I recently made a trip from Michigan to Pennsylvania to pick up my first car – a 1983 Dodge Mirada that my dad has been racing for the past 15 years. We will soon have a full review of how that plush pickup handled the task of towing the car and trailer, but before getting to that, I wanted to look at an interesting feature that I used before picking up the car. The 2025 Ram 1500 Limited is equipped with the brand’s Active Driving Assist program, which includes hands-free driving in certain roads. My trip from Michigan to Pennsylvania was made entirely on roads which support hands-free driving in the newest half-ton Ram, so I had a great chance to experience the company’s first application of self-driving technology.
Before getting into the actual function of the system, I want to point out that the 2025 Ram 1500 Limited it not a self-driving vehicle. You cannot program an address into the system and have the truck drive you there. Active Driving Assist is essentially cruise control on steroids, so when you are driving on the Ohio Turnpike (for example), once you activate the system and set the speed, the truck takes over all activities including full steering, throttle and braking. However, this system does not allow you to sleep during the drive or read a book, going so far as to remind you when you activate the system that you still have to keep your eyes on the road…and it is good at making you keep your eyes on the road.
The Active Driving Assist system is activated via a button pad on the right side of the steering wheel. When you turn the system on, there is a specific screen in the digital gauge cluster that shows a steering wheel with a pair of hands on it, a truck between two lines and an area for the set speed. When you first turn the system on, all of the graphics are white, but when you set the speed and activate the system, all of the graphics turn green. On a road that supports hands-free driving, the green steering wheel graphic shows the hands out away from the wheel, indicating that it is safe to take your hands off of the wheel.
For those wondering, on a road that does not support hands-free driving, you can still activate the Active Driving Assist system, but you have to keep your hands on the steering wheel and provide some steering input. In areas with well-lined roads, the system still handles the vast majority of steering along with all of the throttle and braking, but you have to keep a hand on the wheel at all times.
Hands-Free Driving Across Ohio
I started using the Active Driving Assist system in the 2025 Ram 1500 Limited when driving on I75 south through Michigan, so when I got into Ohio and arrived at the toll station for the I80/90 turnpike headed west, I was pretty familiar and comfortable with the system. When I drove out of that toll station and set the vehicle speed at 70 miles per hour, I waited for the indicator of it being safe to drive hands-free and when that happened, I took my hands off of the steering wheel. I did not provide any steering, throttle or braking input until I reached the toll station on the other side of Ohio. I wasn’t comfortable seeing if the system could navigate the toll station, so I turned if off, guided the truck through the toll system and reset the system on the other side – using it again until I hit I79 in Pennsylvania. Aside from the toll stations, I drove around 185 miles without any driving input on my part.
During that time, I went through several construction zones with very tight lanes and dramatic traffic pattern changes, along with crash traffic that brought us to a crawl for the better part of an hour. At no point during that hands-free drive did the Ram 1500’s Active Driving Assist hands-free system run into any issues. There was even a situation where a tractor trailer cut over into my lane in the accident traffic, but the Ram 1500 just eased to the left and slowed to let the big rig into the lane.
Along the way, there were times when I hit heavier traffic, so I would lower my set speed and when I got to stretches with little traffic, I set the speed up a bit higher, all with the buttons on the steering wheel. When the time came to change lanes, I would use the turn signal level to indicate where I wanted to go, at which point, the truck would change lanes once that desired lane was clear. When it gets to the new lane, I would turn off the indicator and it would stay in that new lane. If you have more lanes, you can keep going over, but the system knows when to stop to avoid going off of the road.
For this long drive across Ohio, I found that the Active Driving Assist system took all of the thought out of that boring drive. I just got to sit there and enjoy the scenery, but as mentioned above, the system makes sure that you keep your eyes on the road. There is a sensor on the steering column that watches your eyes, and when it sees that you look away from the road for more than 5 seconds, the green dash screen flashes yellow and the system tells you to pay attention. If you ignore that warning, at 10 seconds the screen flashes red and the driver’s seat vibrates. That includes staring out the side window, looking at the infotainment screen or looking at your phone. Even if I held my phone up at the top of the steering wheel and tried to stare at my phone that way, the system could tell and after 5 seconds, it would scold me. That being said, for things like flipping through different options on Spotify on the UConnect screen via Android Auto, you can spend more time with your eyes away from the road without any risk of wandering into another lane or hitting a vehicle that slows suddenly.
While it is not a true self-driving system that would allow the driver to read a book or play a game on their phone, I found that the Ram’s Active Driving Assist system makes the driving far more relaxing. I have made the drive across the Ohio Turnpike many times, several times with driving assist systems without hands-free capabilities, and this was definitely the easiest the drive has been. I had more time to take in the sights and to fiddle with the technology in the vehicle, all while being reminded regularly that I still had to pay some attention to the road.
This is a great system for anyone who spends lots of time driving on major highways, especially if you have kids to keep and eye on in the back seat. It would also allow the driver to pay a bit more attention on conversations with passengers without compromising safety due to the driver being distracted.
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