Assisted driving notes

★★★★★

It’s not a given for a city car to offer as many active safety features as the Fiat 500 does. Action trim gets lane keeping assistance, traffic sign recognition, drowsiness alert and automatic emergency braking.

At the price point, that’s quite respectable. For any form of cruise control, you’ll need to upgrade to Red trim, while adaptive cruise control, lane following assistance, blindspot assistance and a 360deg parking camera are available on Icon and above.

Our Icon test car had only the standard-fit features, but what it had worked quite well. We didn’t experience any false activations from the autonomous emergency braking system, which is able to recognise cyclists and pedestrians. The lane keeping assistance was largely unintrusive on the motorway and can be deactivated easily with a button on the end of the indicator stalk when on country roads.

AUTOMATIC EMERGENCY BRAKING

 Does the system seem prone to false activation? ✗

 Can it be deactivated? ✓

 Does it have pedestrian/cyclist detection? ✓

 Is the system tuned to keep the driver engaged at all times? ✓

 Is it adjustable for sensitivity? ✓

 Does it allow you to drive around a pothole/obstacle within your lane easily and without deactivation? ✓

INTELLIGENT CRUISE CONTROL

Not fitted.