I use cruise control a lot, and I really think that the story is an urban legend. However, it is the responsibility of the driver to determine whether conditions are appropriate for cruise control. I always pay attention to the road and road conditions among many other things while driving, and sometimes I do need to cancel cruise if visibility/road conditions suddenly turn bad since that way I am in full control.

:iagree: 110%

The driver is always supposed to be paying attention. Sadly, this is too often not the case.

You do need to be attentive while using cc at all times. It's no substitute for driving.
When I was going extremely fast with the cc activated (that one time) on a rain slicked road, I had my foot hovering over the brake in case I needed to disengage it quickly. And it helped that the road was straight as a ruler for miles and miles....I was too scared to worry about hydroplaning..I just wanted to get out of the darn storm!
(plus, there were people going much faster than me. One Crown Vic heading the other way must have been going 120 or so....)

I've had mega wheelspin with big engine rev when on cruise control and hit standing water on the road. I was towing a pretty big trailer at the time and it had just been raining a lot. I think it was a combination of the load of towing the trailer and the response time of the cruise control/traction control at those higher speeds.

Not sure what the stability control does at highway speeds in the X5. Other cars I've owned would only use the brakes for traction control up to around 40km/h, above that it would just throttle back.