If you are trying to obey the speed limit, it can be hard to keep the perfect speed just by using your foot. It can be difficult or even dangerous to keep looking down at your dashboard to see how fast you are going. There is a way to reduce the danger of constantly looking at the speedometer and allow you to easily stay at the speed limit at the same time.
Cruise control. A highly useful yet underused mechanism built into most modern cars. Out of all the people that I know, hardly any of them use it. I have learned to use it almost all the time.
Instructions:
Turn on your car, and engage the cruise control if it isn't already engaged.
Get on the road, and slowly accelerate to the speed limit. ('Slowly' because accelerating quickly uses more gas, which costs extra money and ruins the environment more. Exception: electric cars that are charged with renewable energy resources.)
Hit the SET button to set the cruising speed.
Take your foot off of the gas pedal, and rest it comfortably near or on the brake pedal. (This is to give yourself the shortest amount of time to react to an emergency.)
To accelerate, you can either press the gas pedal or use the ACCEL button.
Using the gas pedal is useful to overtake when legally possible, because it can accelerate much faster than the ACCEL button. It also lets you fall back to previously set cruising speed without messing with the cruise control. Cruise control will automatically control the gas again when the previously set cruising speed is reached again.
Using the ACCEL button is useful to make tiny increases in speed. Hitting it once will increase your speed by 1mhp. Tapping it two times (giving it a second between taps) increases your speed by 2mph. Simple and accurate to obtain the exact speed limit. Otherwise you can hold it down to continue accelerating until it is released, but it accelerates much more slowly than the gas pedal method. After releasing the ACCEL button, the cruise control will use the current speed as the new cruising speed.
If you are approaching a car that is actually going slower than you (a rarety when doing the speed limit), either tap the DECEL button or hold it down. Tapping it, like tapping the ACCEL button, will decelerate you by 1mph for each tap. This allows you to decrease your speed to match the speed of the car/truck in front of you perfectly. Otherwise, holding it down will continue to decelerate your car until it is released. After releasing the DECEL button, the cruise control will use the current speed as the new cruising speed.
To turn off cruise control, either hit the CANCEL button or the brake pedal. Hitting the brake pedal will automatically turn off cruise control.
After you have reached your destination, disengage the cruise control (if necessary) and turn off your car.
Others cars might have different names for the buttons, or the functions might work slightly different, but you get the idea. Use your cruise control to help keep yourself legal, not liable, and safe.
PS: As mentioned in another post here, be careful using cruise control when it is raining and there is a possibility for hydroplaning. The cruise control mechanism may react incorrectly in those situation, causing the risk of an accident.
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