Cruise Control

I've been doing a lot of highway driving today.

Once I had cleared the local congested areas and was on open road I activated cruise control. What a luxury that is.

I was remembering back to earlier years before cruise control when I took trips that required extended hours of driving. What contortions I would twist myself into. Crossing my legs one over the the other to give my right foot a break from the accelerator was always my first attempt at relieving driving fatigue.

Later, if the vehicle was roomy enough, I would tuck one foot under my butt just to get the muscles in my leg to flex differently. I'm sure drivers around me were cursing my sudden reduction in speed as I went through my physical readjustments.

There were even times when I asked the person in the passenger seat to lend a foot while I tried to work a cramp out of my leg - because it wouldn't make sense to just pull over and switch drivers now would it?

Standard transmission vehicles increase the difficulty of relieving foot and leg weariness.
Trying to untuck or uncross my legs in time to hit both the brake and clutch pedals was not a challenge I was interested in taking.

Of course, for every pro there is a con. While cruise control does allow me to "drivercise" while maintaining consistent speed, I find that my mind has a tendency to wander when constant monitoring of the speedometer is not required.

Maybe cruise control features should have automatic timers requiring the driver to return to active control of the speed periodically.