Someone wrote me:
But the highway patrolman told her that if the cruise control is on
>when your car begins to hydro-plane and your tires lose contact with
>the pavement, your car will accelerate to a higher rate of speed
>making you take off like an airplane. She told the patrolman that was
>exactly what had occurred.
It seems to me that the cruise control doesn't know how fast you are going but it does know how fast the drive wheels are spinning and if you lose traction, they will start to spin faster, and the cruise will let off the accelerator umtil the tires slow down.
With almost no traction, as in hydroplaning, (which the cruise control will see as equivalent to going down a steep hill, where gravity cancels out drag) won't the engine speed have to drop dramatically, perhaps all the way to idling? And it won't go up again until the car regains traction.
The patrolman said this warning should be listed, on the driver's
>seat sun-visor - NEVER USE THE CRUISE CONTROL WHEN THE PAVEMENT IS >WET OR ICY,
I will admit, that iirc, I don't use cruise on wet or icy pavement, but that is because I want full control of the car and think I can take my foot off the accelerator quicker than the cruise (which might not even be true. Which do you think is faster in decelerating, me or the cruise?), but I still don't think the cruise will make the car accelerate.
along with the airbag warning. We tell our teenagers to
>set the cruise control and drive a safe speed - but we don't tell
>them to use the cruise control only when the pavement is dry.
>The only person the accident victim found, who knew this (besides the
>patrolman), was a man who had had a similar accident, totaled his car
>and sustained severe injuries.
>If you send this to 15 people and only one of them doesn't know about
>this, then it was all worth it. You might have saved a life.
>NOTE: Some vehicles (like the Toyota Sienna Limited XLE) will not
Anyone know anything about this car. The post** seems like a hoax, but hoax writers often put in stuff like this to make it sound real.
**Well, actually the email I got had a lot of stuff in it, totally unrelated, nor related to cars or safety. And from a good guy who got it from a good guy, from a very good guy. I think someone was suckered.
allow you to set the cruise control when the windshield wipers are >on.
I found one page that says the car has wiper warmers, but didn't say anything about wipers and cruise. (although it would be harder to notice)