What is the cruise control of a car for and how to use it

Do you already know how to use the cruising speed of a car? Learn how to use it and know all the advantages of cruise control in detail.

How to use cruise control in a car

There is no doubt that the automotive sector is undergoing a great evolution: there are more and more driving assistance systems that really make the task of drivers much easier. And it is that cars have evolved a lot in recent years in this area. One of the most used is the automatic cruise control , also known as cruise control or cruise control .

What is cruise control in a car

Cruise control is a system that causes a vehicle to accelerate or brake in a way that maintains a speed set by the user. This system helps us rest our right ankle, especially during travel.

For this reason, the speed regulator is very comfortable, but it can also free us from more than one speeding fine due to absent-mindedness. Just select a speed within the limits of the law and not worry. But it is not always convenient to use it (later we will delve into it).

Cruise control is a system that, although it helps us a lot, has a very basic operating principle. When we activate it and select a speed, the electronics simply manage the accelerator to maintain that speed .

When we face a slope and it is detected that the vehicle loses speed, the control increases the load to stabilize again at the one we had preselected.

How to disable cruise control

Having said all this, we will explain how to deactivate this intelligent speed regulator. To do this we just have to press the button on the steering wheel that deactivates said function. Naturally, it is also automatically deactivated by simply touching the brake pedal and, on vehicles with a manual gearbox, by depressing the clutch . If for any circumstance of the circulation we find ourselves in the need to have to accelerate more, we simply press the accelerator again.

When to use cruise control and when not to

The ideal is to activate the cruise control on fast roads (motorways and dual carriageways) in low traffic situations . That is when we can get the most out of cruise control, whether it is adaptive or not, because we can really relax our right foot since we will not have to be deactivating it and constantly varying the preset speed.

As we mentioned before, we will avoid speeding tickets for absent-mindedness. We must also take into account that, by maintaining a stable speed, logic tells us that we can save fuel, because if we drive using the accelerator in a traditional way, we will vary the speed more unintentionally.

Although the maximum limit of our highways is 120 km/h, it may be that "one day we go a little faster" than we should, or that we travel to Germany and circulate on some section of the Autobahn without a speed limit. 

Better to use it only at speeds "within normal" , because if we go very fast we cover many more meters from when we want to deactivate it until we do it and it may not be very safe.

Therefore, we should not use this driving aid when logic dictates. When driving around town we are constantly accelerating, changing gears, braking, changing from one lane to another, using the indicators, looking in the mirrors... That is, we drive with changes of pace and much more work than on the open road. 

Therefore, in these situations it is better to forget about cruise control. Moreover, many models do not allow it to be activated below 50 km/h.

If we drive on two-way roads or expressways with a lot of traffic , it is not recommended to use cruise control either. Changes of pace are frequent, as well as overtaking and lane changes, so we will have greater control and more agility if we dispense with its use in these traffic conditions.

On twisty roads, such as those found on mountain passes, we are constantly accelerating and braking, so on these types of roads it makes no sense to activate the automatic cruise control. In addition, on these roads, visibility is reduced due to the abundance of curves, so we could find an obstacle with little room for reaction.