2014 Nissan Rogue: Helping You Avoid Crashing Into Things
April 29, 2014
Among the many changes to the redesigned 2014 Nissan Rogue is the addition of new safety features. Specifically, our loaded-up Rogue SL comes with 360-degree parking cameras, frontal collision warning, lane departure warning, rear cross-path detection and blind-spot monitoring.
Other popular small crossovers (CR-V, CX-5, Equinox, Escape, Forester and RAV4, for instance) offer some combination of these features but only the Rogue offers all of them. If you want maximized vehicle-based assistance for not crashing into things from your small crossover, the Rogue is at the ready.
I've driven our Rogue extensively the past two weeks and think many drivers will find these systems useful. As we've commented previously, the parking camera system is very handy and appreciated on an almost daily basis. The frontal collision warning, blind-spot monitoring and lane departure warning systems also work as advertised. During that two-week stretch, the frontal collision warning system beeped at me only once. I didn't feel like I was in any particular danger in that situation (I did get suddenly close to another car ahead of me), but it made sense for the system to beep at me. The lane departure warning system also warned me on the times I purposely wandered over a lane divider or a double-yellow line without using the turn signal.
With these systems all on, I will admit that the potential for the various beeps to become annoying is fairly high, even in normal driving. But the nice thing is that Nissan gives you the option of disabling them individually in the car's settings if you so desire.
Brent Romans, Senior Automotive Editor @ 4,321 miles
Useful: BSM, parking cams. Useless: LDW, FCW. Undecided: cross-traffic detection.
The most important safety feature in an automobile is an alert driver, i.e. a driver who is not distracted by an ever growing array of electronic nannies buzzing, whirring, clicking, and flashing under common real-world driving conditions.
Beeping isn't the answer. The answer are smarter systems that start to apply brakes for you and those that help you stay in the center lane. THAT is worth it. Sounds like the MDX system is a better one.
I'd much prefer a simple alert that there may be a problem over the car actually taking action for me. If someone needs the car to try to steer and stop itself because an alert that there 'may' be a problem isn't enough then they shouldn't be driving.
More on the 2014 Rogue
More on 2014 Nissan Rogue