Are advanced driver assistance systems truly advanced and do they actually assist?
LUC LACEY
MILEAGE 12,911
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT
To crystallise our opinion of what we’re all going to lose when the Focus retires
As is usually the way with current cars, my Focus has a raft of driver assistance and active features. They are the sort of thing that sounds good on paper and are now quite important for cars to get a good score from safety watchdog Euro NCAP but can get mightily annoying if the systems don’t work flawlessly. Frustratingly, you might not even notice any issues with them on a test drive, but they will drive you mad over the months and years of your ownership.
The Dacia Jogger I ran last year got a dangerous-sounding one star from NCAP because it doesn’t have lane keeping assist and its automatic emergency braking system lacks pedestrian and cyclist detection. Also, the rearmost seats – which I never used – didn’t have seatbelt warnings. My new Focus has the full five stars but was tested before NCAP’s latest rule change on driver assistance features, so it’s anyone’s guess how the two really compare.
However, I can conclude that the Ford is marginally more annoying than the Jogger. In particular, the collision avoidance system is far too easily spooked. It has never actually slammed on the brakes, but most journeys are marred by at least one ominous warning that I’m about to have an accident. Safe to say, I never am. It mostly gets set off when I pass a car that is turning right but that the system must think is stationary.
Being a high-spec version, my car also has matrix LED headlights, which are useful most of the time because they will light up the verge without dazzling oncoming traffic. They’re not perfect, though, and will blind those in approaching vehicles if you leave the automatic function activated on the motorway.
The problem with such smart systems is that when they get brain fade, there’s not much you can do. Recently, the lights decided to only light up the road about five metres in front of the car, which isn’t very helpful. The owner’s manual, which is now included in the infotainment system rather than as a booklet in the glovebox, suggested changing the headlight aim on the physical button… which my car doesn’t have.
An owners’ forum said you can manually adjust the headlights under the bonnet, so I did. That fixed it, but a few days later the smart headlights came to their senses, but overcorrected, making the aim too high.
On to the more useful stuff. There is blindspot monitoring, which will illuminate
