Matt Prior: Why lane-keeping assist systems need a rethink

Lane-keeping assistance moves the wheel for you

Advanced driver-assistance systems have their merits, but could be better implemented

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.

And even if the system isn’t mandatory, you can’t discount the clout of Euro NCAP, whose ratings sometimes dictate whether or not a car is bought. Just one example: when Transport for London buys cars and vans, it “endeavours to choose vehicles with an NCAP at the optimum rating”.

It’s understandable, then, that these systems are already fitted to all new Volkswagen Group cars, given that this is a company that has a lot of public trust to rebuild and wouldn’t even like to be found accidentally putting some printer paper in the landfill bin these days.

But still. It doesn’t have to be like this, where disabling a system is four button pushes away or hidden away in a touchscreen submenu.

Euro NCAP’s requirements for scoring points towards the total say that only the emergency lane-keeping part of the system “needs to be default on at the start of every journey” and that “deactivation of the system should not be possible with a momentary single push on a button”. That means a single extended push of a button would be acceptable, or even that momentary pushes of two buttons would be fine.

The idea of this technology is to help us all, when it’s appropriate. But the harder you make it for a driver to turn it off for conditions when it’s not, the less likely they are to turn it back on again when it is.

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