I'd actually had it on all the way down from the 14 and hadn't had any particular reason trafficwise up to that point to turn it off- the traffic really was thin. I have a difficult enough time shoehorning myself into some of these damn cars- it doesn't help you to maneuver any if your foot is cramped up or asleep, so the cruise helps some with that. Having said that, I think in the future I'll be sure to kick it off before the transition to the 5.
Come to think of it, we wound up renting a Ford 500 last month (what an unbelievable POS that thing is- no wonder they're going down the tubes) to take my daughter to a doctor at USC and I hardly used the cruise at all, however the traffic for whatever reason was heavier then as well, all the way up and down- in fact it took us 7 hours to get home from L.A. I never in my life wanted a GPS until that evening. 
We once took the Vgon ('87 GL/auto) down to LAX to pick up my in-laws. Since its top reasonable cruising speed is about 70 I felt like a sitting duck the whole time we were in the L.A. area. I wonder how you folks that live down there deal with that day in and day out.

Cya,
Robert
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Old Volks Home 
  To: Robert Fisher 
  Cc: vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com ; vanagon@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 10:32 PM
  Subject: Re: Another safety point of a Vanagon re: road monsters, was Re: California law (smog)

  What in heaven's name are you doing running CRUISE CONTROL on the I-405 (much less any other freeway in LA)?!  Sparse traffic on the San Diego Freeway is sporadic at best, non-existant most of the time, but in all cases will come to a dead stop (or worse) any time of the day or night. 

  That's just askin' for trouble..........
  -- 
  Jim Thompson (An LA Native)
  84 GL 1.9 "Gloria"
  84 Westfalia 2.1 "Ole Putt"
  73 K Ghia Coupe "Denise"
  72 411 Station Wagon "Pug"
  oldvolkshome@gmail.com
  http://www.oldvolkshome.com
  ***********************************
  On 1/31/07, Robert Fisher <refisher@mchsi.com> wrote: 
    So there I was on the 405 testing the speakers, as it were, and rolling
    along in the second to left lane on cruise control when I decided the fairly 
    sparse traffic was thickening up and I needed to go back to manual.
    <SNIP>
    I'm about to tap my brake to kill the cruise (this car had a
    buttload of steering wheel controls but instead of looking down and trying 
    to find the right button I just decided to do it the old-fashioned way)
    Cya,
    Robert