Written By Steve Jacobs
It was this past 4th of July weekend. My wife and I were up early to get to the Sacramento Airport, rent a minivan, pick up our kids and grandkids from a flight from Texas, then stop in Grass Valley, California, to pick up our son. We’d rented a condo for the week at Lake Tahoe. Five adults and two kids in car seats, stuffed in a crappy Dodge van (whose transmission failed a few days later at all of 4500 miles). It being a holiday weekend, we found ourselves in a stretch of slow, bumper-to-bumper traffic. I was stressed out but tired from the drive and the logistics. It was getting warm in the car and the conversation had ceased.
At about 5 mph I fell asleep at the wheel for a few seconds. Screams from my family saved the day… I slammed on the brakes and a minor disaster was avoided. I was, and remain, very disturbed by the near miss. What if I’d been driving at freeway speeds? I also recalled recently driving on the freeway late in the evening and realized I couldn’t remember driving for several miles. Had I been asleep and just somehow lucked out?
I was thoroughly freaked out.
I came to BMW late—in my mid-fifties. Once I could afford one, I didn’t see the point, until I took a test drive—but BMW CCA members understand how that works. Now in my 60’s I have sleep apnea, well treated by CPAP, but still a bit of an issue. Likewise I’ve had some vision problems and neck issues. I can feel my driving skills and reflexes aren’t what they were. My near miss reminded me of all of this and my career as a physician had exposed me to some traffic disasters.
My wife had just bought a Toyota RAV4 with all sorts of safety features and I decided I needed them as well. I wanted emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, blind spot and lane departure warnings. All are currently available in the 3 Series now, but not on my older F30.
So I called my salesman, Anthony Bhiatti of Valley BMW in Modesto, California, and put him to work trying to find a suitable car while BMW NA was blowing out the remaining ‘16s by setting high residuals. No way could I do a custom order and get the rock bottom lease terms.
In the meantime I did my due diligence: I rejected Mercedes and Lexus since I found the cars uncomfortable; any VW product since they’re a bunch of crooks; Acura because on the test drive the lane departure warning didn’t work, Honda because they only checked for blind spots on the right. Toyota and Nissan because they don’t make anything I’d want to drive. Infiniti was ok, but much more expensive than the subsidized BMW leases.
Anthony found a likely candidate 500 miles away. Arctic white, saddle leather upholstery, and a bunch of other stuff that indicated someone had ordered it and backed out on buying it. It had sat on the lot for months, but it had what I wanted: blind spot warnings, adaptive cruise control, emergency braking and lane departure warnings. It also had a surround camera—why everyone doesn’t order this I can’t understand. It makes parallel parking a breeze; you’ll never scuff a wheel again. It also had heads up display. Once you’ve had this feature, you’ll never want to be without it again.
The car had much that I’d not have chosen had I been ordering but there were only three satisfactory cars west of the Rockies. Anthony had it shipped to Modesto and I bought it.
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So what’s it like having all this stuff looking over my shoulder? Actually, it’s fine. The adaptive cruise control is a joy in moderate traffic; it’ll even bring my F30 to a complete stop without my intervention. (I’ve only allowed this with the car in front of me slowing down gently—I don’t have the nerve to see how it’d do in a panic situation).
Recently, I drove 30 miles in stop-and-go traffic on the freeway. The maximum speed was about 30 and the minimum was zero. My cruise control was set at 75. In that whole time I touched the brake only once, when the guy in front (maybe he’d fallen asleep himself) initiated a panic stop. My car sounded the alarm and I stomped on my brakes immediately, but I could feel the car had started to stop before I could hit the pedal myself. I’ll admit for much of the 30 miles I had my foot hovering over the brake pedal at times, just in case. Perhaps I can trust the car fully soon.
The cruise control simply works; I wondered if it’d be fooled by cars in adjacent lanes when the road curves but somehow it knows which vehicles to watch during gentle freeway turns.
My BMW shakes the steering wheel if I drift near the next lane. My wife’s Toyota just beeps at you and then turns the wheel back towards the center, which is certainly disconcerting. I think BMW’s approach is best and there’s no problem overriding it if necessary—and it reminds you that you should have used the turn signal that defeats the feature if you meant to change lanes.
The blind spot warning works properly as well, although my wife’s Toyota has the warning imbedded in the side mirrors, just where you should be looking when making a lane change. BMW’s yellow triangle to the inside of the mirrors is bigger and brighter but not directly in my line of sight when changing lanes.
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If I ignore a car in my blind spot and try to change lanes the yellow triangle flashes and the wheel shakes.
Are there problems? Of course. The most common one I’ve found is when I’m exiting the freeway. Near the exit, I move into the right lane, behind the truck going 50 when the cruise control is set a 75. My car promptly slows down to match the truck – until I enter the off ramp. My car then suddenly sees no car ahead of it anymore and thus tries to return to 75! Given that some nearby old California freeways have short 15MPH exits, this can get a bit exciting. I’ve learned to disable the cruise control when I get into the right lane.
On a stretch of roller-coaster profile highway, when I crest a hill often the lane departure warning shakes the steering wheel as if I was crossing a line. I’ve had this happen in the occasional urban intersection as well.
Finally, once I was going about 55 when a car very far ahead slowed to make a turn in front of me setting off an alarm and start of a panic stop. The car ahead was so distant that the excitement of the electronics was quite unnecessary. This has only happened once, however.
A minor irritation: the adaptive cruise control doesn’t remember the ‘following distance’ when restarting the car. Fortunately setting it is easy with steering wheel buttons and it does remember the distance when you cancel and restart the cruise control during a drive.
Underneath all of this is the same F30, with the same handling, acceleration, cornering and braking. All of the nannies have on-off switches, and you can just override them when you want without turning them off. My semi-retired judge wife recently counted off five violations of the vehicular code that I’d amassed in three miles of spirited driving in the Sierra foothills. The car is no less fun when I’m paying attention, but safer when I’m distracted.
Does everyone need these features? I suspect that younger folks with better reflexes might not. All of this is more stuff to go wrong, but I’d rather be alive with a big repair bill than injured or dead with a simpler car.
What does all of this all say about me? Well I’m getting older but to quote Monty Python, I’m not dead yet. I’d like to keep it that way a bit longer.—Steve Jacobs
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