Snow and adaptive cruise control dont mix

[Louie]

Hi Guys

Just cruising along today on a long straight road A16 with light snow falling when the car suddenly lurched and an announcement came on the speedo screen namely  "Your radar adaptive cruise control has failed temporarily please consult your manual"  my immediate reaction was  "i dont think so"  plus other expletives etc. Anyway after i had calmed down i put on my thinking hat and discovered that after i had pulled up on my drive i noticed the front of the car i.e. headlight, grille and bumpers were smothered  completely in this weird white stuff but not the bonnet or windscreen. I can only surmise that would explain the message and malfunction . I decide not to ring the dealer and make a complete fool of myself by berating him as the car had only been for a service about two weeks ago. Has any one else experienced this phenomenon.

[Ian.S]

Perfectly normal. They snow build up disrupts the radar signal. All cars do the same. 

[Timh21]

Wrong type of snow, the railways get the same issue's😀

[AndrueC]

It sounds like it was snow joke for you at the time.

🙂

[Louie]

Hi Guys

I have driven ACC vehicles for a while now in all manner of weathers and never encountered a situation where a vehicle cruising steadily at 45 ish in snowy ice covered road conditions suddenly lurches noticeably as if someone has applied the brakes followed by a silly message. It might as well have said "sorry I am about to kill your ACC and you might loose control of your vehicle in current icy road conditions do you want me to call emergency services".

Sorry Toyota you could have done better and you should stay behind class in detention and write out one hundred times on a blackboard " i shall not frighten vehicle owners silly by suddenly disengaging the ACC in inclement weather i should give the owner the option to do so". This would be in a simple yes/no option displayed as a voice message or on the instrument panel, failing that a simple warning message before deactivating ACC would suffice and not after the event .

[Ian.S]

I have had several vehicles, mainly VW group, that are just the same. Depending upon where on the front the radar is located they can get obstructed by snow or leaves etc.  Skoda had to move their’s from below the bumper to the centre of the grill.  The build up obstructs the radar signal, the car then temporarily switches the system off. This is clearly explained in the manual. In fact according to the manual you could think there are more situations when the radar may not work correctly than when it will. 

[Timmon]

Personally, I would not use cruise control in poor weather. I'd rather have control of the vehicle myself. Maybe it should disable itself anyway when the temperature falls to 3 degrees and below.

[Rivorian]

I drove the car last year in January in North-Finland with the worst snowstorm I had ever encountered and the car also switched the ACC off when it experienced deeper snow windrowes in which the tyre started to spin and I think it's the best thing ever because it means that You need to make sure You control the car and to prevent the "hovering" feeling which might lead to a loosing control of the car. Other than that the car behaved better in snowy conditions than Volvo V60 did...

[john p williams]

51 minutes ago, Timmon said:

Personally, I would not use cruise control in poor weather. I'd rather have control of the vehicle myself. Maybe it should disable itself anyway when the temperature falls to 3 degrees and below.

Absolutely right Tim. Using cruise control where the traffic or conditions do not permit is tantamount to "driving without due care and attention" in my view.

[Louie]

Hi Guys

Thank you for your comments. The  purpose of my journey was to charge the car Battery as it had been left standing for over a week. Unfortunately the A16 is a very long straight boring single carriageway and is the only main connecting route between Spalding and Peterborough which involves a 25 minute journey. It has a 60mph speed limit and is festooned with ASC's so  on the day in question road conditions were good with no traffic and  the snow suddenly descended thick and fast so i turned down my ACC to 40 mph and that was when it cut out so i never got a chance to drive "without due care and attention" just simply turned he car around and drove home. I do not enjoy driving in the snow and last time i remember driving in much worse conditions was on the M1 while on my way to work in London and that was mostly sideways pretty hairy. 

[bigblock]

16 minutes ago, Louie said:

Hi Guys

Thank you for your comments. The  purpose of my journey was to charge the car battery as it had been left standing for over a week. Unfortunately the A16 is a very long straight boring single carriageway and is the only main connecting route between Spalding and Peterborough which involves a 25 minute journey. It has a 60mph speed limit and is festooned with ASC's so  on the day in question road conditions were good with no traffic and  the snow suddenly descended thick and fast so i turned down my ACC to 40 mph and that was when it cut out so i never got a chance to drive "without due care and attention" just simply turned he car around and drove home. I do not enjoy driving in the snow and last time i remember driving in much worse conditions was on the M1 while on my way to work in London and that was mostly sideways pretty hairy. 

Hi Louie,

Just letting you know. You don't have to drive the car to charge the Battery. It will happily charge up stationary if you are able to do this. I always do this if I don't fancy a drive. Give an hour at least in ready mode once a week. This is what I do and is also Toyota's recommendation. Handy if the weather is bad on the roads.