General Motors’ luxury brand, Cadillac, is packaging safety technologies to help ease the rigours of the daily commute, from the driveway to crowded parking structures and congested highways.
“The mall parking lot, packed with cars making it difficult to see what’s coming, or the parking deck at work, or the stop and go of a freeway commute – these are hassles that drivers navigate each and every day,” says James Bell, General Motors’ head of consumer affairs. “Cadillac Driver Assist can help make these situations less treacherous and maybe more bearable.”
Some of the Driver Assist features designed to ease the everyday commute include:
- Full Speed Adaptive Cruise Control, which extends traditional cruise control to more situations, such as managing the car’s acceleration and braking automatically from a driver-set highway “cruising” speed down to a full stop, such as at a toll booth, while maintaining a safe following distance.
- Rear Cross Traffic Alert — Scanning areas adjacent to the car on each side extends driver vision such as when backing out of a parking spot with vehicles on both sides. Cadillac’s Safety Alert Seal warns the driver of traffic approaching from the left or right using directional seat vibration pulses. This patented warning approach is tied to all of the on-board crash avoidance systems.
- Rear Vision Camera with Dynamic Guidelines allows the driver, when in reverse, to view objects directly behind the vehicle via the eight-inch monitor on the centre stack. A set of red and yellow guidelines appear on the display to mark the vehicle’s turn radius, allowing for easier parking and backing maneuvers.
- Automatic Front and Rear Braking will apply emergency braking automatically in certain driveway, parking lot and heavy traffic conditions, if it detects a vehicle in front of or behind the car.
- Forward Collision Alert uses the Safety Alert Seat’s haptic warning to vibrate both sides of the driver’s seat when the car approaches a stationary or moving vehicle ahead too rapidly.
Cadillac offers its Driver Assist technology in three models for 2013, the new ATS sports sedan (crowned North American Car of the Year) as well as the XTS full-size luxury sedan and the revamped SRX crossover.
“Most of us think of driving a luxury car on open roads, and of course cars like the new ATS sport sedan are right at home doing that,” says Bell. “But traffic and parking situations are way more common. A great car should help you in those conditions, too.”
