What Does This Button Do in the 2017 Infiniti Q60?
CARS.COM — Agoraphobia sufferers scared to leave their own house might find this button inside the 2017 Infiniti Q60 comforting. The top-down outline of the car surrounded by a series of circles looks like a force field to protect occupants from other cars, electromagnetic pulses or an alien invasion. Located on the Q60’s steering wheel and called the dynamic driver assistance button, it turns on active assist features that can identify potential collisions and alert the driver as well as course-correct to prevent an accident.
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The dynamic driver assistance button activates three features: lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring and the city-friendly Distance Control Assist.
The Q60’s lane keep assist, called Lane Departure Prevention, uses a camera to monitor lane markings and alert the driver when the vehicle wanders outside of a lane, and it will apply corrective measures to guide the vehicle back in the lane when the audible warning isn’t heeded.
Infiniti’s blind spot monitoring has a traditional monitoring system that uses radar to determine when a vehicle is in your blind spot, but it also will apply corrective braking to guide the car back to the center of the lane if the driver makes a move when a car is identified in its blind spot.
Distance Control Assist is my favorite, however. In stop-and-go traffic, the Q60 stops itself without intervention from the driver. It first senses the car ahead and pushes back on the accelerator pedal to warn of an upcoming vehicle, then automatically applies the brakes to slow and then stop behind the car ahead. The feature isn’t attached to an adaptive cruise control mode but is an independent feature that’s a great perk in bumper-to-bumper city traffic.
Each of the features associated with the steering-wheel mounted button are fairly common driving aids for a luxury car. Putting the control at the driver’s fingertips is a nice touch, however, and the features are also individually customizable within the Q60’s settings so drivers can decide which ones are activated by the button.
