A while back, as you can see in the video, a rock took out half my Lexus emblem, which also acts as the lens for the radar cruise control. I discovered that the Lexus emblem costs around $250 to replace, unless you have radar cruise with collision warning, then it's more like $600.

This is what the damage looked like:





What was interesting is that there is a radar cruise recalibration you can have done on the system (about $340 according to the work invoice), and it was required for this repair. It got me thinking, so I called and asked a question for the person doing the recalibration. I told him that the radar cruise has this very annoying delay, where if a car leaves its line of sight, the system continues to behave as if the car is still in front of me for another 2 or 3 seconds. This is especially bad if I turn off cruise control then turn it back on as a car is turning. What happens is this: a car is slowing to make a turn in front of me, I turn off cruise. The car finishes the turn and now the road is clear, so I hit resume on the cruise control. My car immediately hits the brakes as if the car is still in front of me slowing down. This freaks out people behind me, and often angers them (I'm in the Houston area after all), not to mention very annoying to me as it catches me off guard.

The tech told me that the system unfortunately was designed that way, but that the recalibration might shave off a second or two from the reaction time so I don't feel it as much. That's exactly what happened after I got my car back. The radar cruise still behaves like this, but the delay is almost 1 second or less now, instead of 2 or 3 seconds. I don't know if this is true for all radar cruise types across all car brands, but if you guys ever experience something like this down the road, since many cars (especially Lexus) are getting these systems as standard now, you can always have a recalibration done and see if it helps.