I suppose it’s the closest most Audis get to having steering feel. Arf. Sorry, too easy. But the lane support system on the new A3 Saloon is as annoying as lane-keeping assistance often is.
Look, I get it. People don’t pay attention when driving, they veer from their path and they crash, so support systems exist to read the road ahead. They inspect upcoming white lines and road edges and give warnings, gentle pushes, wheel vibrations or even bigger steering inputs if it looks like the driver is leaving their lane. Commendable.
And also often infuriating. The system that can tell the difference between a distracted driver veering from their lane because they’re trying to change the temperature via a touchscreen and a driver who is concentrating and picking an efficient line while using a little more of the road doesn’t yet exist. So drive a new car for a while and you will discover these systems are needlessly pushing back at you all the time.
If you ask a manufacturer about this, you will be told something like: “Don’t blame us, mate, it’s all this Euro NCAP and legislation.” Which is sort of true, except when it isn’t.
There are three parts to lane support systems: lane departure warning, lane-keeping assistance (automatic steering correction) and emergency lane-keeping (a more strenuous automatic steering correction for if you’re going to leave the road or veer into an oncoming car). But manufacturers tend to wrap them all under one system, with one name, in a car. Turn one of them on or off and you turn all of them on or off.
Lane support systems aren’t mandatory, although they will be on new cars from 2022. Just as significant, though, is that they form part of the star rating awarded to a car by Euro NCAP, the European car safety rating agency.
Join the debate
Add your comment
Whilst the feature can be turned off it reverts to on with every ignition cycle and the setting is buried about seven layers down in the touch screen. My solution has been to tape over the camera in the windscreen, it's early days but seems to have worked. I've lost a number of other features like Adaptive high beam, Adaptive cruise control, AEB etc but that's a price I'm willing to pay to avoid a head on collision.
Fortunately my Toyota lets me
For me, at the moment, it is
For me, at the moment, it is just a disturbing and irritating gimmick.On the other hand, what should be mandatory in view of current traffic and the lack of rear visibility of modern cars (where is active safety ?), it is the blind spot warning.