>>Does "it" know if the road is wet to adjust the parameters ? Or can they be adjusted by the driver ?
I doubt it knows or cares. They likely tuned it for wet to begin with. In snow though, I would not trust it. It likely starts breaking harder earlier if it detects that the car is not slowing down as expected. The only driver side options are "Off", "Near" and "Far". I always keep mine in "Far" mode. It obviously is a closed loop radar system and is not a human so it cannot anticipate that that car in front that is slowly turning right is going to be gone by the time your car passes and sometimes triggers stage 1 (beeping and flashing).

When it is misty or rainy the radar sometimes detects too much noise in the measurements and FCM turns off. You get a message “FCM/ACC temporarily is not available”. After some time it then turns back on its own or right away on a power cycle (engine restart).

The one strange thing you might notice, which is easily explainable in my opinion, is that FCM (Frontal Collision Mitigation) sometimes triggers when I use the ACC (“Adaptive Cruise Control”) (the mode when the car follows the car in front, breaks and accelerates as needed). Sometimes ACC starts breaking to late, FCM triggers, beeps and flashes but then ACC slows down the car enough for FCM to stop complaining. It is a little weird that these two systems don’t talk to each other, but then it is a lot easier to design and test them independently.

We, as humans, all get distracted from time to time while driving, but FCM is always watching the road. So this extra ½ seconds of breaking by FCM when you are distracted might prevent you from getting into an accident one day.

 

i dont look at the speedo much. I do quite a lot of 'speeding' but not much crashing.

You failed to stop short: you were following too close. In my country, youd be taken to court or fined for that.

 

Thank you for your excellent reply. It definitely adds this to my list.

 

Agreed but it happens. And yes you get a ticket.

If you drive in stop and go heavy traffic you can get caught out. The issue here is does this work and is it worth buying, not how we should drive.

 

It does work pretty good especially in situation out of your control - for example some idiot cutting you off.

 

Nickolka you did a wonderful explanation of the the FCM system works in the Outlander. I have the 2014 GT with this as well as the LDW and ACC. I think the FCM is a bit too sensitive in my opinion. I was actually heading to the Mitsu dealer to have it's first oil change 2 weeks ago and was driving in blinding rain most of the way there and the system did in fact deactivate itself. The radar had a hard time I guess sending it's beams through the driving rain so the system remained off most of the time. This is where one would need it the most. It was one of those blinding rains where people where pulling off onto the shoulder to try to wait it out as well as driving more than 1/2 under the posted speed limit on the interstate. This also happened a few times this past winter here in Chicago during heavy snow falls. I really don't care for the LDW on this vehicle. It's way too sensitive. Sometimes I may not even be driving near the road markers/lines and the system starts beeping. Other times it just goes off for no reason. I know the owners manual has a long list on page 5-113 telling you reasons it may not operate properly or may give false readings and become activated. Sometime I just shut the system off and it gets to be a nuisance. Luckily there's that option.