if it doesn't always see the road all the time. i don't really see that as a crutch, how can something that isn't fail-safe a crutch?

 

yeah limited uses, but from where i see it there really only positives (albiet not huge ones), so why run without it?

[kbailey990]

Good point about that it isn't needed if you're a careful driver, but I want all the backup help that technology can give me. ?

 

I have lane keeping, and I leave it on all the time. It took a little getting used to at first because it wants to center you in your lane, but you can easily override it. LCA has stopped my tendency to hug the side of the road too closely, and it has warned me a few times of "lane drifting" in the last two years. Even with shortcomings I rate it a net positive.

[Cobra348]

... Now to cons. It yells at you, sometimes it will pick up on like a passing lane for turn and freak out because you crossed a dashed white line… its okay I know what I’m doing. If it’s windy or you end up bouncing between lines for whatever reason you will get yelled at more (maybe rightly so). You CANT count on it to always work. EDIT: SNOW sometimes it can mistake snow for the fog line and yell at you for driving over it while you’re still in your lane (only time that it actually bugs me) ...

My brother has lane keep and he tells me that using turn signals when changing lanes will prevent lane keep from "yelling at you". My FFH will just not have this particular option on it ... potential problem avoided.

[corncobs]

My brother has lane keep and he tells me that using turn signals when changing lanes will prevent lane keep from "yelling at you". My FFH will just not have this particular option on it ... potential problem avoided.

We should all use turn signals regardless of lane keeping technology or not. There's a good reason why every car has them even if it doesn't look like it driving around out there.

[nv rick]

The solid white line at the right edge of the road.

Thanks. Never heard it called that.

[Easy Rider]

 

Couldn't agree more point is is you drive how you should it should never be used and therefore will never bug you so why not leave it on.

 

Say what ?? :)

 

In my case, it DOES bother me, especially going around some curves.

"It" seems to want to run a different track through the corner than I do.......and I find that MOST disconcerting.

[acdii]

I use it whenever I am on the Interstate. It helps when its a bit windy as you can drift, or a slight distraction like say an 8 YO who wont shut up, or other little things. Mine never yells at me because I turned off those features. It will only bong if I take my hands off the wheel for any length of time. My MKT can stay straight for so long that it will think my hands aren't on the wheel when they are, and pop up an alert on the dash.

 

I never use it when there is snow or rain though as the lines can disappear and disable the system. What I like about it is that is will nudge you over, unlike other manufactures that just alert.

[Barsoom]

Interestingly, I used to use it all the time before moving to Houston. Now, many of the roads here are made with white concrete instead of black asphalt. Lane Keeper cannot see the lane lines or dots due to the lack of contrast on the light surface. Most of the time, the lane lights are out unless I drive over a dark patch of road.

[acdii]

The roads by me dont have any lines, so it is useless for daily driving.

[hybridbear]

Also one interesting thing I noticed when on like a sloping right curve I usually stick close to the inside and the indicator goes yellow I can feel the car like controlling the wheel a bit it feel like I'm magnet-ed to the fog line… has anyone else experienced this?

Yes, this is the most annoying part of the system to me, particularly in winter when roads can be snowy/icy and I'm trying to follow the least slippery track on the road. I frequently turn the system off when approaching a curve where this may happen.

 

Interestingly, I used to use it all the time before moving to Houston. Now, many of the roads here are made with white concrete instead of black asphalt. Lane Keeper cannot see the lane lines or dots due to the lack of contrast on the light surface. Most of the time, the lane lights are out unless I drive over a dark patch of road.

Does it pick them up at night? We have stretches in MN with the same new white concrete and the car can't pick up the lanes in daylight. I believe it will pick them up at night though. It's hard even for our eyes to find the lines in sunlight on those roads. Some roads have a black box painted first on the road with the white strip inside the box to make it easier to see the lines with your eyes, those black boxes don't help the car though...

 

What I like about it is that is will nudge you over, unlike other manufactures that just alert.

I agree!! Kudos to Ford for having one of the most advanced systems on the market when the FFH first came out in late 2012.

[tr7driver]

Sometimes I'll be trying to avoid pot holes and end up fighting with it.

[nv rick]

Say what ?? :)

 

In my case, it DOES bother me, especially going around some curves.

"It" seems to want to run a different track through the corner than I do.......and I find that MOST disconcerting.

I'm pretty sure that's why you can turn it off.

[hermans]

Ford even recommends not using it when driving on curvy roads.

[djminfll]

I like it, but I don't love it. I hate to admit it, but occasionally, I get distracted while driving, and the Lane Assist keeps me in place. And this part, I love!

What I don't care for is when it takes over what I intend to do. For example, there is debris in the roadway ahead, and I want to swerve around it. If I don't put on my turn signal, the system fights me making this maneuver. And, as was mentioned previously, sometimes driving around a curve confuses the system and makes it think I am going to leave the roadway, causing the Emergency lights on the dash to flash and sound.

It is similar to using Adaptive Cruise Control - if a car is turning ahead of me, it brakes too hard, but overall, I think it is safer than driving without it. I generally leave the Lane Keeping system on about 75% of the time (Adaptive Cruise Control I use about 90% of the time, even on local streets).

[Waldo]

And, as was mentioned previously, sometimes driving around a curve confuses the system and makes it think I am going to leave the roadway, causing the Emergency lights on the dash to flash and sound.

 

You're mixing up two different systems, the lights and sound come from the adaptive cruise system (using input from the radar module, not the camera from the lane keeping system). Different inputs, different processors that don't talk to each other,

[Barsoom]

Does it pick them up at night? We have stretches in MN with the same new white concrete and the car can't pick up the lanes in daylight. I believe it will pick them up at night though. It's hard even for our eyes to find the lines in sunlight on those roads. Some roads have a black box painted first on the road with the white strip inside the box to make it easier to see the lines with your eyes, those black boxes don't help the car though...

Not that I have noticed where I live.

[hybridbear]

We used LKA lots on our recent road trip. It was really nice to let the car do the work on long straight stretches of road. Driving through the mountains we mostly kept it turned off because it would fight against us too much on the curvy mountain roads.

 

The system seems to work best at night in the light of the headlights. When the sun is low in the sky the system can struggle to see the lines even on dark pavement. In darkness the system picks up the markings even on the white concrete with white stripes.

[lsherlockl]

We used LKA lots on our recent road trip. It was really nice to let the car do the work on long straight stretches of road. Driving through the mountains we mostly kept it turned off because it would fight against us too much on the curvy mountain roads.

 

The system seems to work best at night in the light of the headlights. When the sun is low in the sky the system can struggle to see the lines even on dark pavement. In darkness the system picks up the markings even on the white concrete with white stripes.

 

I notice that too. on my daily drive its almost always dark on the return trip and i get it on ~100% but the same thing in the morning when its light out i get it on ~75%. Then again we do have pretty nice roads in WI or at least the ones I drive on. In any case i feel like night time more people get inattentive so i would rather have it work more so then.

[Iwejun]

I had a 700 mile to and from ride yesterday out to Lubbock, I was bored so I had the assist on and with hands hovering over the wheel I let it "drive" between the lines. FYI, there was no traffic on this stretch so it would gently bump the center line and then steer back and gently drift over to the right and then bump that line and steer me back left. Weird Google car feeling, when all of a sudden it chimed and told me to keep ahold of the steering wheel. LOL, it also out of the blue chimes and tells me I need a break. I have been known to do 1200 mi in 20 hr. so I just chuckle.

[billford]

I keep my lane assist set to "alert only"

 

These cars are cool. The more I drive it, the more I like it.

[CCalvinN]

I got my car back in early February of 2015. Lane Assist was one of the features I wanted mainly because it was ‘new’. I had never owned a car with a feature anything like this and it sounded interesting. During those first few weeks of ownership I played around with it just as I did all the other new features (yes, I let the car bounce between the lines in a lane a couple times!). I really liked how it would simply ‘nudge’ the car back into its lane, but never felt that it was going to be something I’d use all the time.

 

Eventually it became one of the many background technological ‘things’ that the car had and I left on all the time. Only rarely would it actually be put into use and most of those times were when it was windy out.

 

I never gave it much thought… until last week. Last week for some reason the car turned the system off. I haven’t played with the Lane Assist for almost five months now and forgot that it COULD be turned off. I only noticed it was off because I didn’t see the lane lines on the left side of the dash. When I tried to remember how to turn the Lane Assist back on, I couldn’t figure it out. I looked in both the dash menus and the MyFord Touch menus, but couldn’t find the setting. Obviously I couldn’t find any ‘on/off’ switch there and finished my drive without it. The next day I was hoping it would have just turned back on, but no beans… it was still off. So I drove to and from work without its assistance. Only when I got home and did a quick google search did I find the button on the end of the turn signal stalk. It came back on without issue and has worked fine since.

 

For that trip and a half though it wasn’t there. And you know what? I really missed it!

 

I didn’t realize just how often in my drive that I would feel that little ‘nudge’ to get me centered in my lane. I say centered as I don’t feel that I’m ever close enough to wandering out of my lane, but I do tend to ‘hug’ the fog line. Going around curves is where I feel it most often, and missed it the most when it was gone. The system is obviously not perfect. Yes, it can miss the lines even on the best of roads. Yes, it can sometimes see a line where one doesn’t exist (mainly when one lane is splitting into two or two lanes are merging into one). But even when it nudges and vibrates the wheel I never feel that I have to ‘fight’ it… I just have to use slightly more effort. I’m never afraid the system will push me into danger or prevent me from moving out of danger. With those shortcomings I’ll never fully rely on the system. Ultimately I’m still driving my car and am in control, but it’s a sweet comfort when it is on and I was acutely aware when it wasn’t on at all for a day and a half.

 

BTW, my brother purchased a new Chevy Traverse last month. He was excited that it came with Chevy’s Lane Departure Warning system. When he told the salesman about my Fusion’s Lane ASSIST (mentioning that it would nudge you back into the lane), the salesman told him that no car does that. HA! I love that even with Chevy’s system on his Traverse, my brother is still jealous of mine! And after driving around in the Traverse, I’m reminded how much I LOVE that my Lane system doesn’t beep at me.

 

These modern cars have so many beeps that it’s becoming annoying. If Ford’s system beeped, I’d turn it off and leave it that way. The wheel’s vibration (feeling like you are running over rumble strips) is the perfect indicator of what exactly is happening.