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Driving my mom's S40 on a little two hour trip, I tried out the cruise control. As I messed around with accel/decel features, I wondered if my Volvo had them and I just hadn't figured out how to use them.
Taking my car out later on, I messed around with the cruise control and came up with some questions.
First, let me make sure I've got the proper way to turn on the cruise control. You slide the switch on the blinker handle to the right. Then you press the button on the end of the "handle" to set the speed, right?
Second, why can the cruise control switch slide a little farther "out" than its "on" position? If you press it out, it slides a little bit, and then when you let go it rebounds to the "on" position. Why is that?
Third, I noticed that the "decel" feature can be achieved by pressing in the button on the end of the blinker handle. The gas pedal releases and the car slows until you let go of the button, at which point it resumes cruise control. Am I using this button the right way; is it okay to do this? As in, this doesn't "hurt" the car, does it?
Fourth, is there any way to make the car accelerate on cruise control other than pushing the gas pedal? Modern cruise controls usually have some sort of button or rocker switch to toggle to slightly adjust your cruising speed. Is there anything like this on the Bricks? (I'm guessing not.)
Put simply, I don't have a good grasp of what cruise control actually *does*, other than manually pushes down or releases the gas pedal to match an arbitrary speed set somewhere in the car's computer. I'm not sure of all of the ways to adjust that stored speed (if there are methods), but the mechanism for cruise control sems like a neat little accessory for a car.
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