Assisted driving notes

★★★★★

Toyota makes a point of fitting its whole arsenal of active safety features to all its passenger cars, including the cheapest ones. Depending on how you look at it, it’s a noble gesture or something to needlessly inflate the price of what is supposed to be a cheap car.

This means automatic emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection (cyclists only during daylight hours), lane keeping assistance and active lane following, and adaptive cruise control are all present and correct. Blindspot monitoring is a surprising omission, though.

The lane following can ping-pong a little within the lane, but it’s easily turned on and off using the dedicated steering-wheel button. The lane keeping assistance can be slightly bothersome on country roads but is also very easily disabled. The adaptive cruise control works well, too, as it has the ability to adopt speed limits and you can set it to plain cruise control if you wish.

AUTOMATIC EMERGENCY BRAKING

Does the system seem prone to false activation?

Can it be deactivated? Does it have pedestrian/cyclist detection?

LANE KEEPING ASSISTANCE

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?