[shamanth]

I have Used ADAS extensively in Italian highways(AutoStrada). Where driving style is almost similar to Indian highways, like, bumper to bumper driving Zig-Zag, minus and wrong side drivers or tractors or lorries in speed lanes..

Have driven rentals Audi Q3 in 2019 mostly Italy and T-Cross this September, both having similar ADAS feature.

Found it almost flawless for almost 4000 kms i drove in Italy, Slovenia, Germany and Austria, which i drove in T-Cross 1.5 TSI same as Tiagun here .

Only few minor flaws i found was Sudden braking when a slow car suddenly get in the way when using ACC. Also when in Curve it picks up adjecent lane cars and slow down. Also rapid acceleration when the way gets cleared using ACC.

Good thing in T-Cross ACC was i could override acceleration and Braking with manual steps without getting ACC switched off. 1st thing I did after i can to India was to check if VW Tiagun had same ADAS as TCross, which they don't have.

I am absolutely convinced my next car would be with ADAS feature, but right now have limited option as Astor/XUV700 which i am not a fan of.

We just need to be have a eye on sudden braking and sudden acceleration when using ADAS, else it's absolutely comfortable to drive in current Indian Highways..

[StopUnderrides]

I have an XUV 700 AX7L with Adas . In 1 year of driving in Bangalore it has never surprised me.
1)I leave a crash avoidance space of 2 or 3 seconds always
2) If AEB brakes due to a 2 wheeler or car cutting in when I think it should not brake, I override it by pressing the accelerator. It works quite well

The issue is that most people set AEB to brake late-which gives them very little time to override it and the car also has to brake harder. My suggestion is to set it to “early” mode so that the car brakes early and gives you time to react.

[Lobogris]

I absolutely love ADAS and would not want to have a vehicle without it. It depends on a person’s driving style. Personally, I have only had the emergency braking kick in briefly just once as I always drive cautiously and keep a prudent distance from the vehicle in the front. Even when I have tried to test it (with caution), I have never been able to activate it as I can never risk getting too dangerously close to the vehicle in the front. However when I have traveled with friends in their vehicles, they generally drive much more aggressively and I see warnings come quite frequently. In this instance, the fault lies with the driver who rear ended and not with the ADAS system.

[skarthiksr]

Let me share my experience of traveling as a co-passenger in Honda city e-hev. I asked the Honda person to drive the car in a moderate to heavy traffic road and closely watched the way ADAS behaves. It was a drive of around 3-4 kms and I observed that the CMBS(Honda's term for automatic braking) alerted a possible collision(beeping) multiple times during the drive. Brakes were not applied anytime. Here are the scenarios:

1. The driver was accelerating the car and there was an auto which was driving slowly on the left side and was overlapping the car. It beeped right before the driver maneuvered to the right. The same scenario happened again after sometime but this time it was a pedestrian scenario of a lady walking with her daughter on the road. Once the brake pedal is pressed, the alert stopped.
2. It was an intersection and suddenly out of nowhere a food delivery bike jumped across and was driving in opposite direction towards us and the vehicle alerted.
3. There was a huge pile of traffic on the opposite lane and suddenly one biker waiting in the traffic decided to abandon his wait and took a turn to enter our lane and came right in front of us.
4. A curvy road and the vehicle beeped on a walking pedestrian. This was an incorrect alert as the vehicle came in straight lines with an object on a turn which Honda calls out in the manual as a possible incorrect CMS behaviour.

So, ADAS is intrusive - yes. Otherwise I wouldn't have heard the system working multiple times over a limited distance. But, all the scenarios which I saw were genuine(except last) and in case the brakes were not applied on time, the braking system would have definitely stepped in after the beeps and prevented collision. In City e-hev, as far as I know, it is not possible to change the CMBS to "warning only". It is just on or off and that's it. So, I can say that it didn't enter braking stage in all the instances I had mentioned. At the end of the drive, I checked the console and the CMBS setting was in normal factory default setting only.

So, this is what the conclusion I had. You should be clearly aware that you are driving an ADAS enabled car and hence shouldn't attempt last minute maneuvers like that of a regular car. Maintain safe distance with the vehicle/pedestrian ahead of you. And for city drives, the braking distance settings can be changed as per your needs. The system gets tricky only when someone cuts in to your lane inbetween the "safe distance" you are maintaining putting you into trouble.

[throttleflick]

Do you'll think ADAS makes sense if it is standard on all the cars on Indian roads rather than a handful of them? The system detects an obstacle in the first car should automatically trigger braking, while the cars following the first car would see that as a trigger/obstacle and start braking as well.

How safe is it to test this on a closed circuit where the line up consists of all the ADAS equipped and enabled cars and a scenario is simulated? Should give us a comprehensive data about the implementation by every manufacturer, the braking intensity, the ability to tweak the ADAS to suit our conditions/drivers preference and so on.

[Tanmay007]

Lots of biased opinions in here, majority of opinions against ADAS (it's useless/not meant for India/etc) are from people who either never owned a vehicle with ADAS or never gave it a real chance.

I've been diving the XUV700 in crazy Mumbai traffic for more than 6 months now, I have driven it and used ACC+AEB under all scenarios imaginable (bikes cutting in, people jumping to cross, dogs, heavy rains) and the system works great!

Every owner will tell you there is a learning curve to it, learning curve in the sense you need some time to anticipate what the car will do under certain scenarios. Once you start anticipating, the car won't give you unpleasant surprises.

A common example is with ACC on, the car will try to maintain a safe-er distance from the car in front as compared to when you normally drive. Because of this other cars start cutting in, the car will keep braking when that happens. This was the single most annoying thing in the beginning. I have since changed the setting to keep ACC distance to 1 bar (or 1-second time to collision). It was scary at first but now I've begun to trust the system enough to do this. ACC is now at least 80% less annoying and I have actually started using it under even more conditions.

Coming back to the OP's accident, the car seems to have applied 100% braking, suddenly. This only happens when the system thinks a crash is imminent. Without seeing any dashcam footage or any data it's impossible to tell why the car decided to do so. I personally tend to believe there's a chance the car would've side swiped if AEB was off.

Lastly, if you really want you can always disable AEB and keep it to warning-only, while still continuing to enjoy other ADAS benefits such as ACC. ADAS is meant to assist in your comfort and safety, if you know it's limitations you'll know when to use it and when not to.

I really wish people move on from the ridiculous notion that ADAS is not meant for India. It most definitely is. I bet the market will prove this as well when every single car in the 30L segment starts coming with it in the next couple of years.

[impala]

My experience with Automatic Emergency Breaking and ADAS has been quite positive during my almost 8K km run with my XUV700 AX7. It had warned a collision incorrectly exactly twice and never applied breaks incorrectly. It has also applied brakes correctly before I could realise the vehicle ahead of me abruptly braked. Only annoyance had been with lane keep assist when it tries to put the car back in lane while overtaking; something I have learned to react intuitively or avoid using lane change signals. Recently, I had very enjoyable rides assisted by ADAS through the new highways between Mudanur and Jammalamadugu, and between Kadapa and Rayachoti.

AEB becomes dangerous when one does not keep safe distance from the preceding vehicle. In XUV700, you can adjust how early AEB kicks-in based on your driving style. It's not just the Indian highways but the Indian driving style too that affects the usability of ADAS.

[Chhanda Das]

Thankfully, never faced any ADAS issue in my 1986 Ambassador which was driven by myself or my first-generation Creta which is always driven by my son Arka Das. In other words, my old Creta always has "A Das" or a "Das" in it

On a serious note, the ADAS system needs its proximity sensors to be tweaked for super close proximity driving in congested Indian conditions. The calibration of those sensors as per the standards of more developed countries simply would not work in India. If the calibration of the sensors cannot be tweaked then a user-settable graded system (like the levels of regenerative braking in EVs) can be introduced for proximity sensing. If that does not work either then a user settable ON/OFF option would be the easiest solution

[rajshenoy]

Not sure how practical ADAS is on our driving conditions but I do know that auto makers are using software to differentiate their product offering and justify steep price hike.

Few years ago, they had to justify the premium price tag with 6 airbags and a sunroof but both are becoming mainstream now so software is becoming the differentiator.

Call me old school but I wish for every auto maker to keep all these gizmos as optional Luxury and offer us a car sans all these gadgets. Question is, are they ready to offer you a top end car for 2 lakhs less ?

[Beingtraveler]

ADAS is surely a boon as it prevents passengers first, algorithm deciding on passengers safety first. However, specially in city, people driving with their cellphones in hands using WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook and watching their favourite videos on YouTube on their Android head units are often distracted and will surely not be able to react on time if the ADAS car in front applies sudden brakes.

And we often see some morons driving so close trying to overtake every car, scooter, bike, rickshaw and pedestrians continuously honking, tailgating and thinking of themselves as Pro. ADAS will protect you to some extent, but maybe not always your car being rear ended. If this indeed becomes a standard and people drive responsibly, it's going to be one of the best technologies out there in India.

[driver52001]

Things aren't looking good if we keep on depending on so-called bells and whistles and equipped to the gills etc. Cars keep getting faster and faster. Highways are becoming wider. And disposable income has increased. There are many first-time drivers who bought crossovers and SUVs. Don't want to generalise, but there's some facts to it that people with no aptitude for driving buy big cars loaded with such electronics without actually doing the act of driving. In our country, where it's sab chalta hai attitude, throw in ADAS in the mix and we are left with people who only know how to drive marginally and leave everything to chance. I have colleagues who just learnt driving a month ago and bought a new big car. Their driving is really bad. Multiply this by some 9999. I believe those who have been driving since their youth are the best drivers who deserve, if at all they want, stuff like ADAS. Otherwise a good solid car with no such automation is for me. Don't trust such technology. Maybe long in the future it might make sense. But still, India is India. That remains to be seen if the ways change.

[anti21]

ADAS is a useful feature that is and will definitely be saving lives. But as others have mentioned, it is a driver assistance system and not driver replacement system. The driver is still expected to make decisions with system assisting them (or mitigating in life threatening situations). You need to learn how it operates before you start using it in heavy traffic. Anything used incorrectly has a chance to not work as expected.

As others have already pointed out, it works well in Indian heavy traffic environment if you know how it works. With time you learn where it will not work well and you generally take over in that situation and resume it when it is over.

Someone getting a new car should first try it out in Warning mode to learn how it functions. AEB always works in a sequence of steps (even in Hyundai). First it will give you collision warning, then it will do collision warning with Brake Support and then finally when the car realizes that collision is imminent, it applies collision mitigation. In Indian conditions, where everyone likes to closely follow each other, there is a chance that you will be rear ended when this is applied since its function is to prevent collision with car in front of you.

With Adaptive Cruise Control, it gradually applies brakes based on the speed of the car in front of it. You can set the distance you want between the cars.

In both the scenarios, you can set the sensitivity. By default, in MG Astor, it comes with Medium sensitivity which works well both in City and Highway. For city, you should use Medium or low sensitivity. I think that would also be the case in other cars.

So when trying ADAS, a user first needs to learn about the systems, get familiar with them on where they work and where they don't and then slowly start using it. They also need to be aware sensitivity required in different type of traffic.

[Guna]

I was taken aback by the emergency braking in action on my Tiguan Allspace couple of times. Luckily nobody was trailing me and it didn't end up in rear collision.
Once it was triggered by someone trying to cross the road, standing on the divider. Probably the gentleman crossed the other half of the road before he stopped to let my car pass, but the car obviously doesn't have the intelligence to anticipate whether the person would stop in time or would continue to cross the other half of the road (and come on the direct path of the car).

[wocanak]

Originally Posted by psispace

One scenario : Imagine you are driving at 80, in the second lane, and following another car at the same speed. A car or bus in the third (fast) lane carelessly straddles the second and third lane while it overtakes you, your car will brake to slow down. It will then take a few seconds before it decides everything is ok and accelerates back to that speed. Now imagine this happening every few minutes. It gets' uncomfortable after a while. I tried mitigating this by manually in such scenarios, by reducing the speed via the steering ACC controls and then setting it back up. But I found it still too much of a hassle.

Another scenario: You are travelling at 80, you approach another vehicle travelling at 60 and it slows down. You indicate to the fast lane, once in that lane, your car starts accelerating back to 80, but it catches another car or bike ahead on its' radar thats' travelling on the same lane slower, it will then stop accelerating. If the car ahead so much as slightly veers towards the fast lane, it will stop accelerating. In this scenario, we would use our judgement and adjust our speeds slightly to allow for error and then overtake.

Another scenario: If there is a bike ahead riding on the lane marker, the ACC perceives it to be riding in the lane, you will have to switch to the high speed lane to continue at that speed or manually override the system by pressing the accelerator slightly.

Another scenario : Very rarely will you see straight roads in Kerala. Especially where I live now, the roads are all winding and change their elevation rapidly. Its' dangerous using ACC on these roads. Imagine that at a set speed of 60 you are following a car at 40. At the crest of a curve on the road, the car ahead goes out of range of the radar. It perceives the road ahead to be clear and rapidly accelerates to 60 hurtling you towards the outer edge of the curve. This catches you off guard and you are forced to press the brake, which de-activates the system.
This may be partially mitigated in newer cars with lane change assist that can read lane markers.

Having to do all these, takes away the relaxation you expect to get from ACC. To the contrary, I find myself being more vigilant than normal while using it.

The only time I enjoyed ACC was outside KL on the national highways of TN. In KL, I use it only for a few minutes to relieve my right foot for a while.
...

Thanks for the very thought out reply, really useful. The last scenario is especially scary, looks like ACC only slightly expands the usable conditions over basic CC in India.

[deepak_bajaj]

ADAS is present in my XC60 also but have never came across such incident of sudden automatic braking while driving in NCR even with stop and go traffic. Although, the system does warn (audible and visual indication) about collision but applies break somewhat delayed when collision in unavoidable. So never faced this issue.

However, it is exact opposite while reversing. While reversing, the cross traffic monitoring system is way too sensitive and slams the breaks which jolts and shock you at the same time. You did not expect the system to intervene as there was plenty of space. I'm getting used to it while reversing and the incidents have reduced but still that sudden unexpected breaking is shocking when you least expect it.

Also, ADAS misses out cross lane traffic too often so you have to be careful while putting it on adaptive cruise control. I always keep my foot near the break in case the system misses it.

In XC60, you can only turn off lane assistance and all others system remain active. However, I have read that automatic breaking works only at certain speed limit. I don't know if it true or not.

Another good feature of XC60 (may be present in other cars also) is that Adaptive Cruise Control does not allow driver to take off his / her hands off the steering wheel for more than a minute (unlike XUV700 videos where the car keeps on driving). The system warns you and if you do not hold the steering, it starts to apply breaks and brings the car to complete stop. I feel this is much nicer than letting the car drive by itself.