Assisted driving notes

★★★★☆

Flick a button on the dashboard – it’s haptic and not so easy to find without looking closely at it – and you can pull up a screen on the dash that shows what driving assistance the VW gives you. It’s presented as a rather nice graphic – tap it, and you can switch on and off.

The Multivan uses the latestgeneration VW touchscreen software, for better or worse (mostly worse), but it is an iteration that means switching the lane keeping assistance off is a simple push on the end of the indicator stalk, followed by a confirmation via the ‘OK’ button (a physical button) on the steering wheel. Drivers of other VWS, where it’s buried in this menu, aren’t so fortunate.

Most of the time you will want it off, too – it’s a fussy system that nags at the wheel on a country road and gets thrown where two lanes become one or by long marks of tar demarking road repairs.

AUTONOMOUS EMERGENCY BRAKING

● Does the system avoid false activation well? ✓

● 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? ✓