Advanced Driver Assistance Tech Overview – Toyota Highlander

Advanced Driver Assistance Technologies/Systems, often referred to as ADAS, are quickly becoming commonplace across the automotive industry, even with entry-level vehicles. This is particularly true for many Asian auto manufacturers like Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Hyundai, etc. Keep in mind, there are all DRIVER ASSISTANCE features, and generally require the driver to keep hands on the wheel and remain in full control of the vehicle at all times. 

These include systems like 

• Forward Collision Alert, more passive, this is a warning, either visually or audibly, of an impending potential collision with an object ahead of you. 
• Automatic Emergency Braking, a more active element to the above alert, which can activate braking help bring your vehicle to a stop if it detects an object ahead. 
• Adaptive Cruise Control, sometimes called Radar Cruise Control or Smart Cruise Control, this can help your vehicle maintain a targeted speed on the road, but can reduce speed if necessary due to traffic conditions ahead of you. It will slow the vehicle down to maintain a preferred gap/distance of the vehicle in front. 
• Lane Departure Warning, can warn you, sometimes audibly or visually, or even through slight vibrations in the steering wheel or seat, if your vehicle drifts outside of its current lane without use of a turn signal. 
• Lane Keep Assist, a more active level of lane departure warning, this can utilize either steering inputs or slight braking of specific wheels to help bring your vehicle back into the current lane. 
• Lane Centering Functions, Toyota calls this Lane Trace Assist, Hyundai calls their system Highway Driving Assist, Volvo has Pilot Assist, etc. This is a step above the lane keep assist, which might ping pong your car side to side, this system is more active in terms of trying to help keep your car centered in its current lane. Some people feel that this, along with the lane keep assist above, might feel like you’re fighting with the car for control, but almost all of them will defer to driver control pretty quickly.

• And more…. we’re starting to see some vehicles also add additional capabilities like aided lane changes, while some specific systems like GM’s Super Cruise and upcoming Ultra Cruise, along with Ford’s BlueCruise/ActiveGlide are capable of hands free (but not attention free) driving along specified routes. 

Come along as we take this Toyota Highlander for a spin and try to highlight all of the controls, symbols and communication from the car back to the driver associated with its suite of driver assistance systems. These can be important to understand as each brand does things a little bit differently than others. White vs gray vs orange vs green icons, etc. We hope that these demonstrations can help provide awareness and education to help consumers build confidence in the capabilities (and limitations!) of all these items. 

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