So yesterday, I took a ride out to Lake Placid during a heavy rainstorm. I though the PP did terrible almost pushing me out of the lane several times but I guess the storm was much worse than I thought. Shortly thereafter, there were 3 instances of cars in the ditch at times we were doing less than 50 mph.
I was perplexed by blind spot on the driver's side. I was watching the mirror but the light would only come when the bumper of the car on my left was somewhere between the rear passenger door handle and the B pillar. When home, I read the manual and the BSM has a 10 foot wide by 15 foot long box that it monitors. The manual doesn't specify but my take is that only when a vehicle completely fills the imaginary box does the BSM light on the inside illuminate. I was hoping that whenever a bumper (not the whole car) penetrated this imaginary box the light would come on. The PP is our first car with blind spot but honestly, If I'm going to have to look at the mirrors anyway, I prefer the now obsolete Lane Watch at least for the passenger side. Our RAV has BSM as well so I want to try that one out. Shame on me for not being better informed. The cross traffic alert, no that one is golden, works great and I thought we didn't need it.
EDIT: so I just took the RAV on the Highway, system works way better. I went back and re read the Honda manual and it says when a car enters the zone which extends past the back of the car the BSM will illuminate. Not on my PP, at best the light comes on when a vehicle is in the positions where I can't see it. That's ok but not as advertised and not what I was paying for. So, the CMBS is riddled with false alarms, the Auto high beams rarely activate and now this. I'd give these features an F and saying that a car has these features is one thing but the implementation is another. I wouldn't have really complained about this stuff if it wasn't for the Toyota's superior implementation.