Škoda vehicles offer a host of driving assistants as part of the standard package or as optional features. These systems aid the driver in various driving situations, making the drive safer and smoother. The assistants fall into four categories: Driving Assistants, Parking Assistants, Safety Assistants, and Information Assistants.
Driving Assistants include Adaptive Cruise Control, which adjusts the set cruise control speed according to the current traffic situation. Then there is Travel Assist, a compilation of multiple driving assistants and features aimed at enhancing comfort and simplifying travel through lateral (Adaptive Lane Assist) and longitudinal (Predictive Cruise Control) vehicle guidance. Other driving assistants include Side Assist, which alerts the driver to any approaching object up to 70 meters behind the car and in the car’s blind spot, and Lane Assist, which uses a forward-facing camera on the windscreen to help keep the car in the lane. The adaptive version can also actively keep the vehicle in the centre of the lane.
To help with parking manoeuvres, Parking Assistants that incorporate state-of-the-art technologies are available for current Škoda vehicles. These systems can handle a wide range of situations with front and rear parking sensors that acoustically and visually relay information about obstacles and their distance from the car. Park Assist performs autonomous parallel parking and can also pull out from a row of parallel-parked vehicles and handle perpendicular parking both forwards and backwards. An extended feature of Park Assist is Trained Parking, which allows the automatic execution of a parking manoeuvre at a known location, such as up a driveway to a garage. Trailer Assist helps drivers handle challenging manoeuvres, such as reverse parking with a trailer. Additionally, Area View, which has four wide-angle cameras at its core, helps to significantly improve parking safety by providing a real-time view of the overall situation around the vehicle on the infotainment display, giving the driver a complete overview for executing the intended manoeuvre. Additionally, customers can look forward to the upcoming introduction of a Remote Parking assistance system, controlled via the Remote Parking App. This app will enable the vehicle to be moved forward and backward while the user conveniently controls it from outside the car.
Safety Assistants – the third category – aim to prevent dangerous situations and collisions. All current Škoda models come with Front Assist with Predictive Pedestrian and Cyclist Protection as standard. This constantly monitors the distance from the vehicle ahead and can recognise pedestrians, activating automatic braking in the event of an imminent collision. Škoda vehicles also feature Emergency Assist, which automatically stops the car if the driver stops actively driving, and Turn Assist, which monitors the traffic in the opposite direction at a junction when the driver is preparing to turn left (for left-hand drive vehicles). Operating at speeds from 2 to 15 km/h, this system can prevent an accident if the driver misjudges the situation. The Exit Warning system, part of the blind spot monitoring system, prevents serious collisions with another vehicle, cyclist, motorcyclist, scooter rider, or runner by visually and acoustically warning the driver and other passengers, when opening the doors of a longitudinally parked vehicle could cause an accident.
Information Assistants – the fourth category – support the driver by closely monitoring traffic information. In this respect, the Traffic Sign Recognition system plays an indispensable role in safety. Not only does it project traffic sign information into the driver’s field of view either on the instrument cluster or head-up display but it also provides this data to other systems, enhancing the utility of features like Predictive Cruise Control.
