I don’t like most cross-traffic alert systems, especially since they seem to bleep and whine at the shopping mall more than anything else. In many tests over the years, these systems that warn you when you back-up that a car is approaching leads to a conversation I have with the car.
Me: Yes, I see the car, thanks
Car: Beep, beep, beep
Me: Thanks, yeah I see them
My wife usually smirks at me and laughs — no one is listening to me, not even Alexa. On a recent test with the amazingly advanced 2023 Toyota Prius Prime, I never said a word. I just appreciated the tech, and wondered why it is not more common in all cars.
For starters, the Prime doesn’t just warn you about traffic around the vehicle while you are at the mall, and it’s not annoying. In fact, I will say this is life-saving tech. Most importantly, it works in front of the vehicle, not behind when you are backing up.
The cross-traffic alert system warns you when you are about to pull onto the highway, sitting at an intersection. It’s amazing — in my tests, it warned me just at the right time, when I was thinking of pulling out into a country road near my house, driving to a remote office, and just driving around town. It is very “stop sign friendly” in that the system can alert you if another car is pulling in front of you.
My favorite instance of using this tech was on a morning drive. I was sitting at an intersection at a full-stop, and the cross-traffic alert warned me about an approaching car.
Honestly, I didn’t see it. The brown car melted into the brown grass and a light fog. It surprised me in a good way, because I’m not used to cross-traffic alert systems working so well and in this instance — they usually work when I’m backing up, and annoyingly so because they overdo the warning.
This is an interesting time for car safety. Tech is improving and AI is coming. Automakers will need to be very careful about what they add, since we don’t want to live in a world where there are a dozen chimes warning about a dozen things while we drive. We also don’t want to have an AI nagging us about everything like a nanny monitor.
On the Prius Prime, it was nice to java some safety tech that only warned me at times when it was actually needed, and not so often that I was able to tune it out and just drive the way I was going to drive in the first place. Toyota seems to be striking a good balance on this in a way that didn’t make me feel like I was being inundated with warnings.
What comes next? I feel technology is going to have to prioritize even more in the future about what will really help the driver. As it stands, letting me know there’s a car moving at 60MPH in front of me before I turn would rank up there as the most critical for sure.
