Assisted driving notes

Most of the active safety features are very mature, as might be expected from a safety-conscious brand like Volvo, if still not perfect. We never had cause to turn off the lane keeping assistance as it is perfectly unintrusive on country roads and works well on motorways. If you do want to turn it off, it takes a few taps of the touchscreen. The automatic emergency braking recognises pedestrians and cyclists and didn’t give us any trouble.

The adaptive cruise control confidently speeds up and slows down, and it will accelerate when you indicate to match the speed of the faster lane. The automatic lane following is smooth, too. It tends to stick to the left-hand side of the lane, but you can adjust it with the steering without deactivation. Annoyingly, it can’t easily be toggled on or off. Instead, it takes several taps and a swipe of the screen. Another curious oversight is that the speed-limit recognition is wrong more often than it is right.

AUTONOMOUS 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

 Can the system consistently recognise and automatically adopt motorway gantry-signed variable speed limits? ✗

 Does it prevent undertaking? ✗  Does it have effective audible or visual alerts, or steering intervention, to prevent changing lanes into the path of an overtaking car? ✓