LONG-TERM FLEET
The touchy co-existence of humans and machine
Mark Smyth looks at some of the safety and autonomous tech in our long-term Ford Kuga
Everyone’s talking about autonomous technology when it comes to cars. There are those who reckon we can do away with the human driver tomorrow and those who say no machine can interpret situations in the way a human can. There are a whole lot of different opinions in between, of course, as well as different levels of autonomous driving. Many people do not realise they already have some autonomous capability in their car. Our long-term Ford Kuga is an example of that with its adaptive cruise control. Set the speed and distance to the car in front and the car will maintain speed and distance, slowing when it needs to and accelerating when there is an opportunity to do so. Adaptive or radar cruise control has been around for years. When we had an Audi A4 Avant with the technology in its early years it would get so nervous of the mountains on the N1 driving into the Western Cape that eventually it would just switch off and let the human do it. The technology is better now. It is also ti...
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