How is everyone's experience with the FCW? How frequently does it work? How well does it work?

I am unhappy with the operation. It doesn't appear to work when it's supposed to be. It only works when you are literally inches away from hitting the car in front. I had tried setting the FCW to "long" in the menu. Which is supposed to increase the distance at which the system warns. But it did not work out that way. It appeared that the "long" setting pretty much disabled the system as it didn't go off even once.

I brought it to the dealer and at first the service advisor argued with me that FCW doesn't exist (only CMBS). Finally he realized that it does.


The techs tested it, and their experience was that the system activated only in cases where they were inches away (so too late for it to be useful). They also found that the "long" setting seemed to make the system "blind" as it would not alarm, which is counter to the instructions in the manual. They recommended "regular" or "short" setting.

Long story short, the FCW does not appear to work as advertised by Acura, not sure why.

Any thoughts, feedback and so on are much appreciated.

 

The minimum speed for the system is 10 miles an hour. It is probably one of those things that is very difficult to demonstrate and test in practice.

 

+1. In practice mine has been alerting as it should. I have found the LKAS/FCW/ACC features to be awesome! I am currently on vacation and have racked up almost 3K miles in the short time I've had the car. THe LKAS is awesome and in combination with the ACC the car practically drives itself!

 

On my 2011, the system works ok I guess, but it is easily confused. On sunny days with a low sun angle, as I approach an overpass on the highway (going under), the system beeps and flashes "brake". I am pretty sure this is radar based, so I don't understand how this happens. I could see if it was optical, but that is not the case AFAIK. Also, if you drive in snow, the system clogs and becomes not operational (also the adaptive cruise). I don't have a point of reference for other car brands but I have a hard time believe they are all so finicky.

 

Sorry to change topics, but Fun2Drive, you still can't post pics yet? Dying to see those LED fogs you got put in!

 

Your system is radar base, there is no camera component to it. The sunlight had nothing to do with your "false positive". It must be detecting the mass of the bridge overpass as a vehicle stopped in your path. As for snow and mud, they are known to cause interference with the radar based system. If this radar gets obscured, both CMBS and ACC will not work properly.

 

Just to be clear, I am talking about the 2014 MDX Tech package which uses a camera based FCW

You are referring to the Radar based system in the Advance package. The Radar based system is in a different realm, it's so much better.

 

I am posting them shortly in the Accessory thread

 

ahhhh...ok! :-) Sorry!

 

Can this thing be aimed like headlights ?. I find it unbelievable that an overpass that is several feet above the car would trigger the sensor. It never does it on cloudy days. Same overpass will do it on a sunny day in the fall, and nothing will happen on a cloudy day. This is why I thought it might be optical (shadow).

 

I'm not aware of any way to aim the system. I believe it can also 'false' if heading down an incline with large metal mass at the bottom. For example, a dip in the road approaching rail tracks.

 

THAT would make sense, but the overpass on a flat highway ?.

 

Since the debut of the system I've always felt that it had the potential to be "problematic". Please keep in mind I am not speaking on behalf of of anybody but myself. However, there always seemed to be very little "upside" to these types of driver aids. If they false positive, people are upset (as in your situation) however, if they fail to warn in a real accident situation the potential downside is far greater.

I suppose that the best we can hope for is they become like radar detectors were back in the day. We accepted that certain things were going to cause them to go off such as automatic door openers but the upside of potentially avoiding an illegal speed trap made it worth the occasional inconvenience.

 

Yeah I hear ya. I am not "upset". Just somewhat disappointed with the overpass thing. Again, I wonder how other brands fare. If it was a widespread "thing", I'm sure there would be articles everywhere.