Cruise control is a convenient feature found in most cars on the road today. It gives you the ability to maintain the same driving speed on the road without having to keep your foot on the gas pedal. What you do is just accelerate your vehicle up to the speed that you want to maintain and then you activate the cruise control mechanism to stay at that speed. This is appropriate to do on fast moving roads, such as interstates or state highways. It is not required, but it can help you as a driver in a variety of different ways.
Cruise control has been around for decades. At first, it was only a feature found in luxury cars. Now you see cruise control in economy cars and luxury cars. It is a feature as common as the car radio and air conditioner. However, some people don’t really understand the benefits of cruise control nor do they take advantage of it. If you do a lot of long-distance driving which requires you to maintain a particular speed, then you should educate yourself on the benefits of cruise control. Then you will see why it is important to use.
5 Benefits of Using Cruise Control
Cruise control is not exactly a safety mechanism. It is more of a convenience mechanism for people who want to make driving easier. To understand how it can help you as a driver, below are the top 5 benefits of using cruise control in your car.
1) Rest Your Foot
If you’re someone who does a lot of driving every day, your foot is going to get tired from having to keep it on the gas pedal so much. Wouldn’t it be great if you could rest your foot and allow the car to keep driving at your desired speed? Well, cruise control gives you this convenience because once it is activated, you no longer need to keep your foot on the gas pedal. Instead, you can rest it on the floor as the car continues to move at a consistent speed.
2) Better Fuel Economy
Each time you apply pressure to the gas pedal, it burns more fuel from your gas tank. It doesn’t even matter how much pressure you put on the gas pedal. Just a little bit of pressure consumes more fuel. If you want to avoid this problem, cruise control can keep your speed consistent so that you’re not always slowing down and speeding up. That way, you won’t burn as much fuel and you’ll save money at the gas pump.
3) Maintain Legal Speed
A lot of people get speeding tickets because they aren’t watching how fast they’re going. It is easy to go 10 or 15 miles per hour over the speed limit without even realizing it. If you want to make sure that you’re not surpassing the speed limit, just activate cruise control once you get up to the legal speed limit. Then you won’t need to worry about speeding every again.
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4) Less Fuel Consumption
When your vehicle has cruise control activated, it is not consuming as much fuel. That is why the fuel economy is improved when you use cruise control regularly. When you slow down and speed up consistently, it burns fuel each time. Cruise control doesn’t burn as much fuel because it doesn’t go through this slowdown and speed up phase.
5) Easy to Deactivate
Cruise control is easier to deactivate than it is to activate. All you need to do is apply a little bit of pressure to the brake pedal and it will deactivate immediately. Then your speed will start to decrease again unless you put your foot on the gas pedal.