What mode is your ACC set to: Comfort, Normal, or Sport?
Its in Sport. I also used VAG com to set the default distance to very close otherwise it would default back to the farthest away setting after the ignition is turned off.
Seems i'm not going to get anywhere in this thread without explaining myself. Alright here goes......
My biggest annoyance is how soon it applies the brakes when approaching another car. And the bigger the speed differential the sooner it brakes. I normally drive on the freeway at 140km/hr and if there's a vehicle travelling at say 100km/hr in front of me the touareg piles on the brakes way way WAY too early. Also with cars travelling only slightly less than me the Touraeg will usually hit the brakes right at the worst possible time when I've started a lane change and I have a diminishing size gap to fit into the fast lane. Drives me mental.
So its more about my driving habits, which are aggressive. and which most of you probably don't like. Having said that, I'm not a tailgater, or at least i'm not an extreme tail-gater who gets inside a couple car lengths. But for my driving habits, the ACC is an extreme annoyance and not particularly useful at all, except in bumper to bumper traffic with no hope for escape. That is the only situation I find it useful.
The theres the driving habits of others. Hopefully I don't offend any Albertans here but "Most" drivers in my area simply don't know how to use a multi-lane highway. Everyone goes straight for the left lane regardless of speed and they won't move even with miles of open road ahead of them. The only thing that seems to make some driver move is if they notice a vehicle travelling much faster than they are approaching quickly, or if you spend 30seconds to 5 minutes a few car lengths from their bumper. Both situations are nullified by the ACC since it slows down so early that the offending car doesn't notice how much faster you are driving. And once its slowed down it leaves too much space between you and the car in front of you to communicate your intention to pass.
Now I hope many of you don't suffer from similar drivers and you may not have these issues. I grew up on the east coast where the signs said "Keep right Expect to Pass" and thats what people did. Not the case here in western Canada. The signs here say "Slower Traffic Keep Right". I swear most people interpret this as "If i'm not travelling slow, then I'm required to be in the left lane". Problem is, what is slow?
Most people just do undertaking maneuvers and pass in the right lane. I'm against that, I feel its unsafe and should not be necessary. I always stay in the right lane as long as possible, make my pass, then move back ASAP. The ACC is a major PITA using this driving style. It requires continuous intevention, and then when intervening with the ACC my speed display is continously flipping back and forth between unuseful ACC messages and is very distracting.
Flame away!