derh20 wrote:
dieharder mentioned that putting the vehicle in neutral automatically disengages cruise-I did not know that. Maybe another solution would be not to use cruise. I have never used cruise just in case I had a medical emergency.
Even if it did not disengage the cruise control, it wouldn't really matter. The cruise control basically only operates the engine throttle, the same as the gas pedal. Just as stomping on the gas in neutral doesn't make the vehicle speed up, so the cruise control cannot. The worse it would do if engaged is rev the engine up to the rev limiter and make lots of noise.
(I say "basically" because many modern cruise controls may also affect automatic transmission programming/shifting in various ways. Current Ford chassis, for example, will downshift automatically to apply engine braking if needed with the cruise control engaged, or so I understand.)
I'm not sure that having cruise control engaged would be measurably more unsafe in the event of a sudden medical problem for the driver than driving "manually." In the latter case, it seems to me there would be a reasonably good chance that the gas pedal could get wedged down at a high throttle setting, something less likely if one's foot isn't on the pedal at all. Of course, if one's health is such that one is somewhat likely to be incapacitated at any time without warning, it probably isn't the wisest to be driving at all.
