Adaptive cruise control has made it much more common for people to mindlessly drive in one lane I think.

I've had it on a few hire cars, and could see exactly why people got lazy like that. It starts to back off just at the point when you want to pull out to overtake meaning it's much easier to just let it slow you down until the car in front speeds up or pulls back in. Even when the distance setting was on what I think Clarkson once referred to as "Full Audi", it still backs off very early and then creeps closer and closer to the car in front until you're much too close to have a chance of changing lanes unless there's very little traffic.

I quite like normal cruise control, but I actively avoided using this supposed improved version. I think the adaptive part can usually be switched off, not something I bothered to investigate down eight levels of menus on a hire car I didn't know....

Don't agree at all, its no more likely to make a person stay in one lane than any other form of cruise control.

We have now owned 2 Skodas with Adaptive and the factory set position which leaves a large distance between you and the car ahead is positively dangerous when you, as an example, change lane to leave the motorway. If it senses a car ahead that in reality is at a safe distance it can unexpectedly brake heavily giving the person behind a coronary, but tis can also happen with an a non-adaptive car with the following distance radar. Best thing to do is to cancel it before moving to lane 1, problem solved. We have found in both cars that changing the setting to the closest following distance still leaves loads of space and is no way "full Audi", it leaves plenty of space for idiots to pull into. On the first Superb this could be done in the radio settings menu and was set there until you changed it, in over 3 years we never had to re-set ours. In the new Superb you have to change the setting on the stalk every time you turn cruise on, bit of a faff but you soon remember and it takes just 2 clicks of the small lever (you could do it this way in the first car if you chose to).

Adaptive is set up to prevent you overtaking on the left, if you are in lane 1 and it senses a car going slower in lane 2 it slows you down to their speed. Simple solution, move to lane 3 when safe and overtake legally.

On the Skodas its not possible to turn Adaptive cruise into normal cruise but on the Toyota RAV4 it was.

I could live with either system. On a long drive to Scotland with reasonable traffic normal cruise is fine but in heavy traffic adaptive is brilliant and when combined with DSG (as in the current Superb) it works right down to zero mph (in a manual it stops working at 30mph approx).