This is Technology Bytes, episode 108 for March 30th, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bites on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So this week I’m still on the Kia EV6 and I want to talk about the driver assist technologies that are available in that vehicle and compare them to ones that I’ve used in other vehicles that I’ve driven.
And so when you think about driver assist, there’s a few things that come to mind.
One, I think, is the most important is adaptive cruise control.
I think if that was a requirement on every car built in America and somehow they could force that to be turned on in every car that’s on the freeway, I think traffic would disappear because the cars would know how fast they could go and all of that.
But that’s another microcast altogether.
Other things that you think about in the driver assist technology is what we call, at least in the Honda world, they call it lane keep assist.
It’s funny that I don’t know what Kia calls it.
I guess that comes from my Honda salesman training from years past.
But it’s really the idea that it keeps you in your lane, warns you if you’re traveling outside of that lane without turning on a blinker.
So that’s a thing there.
And then another thing that Kia has in their system is like avoidance steering.
And I’ll talk about that a little bit in a minute.
I’ve never used it, so I don’t know how it works entirely.
So in the lane keep assist where it keeps you in your lane, it’s just a matter of paying attention.
It’s one more thing that the car can help you with as you’re driving.
Sometimes we get distracted.
Okay, maybe me, but get distracted as we drive.
And it’s interesting that in the Kia, you have to be going over 40 miles an hour for that to work.
In the Honda, it works kind of at any speed because it can still see the lanes.
I’m not exactly sure why Kia chose to only do it at a certain speed.
Maybe because leaving the lane at a slower speed is not something that’s that dangerous.
But I don’t know.
I think it might be.
So I’m not exactly sure where they’ve chosen or why Kia has chosen to do that.
But in both cars, the Honda and the Kia, it works very well.
And it keeps you in your lane.
It shakes the steering wheel if you are drifting.
It lets you know with audible sounds.
It’s a good system.
The other thing that I use all the time is the adaptive cruise control.
And that basically is you’re setting your cruise.
And then whatever the cars in front of you are doing, then your car mimics.
So if a car is going the speed limit or going as fast as you set your cruise, then that’s how fast you’re going.
If cars are going slower, then you’re going slower.
And then you kind of set in the settings how far or how close you want to follow the car ahead of you.
And so those are pretty cool systems.
And I think that that would solve traffic if people would use that.
Because you don’t have that stop and go and stop and go.
But the neat thing about the adaptive cruise control in both the Kia and the Honda is that it is what they call a low speed follow.
So it’ll go all the way up to traffic stop.
And then when traffic starts again, it’ll pick back up and start following the car ahead of you.
The other thing that the Kia has, two things.
One is avoidance steering.
And you can turn it on and it will help you steer away from accidents or threats.
I’m not sure exactly how that works.
I’m not sure I want to know how it works.
I don’t ever want to really see it in action.
But I keep it on just in case my reaction time is too slow.
And so I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to talk about that in real use situations.
The other thing that the Kia does that I haven’t seen before, and this is all the time, is when the car ahead of you is leaving and you aren’t moving, then it beeps and then puts a message on the screen that says, hey, the lead car is disappearing or driving off, I think it says.
And so that’s just a matter of someone paying attention, kind of like at a light and you don’t want the person behind you to honk.
So good systems help you with your driving, at least help me with mine.
I find them all very useful.
So when I bought the Kia, the salesperson told me that the driver assist technology of the Kia is the best in the business.
It rivals right up there with what Mercedes offers.
I’ve never used Mercedes, so I can’t talk to whether that’s true or not.
But he did say it was better than Honda’s, and I really like Honda’s.
I think they’ve done a very good job.
My wife has a VW, not the Atlas, the Taos, and I don’t think it does a very good job.
It’s complicated to set up, and so it makes it difficult to use.
The Honda is easy to set up.
It’s very simple to use.
It’s very helpful.
And as I’ve used the Kia for the last couple months, I will have to say that I agree with the Kia salesperson in that it actually reacts better in traffic than the system from Honda.
Oftentimes in the Honda, I would have to take over.
In fact, the car would tell me to take over because it didn’t think it could react fast enough to what was happening.
The Kia doesn’t do that.
It reacts well.
It reacts quickly, and I don’t know that it’s ever told me as the driver to take over for its driver assist technologies, and that’s pretty impressive.
So I know there’s lots of talk about full driving and those kind of things.
I’ve never been in a Tesla or driven one in that kind of environment trying to use that quote-unquote full driving.
But in the assist technologies, I like them a lot, and I think it makes driving way more comfortable and way less stressful.
I wish more people would use it because I think it would help traffic on the roads.
But for me, it just maintains a sense of awareness in case I’m not, and it maintains reactivity in case I don’t.
And it just is a level of comfort in the driver’s seat that I have with the car that it’s helping me be the best driver that I can be.
And so I really enjoy using them.
It’s a great technology, and if you haven’t used it yet, I know you say, look, I’m the driver.
I don’t need the car to tell me what to do.
I don’t know.
Maybe we do because car accidents are way too prevalent in the roads of the United States.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at marigfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
