Honestly, I have no idea how this is acceptable these days, let alone legal.
Well. Taking both hands off the steering wheel ain’t no help either, Mr 18 Wheeler.
This is like “reverse Nokia”. The then Nokia CEO rejected to adopt touchscreen technology because he thought “people like buttons”. That was the start of Nokia’s demise. Now, car companies took this lesson too zealously and replaced controls with touchscreen, but this completely compromises safety!
Chevy Volt:
YOU HAVE A NEW TEXT MESSAGE FROM 58931 (READ) (LISTEN) (DISMISS)(READ) you cannot read this message while moving (DISMISS)
when WTF did you even offer it to me? We’re just wasting dangerous clicks now!
Similar to Android Auto having a giant Search bar across the map page. You’re not allowed to use it when driving, but it’s always there in the way.
There probably was one in the HUD of the Google car prototypes too.
Weird, that must be some market-specific rules? I can search on Android Auto’s Google Maps while my car is in motion in Sweden.
I don’t usually do it, because I’m not an idiot, but it still lets me do it.
You’re probably right about it being market dependent rules. I have always been annoyed by the search bar not only being useless to me, it pushes the “center” of the map to the right side of the screen, so the symbol indicating your position is never actually centered.
“We’ll set your car up with questionable tech to make you even less safe, and we’ll charge you way more for it.” /s
“And it enables us to remotely brick your vehicle to force you to buy a new one”
My Toyota has an emergency beep and displays “Warning Roads may be icy.” whenever the temp is below freezing. It never fails to startle me and take my eyes off the road.
This sound and warning pops up at a random time after you start driving in the winter. There is no way to disable it. You can disable the seatbelt warning.
I just rented a brand new Ford Explorer and tried on the lane assist and it’s the stupidest thing, I would never waster money to pay extra for that “feature”
From what I can tell it doesn’t have an actually sensor in the steering wheel to tell if your hands on on the wheel, so instead it judges that by the fact that there is “resistance” or “feedback” from you turning the wheel or slowing it from turning while adjusting to stay in the lane.
However, this means that when you hit a straight stretch of road, and have no need to adjust the wheel physically, it blares a “KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE WHEEL” warning at you until you move the wheel a little bit. So on a straight stretch of road you have to unnecessarily weave left and right a bit in order for the car to not get pissed at you.
If you don’t and the car thinks you don’t have your hands on the wheel it just turns the system off. So fuck you apparently, they’ll let you weave off out of the lane on purpose if you’re having a medical emergency and can’t keep your hands on the wheel and relying on the lane assist to slow down safely.
I have such a system in my Corolla Cross, and I’d like to add that on top of all that - sometimes the system looses track of the lane and thus cannot follow it. Which is reasonable - it’s only… nonhuman. What is not reasonable is that the only indication for that is a small indicator on the dashboard switching color from green to gray. That big-ass warning shouting at you? That’s reserved for when you didn’t play with the wheel for too long.
Mine tries to take exits on the freeway. It will follow the line on the right of the car and when there’s an exit it pulls towards the exit even when I’m not wanting to go that way. Thanks Honda.
My car does this, but it’s the same “bong” sound as when a warning light comes on – it’s not really distracting, but every time my heart sinks and I think, “what’s wrong with the car now?”
My mom’s Rav4 would do this, and they clearly forgot to think about shifting temperatures, something that surely doesn’t happen when driving at 100kph?
It bongs and flashes the display every time the temperature goes under 5c. So if it’s 4/5C out it’ll keep bonging every time it switches between the two readings. I’ve had it happen multiple times within a couple minutes.
Also really annoying going in and out of tunnels in winter, of which there are a lot of here.
Thankfully the dealer was able to disable it, after it was a couple years old…
What’s a “warning road”? It doesn’t snow where I live so I don’t think we have those here.
There aren’t “Warning roads”, the message is usually laid out like this:
WARNING
Roads may be icy
I’m just making fun of their lack of proper punctuation.
I have a 2023 Honda Passport, and when the Collision Assist Warning (or whatever the hell it’s called) is active, when it thinks you should apply the brakes it flashes “BRAKE” in big red letters right in the middle of the dashboard. It’s incredibly distracting, and almost guarantees I’ll be looking at IT rather than whatever I should be braking for.
My favorite part of my honda accord is when I try to avoid an obstacle on the road and the lane keep assist system decides to take control of my steering wheel and jerk me in the obstacle’s direction.
That’s why I turn lane assist off, it kept jerking me back when taking exit ramps because the painted lines were inconsistent and it gave so many false positives.
If you use your turn signal it doesn’t do that.
Guess mine was possessed and did it despite the turn signal.
Do you flick the turn signal? My Kia doesn’t cause me any problems if I do it before actually turning in that direction
This is what I see in this post. I have not been driving tons of modern cars, but I did drive a dozen or so with this feature. Never had any issues with this.
Firstly - using blinker disables lane assist. Anyone mentioning “I use exit line and it doesn’t let me” had outed themselves as BMW drivers/not using blinker when needed. “Avoiding debris” - yeah, sure… Keep distance, watch the road, glance at the mirrors to be aware of everything around you, and certainly do no speedup.
Secondly - this may vary to each brand/model but for the ones I drove it only just slightly makes it harder to leave the lane. Using bit more strength would still lead you to leave the lane. Kind of similar to a car without a power steering. Doubt that safety standards would let wheel lock you in the lane while changing lanes without a blinker.
Other than that, technically these features are nice-to-haves and are not a necessity. Not being able to turn them off is quite a PITA, I agree.
Ah yes, using the turn signal is the first thing I think of when avoiding road debris.
Correct: if you see an obstacle and have to do something, swerving without signals is dangerous. Braking is the first maneuver you think of, if you are out of time to decide.
And flicking a turn signal (if you do it every time you turn) takes milliseconds and comes naturally.Depends on whether you have milliseconds available when surprised by something the car before you swerved around. I like keeping my hands on the wheel when steering suddenly.
Maybe learn the old addage “3 car length minimum between you and the person in front of you”
Maybe learn to read?
You can be at a safe following distance for traffic, and have debris in the road that isn’t stationary that takes a second or two to judge where it is going while braking and still needing to swerve because it is approaching faster than a hard braking car. Like stuff that falls off a construction vehicle and the car in front of you swerved around. There was plenty of time to brake if they stopped short, but this isn’t the same thing.
Guess I could signal the moment I swerved but not sure how that is going to be helpful to anyone behind me to tell them what I am already doing.
Also, three car lengths isn’t nearly far enough in slow traffic, and deadly on highways.
If the car in the front swerved and you have milliseconds, that only means you didn’t keep a safe distance.
If that happens, you’re following too closely.
And/or not looking ahead far enough
Unless something falls onto the road right in front of you, and you have to guess whether it will roll or move and which way you might want to go which takes time even with plenty of following distance. If I’m guessing which way I might need to go to avoid an object in front of me signaling is the least important thing. People behind me can slow down when I slam on the brakes and start swerving.
Apparently everyone things all debris in the road is stationary. Stopping distance between the car in front is based on it slowing down over a distance as opposed to stationary or relatively stationary debris which is a lot less distance.
I’m on your side in this discussion but it’s pretty easy to use a turn signal while keeping hands on the wheel.
In any situation I find myself driving a car with that system, I always disable it before setting off. Several instances like that in my own experience just proved that it can never be trusted, even to just leave things alone when they need to be.
I now have a car with that system after having an old dumb car for the preceding 20+ yrs of driving, and I keep it off by default, and turn it on only when I know I’ll be slightly distracted for a few minutes.
It was just too difficult to get used to, and frankly it was so sensitive to where it was that just being near the edge of the road, where I like to ride to give other drivers as much space as possible because I don’t trust them, set it off and it fought against me constantly, causing far more swerving than I’d otherwise do… it’s also a giant asshole about country driving, where lane markers only apply when theres other cars around.
I could see it being useful for new drivers who never had to learn to do fully manual driving, though, the same way power steering was a useful change that was difficult to adjust to for those who learned without it.
this is why I won’t buy a newer car. it’s so goddamn distracting and dangerous. not to mention pretty much all new cars have LED headlights and I’d rather not be a threat to everybody else on the road
Worse is auto LED headlight smart dimming. It tries to brighten on dark stretches and dim when it thinks there are oncoming cars. It will never let your eyes get accustomed to night driving. Too many reflective curve\turn signs like these…
And it will dim to its lowest legal setting thinking, “lots of cars!”, leaving you to complete the datk curve with a, “oh sh🤬 did my headlight just burn out?!” feeling.
Jesus. From this thread, it sounds like driving a modern-made car means having an anxious back-seat driver that you can’t kick out constantly trying to mess with your settings and telling you you’re driving wrong.
It reminds me to take good care of my 10+ year old car…
Don’t worry, it’s all bullshit. Kia Ceen SW '22:
- keeps you in lane, but if you try to sharply turn, it will let you, you will feel a bit of resistance, but barely on a “notice it’s against it” level. If you turn the blinker on, zero resistance.
- there is an auto near-far lights system, but it’s disabled by default, I only turn it on when he road constantly switches between villages and dark highway, and it does it’s job well
- it has adaptive cruise control so it holds the distance automatically. It is super awesome during long trips, because you just control what it does, and don’t have to hit the brakes whenever some asshole swerves in front of you (because you keep a good distance, right?:) )
On the bright side it’s usually easier to get them to quiet.
Cars should have a universal “I’m the captain” button, that shuts off all automated & assist shit, and leaves it to the human. The amount of times I’ve rented a car and it’s screaming at me every 30 seconds about something is just distracting and dangerous.
Kias beep when you turn without signals, but you still can do that. And if you’re on adaptive cruise and you break, it just turns it off. So it doesn’t dorce you to turn, not turn, or to keep going if you break. And it saved me already - I was angry on my gps and didn’t watch the road for 20 seconds. the highway started turning quicte sharply, the car beeped and yanked the steering wheel to the left so to keep me from running into the guard on the side.
Jesus my father’s Avalon does the same thing. You’re maneuvering in traffic and then there’s a beep and a blinking light from the dashboard.
Yeah but an ebike almost hit me once /s
Some brands are already trying to push ads on the car screen.
Was taking a carshare somewhere and, while driving on the highway, the car’s massive digital monitor switched to some sort of notice like this that hid the map the driver was using, forcing them to figure out how to exit it and go back to the map he needed while he was driving. I always knew those screens were dumb, but I hadn’t thought they were that dumb. They’re a fucking menace.
I rented a car that would lock you out of the stereo controls while backing up. It would also auto-connect your phone and then start playing music at the last volume setting
the number of times I was backing up attentively only to have music start blaring mid-manoeuvre and startling me, forcing me to either hurry up so I could get the volume button back or stop so I could access it asap…
we eventually got used to it but damn the first few days we kept forgetting to turn it ALL the way down instead of just a reasonable level
such a fucking stupid design choice. fuck you, Chrysler
Relevant Hank Green video about this
Here I am getting annoyed that my Android Auto wouldn’t automatically start, and instead I have to wait until module loads to click AA button on the screen. (I can hit it while driving) 2017 Peugeot if anyone is interested.
Fuck this shit, really. Who in the fuck needs a reminder that they need to drive safe. Who wants to see instructions on how to pair their phone with an app that is a paid subscription? That should be banned.
The best part is that the Ioniq 5 doesn’t do this in Europe. (at least not my friends one here in Norway)
Was just going to mention that
System Developer: We did our job boys, no legal penalties.
Same reason car manuals are terribly written
Also, the climate controls are now only accessible through the touchscreen. Buried under 3 levels of sub menus.
It won’t be long before turn signals and windshield wipers are behind a sub menu
Didn’t Tesla already do that?
Wipers yes, turn signals no, at least in Europe.
Some Teslas have the indicators as buttons on the wheel. Terrible design.
And a monthly fee.
Cars should not have screens. Maybe a tiny one in the dash for error messages, but anything bigger than a matchbox should be illegal.
It’s nice for navigation and rear camera view, I guess. But yeah, it’s function should mostly be limited to be an output device and not an input device.
Our car has a decently large screen. When reversing, it’s invaluable. You can see more than if you turned around and looked, it’s that good. I’d never go back to a shitty 2 inch reversing camera.
I tried to use the reversing camera for a while until it completely missed the person walking by with their knee almost on my bumper and I nearly ran them over. Now I just look behind me.
How did it miss the person? You couldn’t see them?
Our new car has quite a wide angle on the camera, our older ones didn’t have that. But for sure it’s something you use in combination with looking, the reversing camera is for directly behind where you can’t see with mirrors. You should still turn your head as well to check traffic (and people) coming from the sides. You also look in your side mirrors too. You don’t just pick one.
It was a parking lot and I was flanked by two SUVs. I don’t think the car was that old, 2018ish maybe? The angle on the camera didn’t show her but when I checked my mirrors and turned around there she was. I usually do check the mirrors before turning around (which is why she didn’t get run over). I just don’t bother with the cameras anymore because they’re superfluous and apparently unreliable.
When I’m in a parking lot and flanked by two SUVs then that’s then the camera is invaluable! I can’t see shit like that, but the camera with a wide angle on the back of the car can show cars coming as soon as I reverse up just a bit to poke the back end out.
Reversing cameras are certainly not the only tool to use when checking, but it’s worth noting that kids under 5 (and especially around 2-3) get squashed at a much higher rate than kids tall enough to be seen out the rear window. I highly recommend glancing at the camera even if you’re not trusting it.
invaluable is a bit much.
valuable, yes. not invaluable.
unless you’re driving a canyonero, in which case that’s on you for buying a canyonero
That’s only because the pillars are getting fatter and the rear widows are getting smaller.
I’ve literally never driven a car with any sort of external camera and I parallel park without issue like almost every day. Head swivel and mirrors. Are y’all saying this isn’t something you’d be comfortable doing without a camera?
What, parallel park? I can do that fine, the camera is great for two things. Not running over kids and backing out of car parks where you can’t see shit.
If you have an overhead camera view, then the third thing is seeing how perfectly you parked in between the car park lines, but thats less of a necessity and more of a look how great I am thing.
For the record, this is all stuff you should be able to do dependably without a camera too. Not to belittle the convenience of course, but I’d worry about developing a reliance on it.
Ultimately stats show that kids under 5 (and especially around 2-3) get squashed at a much higher rate than kids that are tall enough to be seen out the back window. Rear view cameras are a tool and I highly recommend using that tool as an added tool in your toolbox.
For these two scenarios (1.short kids and 2. can’t see shit when backing out of a park), the alternative is to drive back slowly and hope.
I also wonder to what extent this is a particular issue with larger vehicles. Most of my parking maneuvers are performed with a Mk5 Golf, a very small car where I have near-complete visibility from the driver’s seat, and the practicality of that size was part of the appeal for me.
I find the issue is when you are parked between two large vehicles!
easy fix is to back in instead of out. can’t remember the last time I pulled forward into a spot
You don’t have much angle parking where you live? This is the predominant form of roadside parking near shops where I live. Not really possible to back into a spot.
no angle parking, all parallel
good point though. can be avoided with better street design, too, and sometimes it is unavoidable for the driver
Safety for the manufacturers’ liability
