√Driver assistance technology explained with Toyota Safety Sense
Driver assistance and safety technology features are important for buyers, but how do they all work? We delve into Toyota’s series of intelligent safety features to cover off five key areas.
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The list of acronyms that new car buyers need to understand is growing every day. From AEB through LDA to ACC, what do all these things mean and how do you know that you are choosing a car with all the technology you need?
To help simplify this, many brands are combining some key features into a single product set, and for Toyota, this is Toyota Safety Sense.
Every new Toyota passenger car sold in Australia includes high levels of modern safety equipment, and an important part of this is the advanced suite of active safety technologies. These tools are designed to aid the driver in ordinary and extraordinary driving situations, protecting you, your passengers and other road users – all with the goal of avoiding an accident altogether.
We delve into five key features of Toyota Safety Sense to explain how they work and why they’re so important for the safety of road users.
Pre-Collision Safety System
Active safety has been a feature of Toyota vehicles for over 50 years, since the introduction of anti-lock brakes in 1971.
One of the most important advancements in recent times has been the pre-collision safety system. The system uses cameras, radars, or a combination of the two to scan the road ahead and then alert or intervene if a potential hazard is detected. Think of it as having an extra set of eyes always keeping watch on the road conditions.
Depending on the model of your Toyota, there are up to three modes for the pre-collision safety system – warning, brake-assist and braking.
The pre-collision warning system operates between 10 and 180km/h for detecting other vehicles, and if your Toyota is equipped, between 10 and 80km/h for detecting bicycles and pedestrians.
A message will flash, and a chime will sound to alert you to the detected object closing at a rapid speed. If you begin to brake but the system determines that you aren’t braking hard enough, the pre-collision brake assist steps in to increase that brake pressure, which minimises or potentially avoids a collision.
If no action is taken, the system is designed to engage maximum braking automatically.
This is often known as Autonomous Emergency Braking, or AEB.
Road Sign Assist (Speed Signs Only)
You will encounter dozens of different speed zones on every drive you take, and it can be all too easy to find yourself confused of what the limit is. Road sign assist helps take that uncertainty away, with a forward-facing camera in the windscreen that constantly scans for speed limit signs, and displays the current limit in the instrument cluster.
This improves on the navigation-based speed zone alerts by using live data from the environment around you – key for roadwork zones as speed limits can change regularly.
For areas where the regular speed limit is reduced depending on the time of day, like a school zone, an additional speed sign might be shown.
Should this speed be exceeded, an alert will be displayed, and a chime will sound to warn you to reduce speed.
This is referred to as Road Sign Assist (RSA).
Lane Departure Alert & Lane Tracing Assist
Lane Departure Alert (LDA) monitors the lane markings on the road ahead, which are also shown by an indicator in the instrument cluster.
If your car moves too close to the line or crosses it, you’ll be prompted to check the position of your vehicle, and depending on your car an alert will be shown, a chime will sound, the steering wheel will vibrate, or there may be a combination of all three.
Should no action be taken, the Lane Tracing Assistant (LTA) is designed to automatically adjust the steering angle to move the vehicle back into the centre of the travelling lane.
Lane Tracing Assist can combine with other features like Blind Spot Monitoring (BSM) to prevent a lane change when there is a risk of collision.
Active Cruise Control
Cruise control is great for longer journeys, enabling you to maintain a set speed for extended periods while you focus on the road ahead.
However, our roads are getting busier, which means that a comfortable cruise at 100km/h may be frequently interrupted by slower-moving vehicles in your lane. This is where Active Cruise Control (ACC) steps in.
This technology uses radars to monitor the speed and distance of the vehicle in front. As you approach, the system is designed to smoothly reduce the speed of your car to match, so as to maintain a gap. The following distance can be adjusted to suit the driving situation, and in many cases the active cruise control can bring the vehicle to a complete stop under the right conditions.
You can then resume the previous set speed with the press of a button. Using the information provided by the roadside assist system, you can easily match the set speed to the current limit, while lane tracing assist keeps your vehicle centred in the travelling lane.
Automatic High Beam
Country driving at night is a regular part of many Australians’ lives, and with Automatic High Beam (AHB) technology you can be sure the road ahead is brighter for longer.
When the road is clear, the high beams will be automatically activated at speeds above 30km/h. Using the camera in the windscreen, the system monitors the conditions ahead for streetlights as well as oncoming or leading vehicles.
If a car approaches from the other direction, the AHB system is designed to switch to low beam to prevent dazzling the other driver. As soon as they have passed, the high beam will be reactivated automatically.
As you can see, there are plenty of reasons to have Toyota Safety Sense at the top of your priorities list when shopping for your next new car.
It’s important to remember that these features are driver aids only and are not a substitute for attentive driving, but when used correctly these features make for a more comfortable and safer journey for you and your family.
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