Every car I’ve driven with cruise control it won’t engage below ~30km/h. Is there a reason or is it just arbitrary?
In: 0
It’s arbitrary – but the theory is that you are not likely to be cruising at that speed. It is for highways, not for stop and start city streets.
If you have it set to 65, you don’t want to accidentally hit “resume” while you’re doing 15 in a school zone
Cruse control gained popularity in the 1970s. The devices at this time were mechanical systems. Maintaining a constant speed without “hunting”*, is a little tricky with a mechanical system. It was easier to make a mechanical cruse control if the speeds it needed to operate at were limited. The lower limit (around 20 to 25 mph in the USA) would have been selected to avoid problems like hunting.
With modern electronic speed controls, this is not an issue. The lower limit on cruise control speed is probably mostly just following the tradition from the 1970s. Also, I think most adaptive cruise controls (ones that adjust the speed based on the care ahead) do operate at speed well below 30 km/h, some down to zero.
* Hunting is the speed continuously cycling above and below the set speed and not settling down to the set speed.
* The lower limit, among other reasons, is for safety.
* If drivers could set the cruise control very low, people might try to do dangerous things like get out of the car etc.
* If you don’t believe me….just google videos about “ghost riding the whip”
Latest Answers