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My brand new car has a feature called forward attention warning which is driving me insane. It is essentially a small camera located at the steering wheel colum

My brand new car has a feature called forward attention warning which is driving me insane. It is essentially a small camera located at the steering wheel column which emit a series of high beeps and have an eye icon blink in the dashboard if the car doesn't think I am looking forward. Cases in which this can happen. - I orient myself before overtaking another car on the highway or motorway. - I position my hand wrong on the steering wheel and the camera can no longer see me. - I put on sunglasses when I am driving against a low sun. It can be turned off, but if you live in the EU it is required to enable itself once the car has been turned off/on. It will also happily warn me if it thinks I am speeding based on errornous gps data. This feature also turns itself back on once the car has been turned off.

Blackthorn 1y ago
In a lot of places in the world you can return new cars. I would return one that did that. Manufacturers won't get the hints until they start seeing returns wreck their bottom line.
- trinix912 1y ago
  Wouldn't that wreck your credit score though? Pardon my ignorance.
  - tupac_speedrap 1y ago
    I don't know the law in your country but most forms of credit have a 'cooling off' period where you can return the money or asset and reset the credit agreement within a certain time but I'm not sure if doing it a lot in a small period of time would flag to a future creditor though.
- epolanski 1y ago
  Manufacturers can't do anything about it if it's required by law.
  - bruce343434 1y ago
    They can lobby the politicians
    - epolanski 1y ago
      Why would they on such things? In any case, it's law, there's no coming back from this.
      - gffrd 1y ago
        possibilities: (1) they get lots of angry customers and bad press, and are tired of being made to look bad because of gov req's (2) it costs them more to manufacture all the fancy nanny tech, so their bottom line would be positively impacted by rolling back the requirement for it
      - newdee 1y ago
        Laws are immutable now?
      - account42 1y ago
        > Why would they on such things? Read the context of what you are replying to.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      They do. They know this will make cars more expensive and most people don't want any of it.
      - foobarchu 1y ago
        If a substantial portion of people refused to keep buying them, that's data supporting the repeal. If people just keep buying them, then the lawmakers get to go "no see the people like it".
  - Mawr 1y ago
    The law requires bad design/implementation?
idontwantthis 1y ago
My subaru will beep and flash a signal to let me know that it can’t see the lanes well enough to use the lane departure warning. A safety feature takes my eyes and ears off of the road to let me know that it is not keeping me safe for the moment.
- mdavidn 1y ago
  On my spouse's 2019 model, I could disable that alert in the menus. Even after I disabled every alert in the menus, the car still emits an urgent tone with an unknown meaning.
  - idontwantthis 1y ago
    The thing is that I like the safety feature itself. It’s just asinine that it distracts me to tell me that for the next 1 second it’s not keeping me safe. Also the fact that there is absolutely nothing it changes in my driving behavior when it is off. I’m still the one driving.
    - mdavidn 1y ago
      I just drive with lane keeping enabled. The car will keep itself in the lane without audibly alerting me. If I really wanted to depart the lane, e.g. to avoid debris or to give a cyclist more space, the blinker or a slight nudge of the steering wheel will override it.
      - idontwantthis 1y ago
        I’m talking about it alerting me that it has turned off for a moment because the lane isn’t marked well enough.
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  My Tesla often beeps loudly at things I have my focus on completely to let me know that I don’t have focus on them, thereby forcing me to look around to see if I missed something and making me lose focus on the thing i needed to focus on. The one that annoys me the most is the one right near where I live where a wider street becomes a narrower street, which makes my car think I’m going to rear end parked cars at 30mph and always beeps loudly. Even when I know it’s coming, it startles me and makes me lose focus, sometimes when there’s pedestrians trying to cross the street. Very dangerous.
alterom 1y ago
Thanks, looks like I'll be repairing my 2010 Honda Fit (Jazz in EU markets) forever to avoid getting anything of the sort of antifeatures you describe. That, or the manufacturers and regulators wisening up, but I ain't holding my breath for that. Same with touchscreen controls in a vehicle.
- mdavidn 1y ago
  Honda was still good in recent years. I drive a 2024 Honda CR-V. No tones that annoy me. No interior cameras. All of the important controls are still physical.
IshKebab 1y ago
I'm generally pro-EU but they sure know how to not fix things by annoying people as much as possible. C.f. the cookie laws, headphone volume warnings, etc.
- rapnie 1y ago
  Cookie dialogs easily avoided wherever companies care about their customers/users.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    Is this the sort of naive reasoning that led to the law in the first place?
    - fsflover 1y ago
      The EU didn't force the banners. They restricted opt-out data collection without consent, which is a good thing to do. The banners is malicious compliance.
    - account42 1y ago
      And what lead to the banners is the knowledge that people like you would blame the law instead of the companies.
  - bmacho 1y ago
    And they are getting better. I don't remember when was the last time a cookie dialogue forced me to uncheck 10+ switches, and making me angry that they give my browsing history to 1000+ random ad companies--I unironically miss that daily dosage of anger (against ad people and not the EU). Most of them are one-click nowadays, just as intended. (Still bad on phones tho, especially javascript disabled.)
    - IshKebab 1y ago
      Yeah now they say "accept all or subscribe". Much better!
jollyllama 1y ago
Why'd you buy it?
- SuzukiBrian 1y ago
  Because it's otherwise a great car. I did notice the problems during the test-drive, but I figured it wasn't a problem, since it could be turned off in the console. So I turned them off and forgot all about it. I would never have imagined that some obscure EU-regulation, that I've never heard about, would require them to turn back on.
- mort96 1y ago
  You can't avoid cars with these anti-features if you want a new car. They're required by law in the EU.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    Catalytic converters are required by law too, yet I know plenty who have done a "cat delete" on their vehicle. As a simpler example, pulling the seatbelt chime fuse was a common mod long ago when I grew up. You may want to check if the modding scene has any solutions for your make and model.
    - bzzzt 1y ago
      If you modify your car in such a way in the EU it won’t pass the mandatory yearly inspection which means it’s no longer road legal.
      - userbinator 1y ago
        You obviously restore your mods before the inspections, and redo them afterwards. Even the "stupid Americans" know that much. ;-)
  - jollyllama 1y ago
    Yeah, that's why I don't buy new cars. Put up or shut up.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
vasco 1y ago
The assist to keep you in the lane that also auto turns on has been the only cause of 3 near crashes I've had, when renting cars. Never have I even had a slightly dangerous situation other than this bullshit turning the fucking wheel for me. Who the heck thinks that a machine knows best if it should turn the wheel than a human, with eyes, driving? I cannot understand how it ever helped anyone and it's much worse than just a beep, literally trying to steer against you.
- SuzukiBrian 1y ago
  I actually knew about this one going in, since it's been a requirement for a bit longer. My Hyundai has two modes, one where it simply beeps if you cross the lines without the turn-signal and the dangerous one where it locks the steering wheel. Only the slightly annoying beeping one seems to be mandatory, the extremely dangerous steering wheel locking one isn't. Otherwise I wouldn't have bought the car at all.
  - vanviegen 1y ago
    Steering wheel lock? Is that seriously a thing, or is that a strong exaggeration? My car just gently applies a tiny bit of force on the steering wheel, to keep the car in the lane. It's very easy to override manually. In fact, it feels quite similar to moving out of pretty shallows ruts in te road, and could even be mistaken for it.
    - SuzukiBrian 1y ago
      No, it will actively prevent you from turning the wheel if it means you will go outside your lane. It does have threshold if you struggle enough, in which case it will simply undo the lock and you get to jerk the wheel dangerously in that direction. If you use the turn signal it won't lock the wheel, but if child suddenly runs into the road and you will try avoiding a collision, you'd better remember to use the turn signal first.
- foresto 1y ago
  This reminds me of how Boeing introduced an automatic nose-down feature in the 737 MAX, meant to compensate for its higher-mounted engines causing nose-up during takeoff. According to a video I saw, they didn't make pilots aware of this change from the older 737, nor train them in how to recognize it or turn it off, and its behavior in response to a bad angle of attack reading turned out to be deadly. I think this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5KQ0g_-qJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5KQ0g_-qJs Keywords: 737 MAX MCAS trim
trinix912 1y ago
I've found that disabling the lane assist in my 2020 Civic permanently disables that too. It's an EU model. For anyone looking for a solution, try if this solves it (if you wouldn't miss the lane assist, of course).
- SuzukiBrian 1y ago
  Unfortunately as I've later learned, it's a requirement in all cars in the EU from 2025, so there is no way to disable it permanently. Thank you for the suggestion though.
  - orwin 1y ago
    My understanding was that it is only required for lane assist/cruise control, unless i misunderstood. Hopefully if you deactivate those, your car will allow disabling this "feature".
    - SuzukiBrian 1y ago
      No, it is mandatory for all new cars in the EU since 2025 and while you can turn them off, they will turn themselves on again once the car has been turned off. It doesn't matter if you use lane assist or cruise control. Unfortunately.
      - Terr_ 1y ago
        I wonder if there's a market for a little device that taps into the CAN-bus(es) and auto-applies your desired settings on startup.
        SuzukiBrian 1y ago
        My dealer suggested that I cover the sensor with electrical tape, since that is what all his other customers were doing. It will then just give off a single warning when you start the car telling you, that the forward attention warning is disabled. I have since learned that you can put some tinfoil between the sensor and the tape and seemingly disable it completely without any alarms going off. With that in mind I wouldn't be surprised if there was a market for a gadget that remove all the hassle. I am definitely not alone with this issue.
thedanbob 1y ago
I rented a car in the UK a few years ago and by the end of the trip I was ready to set it on fire. - Adaptive cruise control would randomly slam on the brakes on the motorway (just passed a 30 kph exit, the speed limit must be 30 now!), or match speed with a car in the next lane that was I trying to pass - Emergency braking would trigger if I got too close to a car that was turning out of my lane, or a shrub while parking - Lane assist reenabled itself every time I started the car - Radar system would fail every ~3 starts, which would disable adaptive cruise control (ok) and blast a warning sound (bad) At least now I know that if I'm shopping for a car in the future, one of my criteria needs to be "won't actively try to kill me".
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- morpheos137 1y ago
  Ren
- phatskat 1y ago
  I rented a car in the states last time I visited family and it was mostly ok - the touchscreen controlled all the heat/cool through convoluted menus but thankfully had dedicated buttons to kind of control climate? But worse was it would use a camera to read speed signs and therein we had these issues: - Misreading signs - Reading signs that didn’t exist - Every time it read a new sign it would “helpfully” yell that I was over the speed limit if for example I was coasting down from a 45 to 35 zone, along with scary flashing visuals on the dash
mort96 1y ago
There is truly a scourge in the EU of increasingly intrusive "safety features" which I truly believe are making cars less safe. I've been driving a family member's new Nissan. Nice car for the most part, but it has this "safety" feature (that's on by default and cannot be permanently switched off, thanks to the EU) which watches out for the white stripe on the right-hand side of the road and JERKS THE STEERING WHEEL when it thinks you're "too close". Where I often drive, there are many narrow roads. No yellow line in the middle of the road. The only way to avoid hitting oncoming traffic is to drive with your wheels on the white stripe when you meet another vehicle. This can be stressful enough in itself, especially when the other vehicle is some huge bus or semi truck. Not exactly the time you want alarms going off AND YOUR STEERING WHEEL TURNING BY ITSELF. I've taken to calling it the car's auto-crash feature. Always gotta remember to disable the auto-crash. Every time I start the car. I got so annoyed I looked up the relevant directive. Turns out new cars are required to have a lane assist feature. It is required to turn itself on automatically, and it is required to warn the driver using at least 2 out of the 3 methods: sound, visuals, haptic. So the steering wheel jerking isn't even just a bad implementation, it's the law. Sigh.
- star-glider 1y ago
  I recently got back from Europe; rented a car. This "feature" is _insanely_ dangerous. Whatever idiot bureaucrat decided that having crappy machine vision software jerk the steering wheel around while you're driving should be sent to an island somewhere. The damn thing tried to kill me every time we came up on a construction area on the freeway, because it got completely flummoxed by the lane realignment. I couldn't turn it off until we parked the car, and we were on the freeway. Fighting that piece of crap for an hour made for the most exhausting drive of my life. Far from being mandated, I can't believe that safety regulators allow _anything_ to jerk around the wheel at 60MPH.
  - vanviegen 1y ago
    Or you could look at some of the research, which suggest that this feature may in fact reduce fatalities significantly (I'm finding estimates in the 20 to 25% range). Well done idiot bureaucrat! https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/fewer-drivers-are-opting-out-of-lane-departure-prevention https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/fewer-drivers-are-opting-ou... https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813663 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
xenadu02 1y ago
On the Kia EV 9 I had to go in and disable lane assist (which you can still disable here in the US). It was downright dangerous, jerking the steering wheel at seemingly random times when it gets confused.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
> is required to enable itself once the car has been turned off/on Get an older car. Screw panopticon tyranny.
UomoNeroNero 1y ago
I’ll keep my stupid, non-digital 2010 car running until the day I die. They’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. I’d rather register it as a vintage car and keep driving it.
- userbinator 1y ago
  Mine is over 50 years old. It's been upgraded with a few "modern" features like distance sensors, rear cameras, and a GPS, but those are actually useful and won't actively fight me.
unethical_ban 1y ago
It sounds like some of these things need to be disabled by pulling a fuse, or else disabled via button every time the car is on, like a takeoff checklist for an airplane. I hear a lot of people do that for the auto start/stop feature on cars in the US. And the INEOS Grenadier, which has an alarm go off if it detects you are going above the speed limit. Every time you turn the car on, you have to navigate a touchscreen menu to turn that off.
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
A friend of mine spends the first minute of all trips in their car turning off all the auto-safety BS loaded in by regulation these days. All on by default the next time the car is switched on. Also, I pretty much wear sunglasses 100% of the time I'm either outdoors or driving. That attention detection is not fit for purpose. Squinting through road glare literally makes me tired. The dangers imposed on self and society by driving are poorly matched to the requirements of getting a license. Unfortunately participation in much of society requires the ability to drive one's self from one place to another; it's been built around this requirement.
kjkjadksj 1y ago
Why not return the car for an actual sane one from 5 years ago?
- SuzukiBrian 1y ago
  I would, but once I fully understood the problem it was too late to return it. When I got the car I simply turned off the features, and because I don't drive a lot I didn't notice that the car would turn them on again until I was outside the return period. I really just didn't have the imagination to think that it could possibly be a problem. Even the manual says that it stays turned off once disabled.
watwut 1y ago
I live in EU and my car does not have any of that.
- therein 1y ago
  Obviously the reason will be revealed as you get into questions like what year was your car manufactured and at which stage of integration is your country.
- SuzukiBrian 1y ago
  It's required in new cars from 2025 and onwards.

Blackthorn 1y ago

In a lot of places in the world you can return new cars. I would return one that did that. Manufacturers won't get the hints until they start seeing returns wreck their bottom line.

trinix912 1y ago
Wouldn't that wreck your credit score though? Pardon my ignorance.
- tupac_speedrap 1y ago
  I don't know the law in your country but most forms of credit have a 'cooling off' period where you can return the money or asset and reset the credit agreement within a certain time but I'm not sure if doing it a lot in a small period of time would flag to a future creditor though.
epolanski 1y ago
Manufacturers can't do anything about it if it's required by law.
- bruce343434 1y ago
  They can lobby the politicians
  - epolanski 1y ago
    Why would they on such things? In any case, it's law, there's no coming back from this.
    - gffrd 1y ago
      possibilities: (1) they get lots of angry customers and bad press, and are tired of being made to look bad because of gov req's (2) it costs them more to manufacture all the fancy nanny tech, so their bottom line would be positively impacted by rolling back the requirement for it
    - newdee 1y ago
      Laws are immutable now?
    - account42 1y ago
      > Why would they on such things? Read the context of what you are replying to.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    They do. They know this will make cars more expensive and most people don't want any of it.
    - foobarchu 1y ago
      If a substantial portion of people refused to keep buying them, that's data supporting the repeal. If people just keep buying them, then the lawmakers get to go "no see the people like it".
- Mawr 1y ago
  The law requires bad design/implementation?

idontwantthis 1y ago

My subaru will beep and flash a signal to let me know that it can’t see the lanes well enough to use the lane departure warning. A safety feature takes my eyes and ears off of the road to let me know that it is not keeping me safe for the moment.

mdavidn 1y ago
On my spouse's 2019 model, I could disable that alert in the menus. Even after I disabled every alert in the menus, the car still emits an urgent tone with an unknown meaning.
- idontwantthis 1y ago
  The thing is that I like the safety feature itself. It’s just asinine that it distracts me to tell me that for the next 1 second it’s not keeping me safe. Also the fact that there is absolutely nothing it changes in my driving behavior when it is off. I’m still the one driving.
  - mdavidn 1y ago
    I just drive with lane keeping enabled. The car will keep itself in the lane without audibly alerting me. If I really wanted to depart the lane, e.g. to avoid debris or to give a cyclist more space, the blinker or a slight nudge of the steering wheel will override it.
    - idontwantthis 1y ago
      I’m talking about it alerting me that it has turned off for a moment because the lane isn’t marked well enough.
darth_avocado 1y ago
My Tesla often beeps loudly at things I have my focus on completely to let me know that I don’t have focus on them, thereby forcing me to look around to see if I missed something and making me lose focus on the thing i needed to focus on. The one that annoys me the most is the one right near where I live where a wider street becomes a narrower street, which makes my car think I’m going to rear end parked cars at 30mph and always beeps loudly. Even when I know it’s coming, it startles me and makes me lose focus, sometimes when there’s pedestrians trying to cross the street. Very dangerous.

alterom 1y ago

Thanks, looks like I'll be repairing my 2010 Honda Fit (Jazz in EU markets) forever to avoid getting anything of the sort of antifeatures you describe. That, or the manufacturers and regulators wisening up, but I ain't holding my breath for that. Same with touchscreen controls in a vehicle.

mdavidn 1y ago
Honda was still good in recent years. I drive a 2024 Honda CR-V. No tones that annoy me. No interior cameras. All of the important controls are still physical.

IshKebab 1y ago

I'm generally pro-EU but they sure know how to not fix things by annoying people as much as possible. C.f. the cookie laws, headphone volume warnings, etc.

rapnie 1y ago
Cookie dialogs easily avoided wherever companies care about their customers/users.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Is this the sort of naive reasoning that led to the law in the first place?
  - fsflover 1y ago
    The EU didn't force the banners. They restricted opt-out data collection without consent, which is a good thing to do. The banners is malicious compliance.
  - account42 1y ago
    And what lead to the banners is the knowledge that people like you would blame the law instead of the companies.
- bmacho 1y ago
  And they are getting better. I don't remember when was the last time a cookie dialogue forced me to uncheck 10+ switches, and making me angry that they give my browsing history to 1000+ random ad companies--I unironically miss that daily dosage of anger (against ad people and not the EU). Most of them are one-click nowadays, just as intended. (Still bad on phones tho, especially javascript disabled.)
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    Yeah now they say "accept all or subscribe". Much better!

jollyllama 1y ago

Why'd you buy it?

SuzukiBrian 1y ago
Because it's otherwise a great car. I did notice the problems during the test-drive, but I figured it wasn't a problem, since it could be turned off in the console. So I turned them off and forgot all about it. I would never have imagined that some obscure EU-regulation, that I've never heard about, would require them to turn back on.
mort96 1y ago
You can't avoid cars with these anti-features if you want a new car. They're required by law in the EU.
- userbinator 1y ago
  Catalytic converters are required by law too, yet I know plenty who have done a "cat delete" on their vehicle. As a simpler example, pulling the seatbelt chime fuse was a common mod long ago when I grew up. You may want to check if the modding scene has any solutions for your make and model.
  - bzzzt 1y ago
    If you modify your car in such a way in the EU it won’t pass the mandatory yearly inspection which means it’s no longer road legal.
    - userbinator 1y ago
      You obviously restore your mods before the inspections, and redo them afterwards. Even the "stupid Americans" know that much. ;-)
- jollyllama 1y ago
  Yeah, that's why I don't buy new cars. Put up or shut up.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

vasco 1y ago

The assist to keep you in the lane that also auto turns on has been the only cause of 3 near crashes I've had, when renting cars. Never have I even had a slightly dangerous situation other than this bullshit turning the fucking wheel for me. Who the heck thinks that a machine knows best if it should turn the wheel than a human, with eyes, driving? I cannot understand how it ever helped anyone and it's much worse than just a beep, literally trying to steer against you.

SuzukiBrian 1y ago
I actually knew about this one going in, since it's been a requirement for a bit longer. My Hyundai has two modes, one where it simply beeps if you cross the lines without the turn-signal and the dangerous one where it locks the steering wheel. Only the slightly annoying beeping one seems to be mandatory, the extremely dangerous steering wheel locking one isn't. Otherwise I wouldn't have bought the car at all.
- vanviegen 1y ago
  Steering wheel lock? Is that seriously a thing, or is that a strong exaggeration? My car just gently applies a tiny bit of force on the steering wheel, to keep the car in the lane. It's very easy to override manually. In fact, it feels quite similar to moving out of pretty shallows ruts in te road, and could even be mistaken for it.
  - SuzukiBrian 1y ago
    No, it will actively prevent you from turning the wheel if it means you will go outside your lane. It does have threshold if you struggle enough, in which case it will simply undo the lock and you get to jerk the wheel dangerously in that direction. If you use the turn signal it won't lock the wheel, but if child suddenly runs into the road and you will try avoiding a collision, you'd better remember to use the turn signal first.
foresto 1y ago
This reminds me of how Boeing introduced an automatic nose-down feature in the 737 MAX, meant to compensate for its higher-mounted engines causing nose-up during takeoff. According to a video I saw, they didn't make pilots aware of this change from the older 737, nor train them in how to recognize it or turn it off, and its behavior in response to a bad angle of attack reading turned out to be deadly. I think this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5KQ0g_-qJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5KQ0g_-qJs Keywords: 737 MAX MCAS trim

trinix912 1y ago

I've found that disabling the lane assist in my 2020 Civic permanently disables that too. It's an EU model. For anyone looking for a solution, try if this solves it (if you wouldn't miss the lane assist, of course).

SuzukiBrian 1y ago
Unfortunately as I've later learned, it's a requirement in all cars in the EU from 2025, so there is no way to disable it permanently. Thank you for the suggestion though.
- orwin 1y ago
  My understanding was that it is only required for lane assist/cruise control, unless i misunderstood. Hopefully if you deactivate those, your car will allow disabling this "feature".
  - SuzukiBrian 1y ago
    No, it is mandatory for all new cars in the EU since 2025 and while you can turn them off, they will turn themselves on again once the car has been turned off. It doesn't matter if you use lane assist or cruise control. Unfortunately.
    - Terr_ 1y ago
      I wonder if there's a market for a little device that taps into the CAN-bus(es) and auto-applies your desired settings on startup.
      - SuzukiBrian 1y ago
        My dealer suggested that I cover the sensor with electrical tape, since that is what all his other customers were doing. It will then just give off a single warning when you start the car telling you, that the forward attention warning is disabled. I have since learned that you can put some tinfoil between the sensor and the tape and seemingly disable it completely without any alarms going off. With that in mind I wouldn't be surprised if there was a market for a gadget that remove all the hassle. I am definitely not alone with this issue.

thedanbob 1y ago

I rented a car in the UK a few years ago and by the end of the trip I was ready to set it on fire. - Adaptive cruise control would randomly slam on the brakes on the motorway (just passed a 30 kph exit, the speed limit must be 30 now!), or match speed with a car in the next lane that was I trying to pass - Emergency braking would trigger if I got too close to a car that was turning out of my lane, or a shrub while parking - Lane assist reenabled itself every time I started the car - Radar system would fail every ~3 starts, which would disable adaptive cruise control (ok) and blast a warning sound (bad) At least now I know that if I'm shopping for a car in the future, one of my criteria needs to be "won't actively try to kill me".

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
morpheos137 1y ago
Ren
phatskat 1y ago
I rented a car in the states last time I visited family and it was mostly ok - the touchscreen controlled all the heat/cool through convoluted menus but thankfully had dedicated buttons to kind of control climate? But worse was it would use a camera to read speed signs and therein we had these issues: - Misreading signs - Reading signs that didn’t exist - Every time it read a new sign it would “helpfully” yell that I was over the speed limit if for example I was coasting down from a 45 to 35 zone, along with scary flashing visuals on the dash

mort96 1y ago

There is truly a scourge in the EU of increasingly intrusive "safety features" which I truly believe are making cars less safe. I've been driving a family member's new Nissan. Nice car for the most part, but it has this "safety" feature (that's on by default and cannot be permanently switched off, thanks to the EU) which watches out for the white stripe on the right-hand side of the road and JERKS THE STEERING WHEEL when it thinks you're "too close". Where I often drive, there are many narrow roads. No yellow line in the middle of the road. The only way to avoid hitting oncoming traffic is to drive with your wheels on the white stripe when you meet another vehicle. This can be stressful enough in itself, especially when the other vehicle is some huge bus or semi truck. Not exactly the time you want alarms going off AND YOUR STEERING WHEEL TURNING BY ITSELF. I've taken to calling it the car's auto-crash feature. Always gotta remember to disable the auto-crash. Every time I start the car. I got so annoyed I looked up the relevant directive. Turns out new cars are required to have a lane assist feature. It is required to turn itself on automatically, and it is required to warn the driver using at least 2 out of the 3 methods: sound, visuals, haptic. So the steering wheel jerking isn't even just a bad implementation, it's the law. Sigh.

star-glider 1y ago
I recently got back from Europe; rented a car. This "feature" is _insanely_ dangerous. Whatever idiot bureaucrat decided that having crappy machine vision software jerk the steering wheel around while you're driving should be sent to an island somewhere. The damn thing tried to kill me every time we came up on a construction area on the freeway, because it got completely flummoxed by the lane realignment. I couldn't turn it off until we parked the car, and we were on the freeway. Fighting that piece of crap for an hour made for the most exhausting drive of my life. Far from being mandated, I can't believe that safety regulators allow _anything_ to jerk around the wheel at 60MPH.
- vanviegen 1y ago
  Or you could look at some of the research, which suggest that this feature may in fact reduce fatalities significantly (I'm finding estimates in the 20 to 25% range). Well done idiot bureaucrat! https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/fewer-drivers-are-opting-out-of-lane-departure-prevention https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/fewer-drivers-are-opting-ou... https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813663 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

xenadu02 1y ago

On the Kia EV 9 I had to go in and disable lane assist (which you can still disable here in the US). It was downright dangerous, jerking the steering wheel at seemingly random times when it gets confused.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

> is required to enable itself once the car has been turned off/on Get an older car. Screw panopticon tyranny.

UomoNeroNero 1y ago

I’ll keep my stupid, non-digital 2010 car running until the day I die. They’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. I’d rather register it as a vintage car and keep driving it.

userbinator 1y ago
Mine is over 50 years old. It's been upgraded with a few "modern" features like distance sensors, rear cameras, and a GPS, but those are actually useful and won't actively fight me.

unethical_ban 1y ago

It sounds like some of these things need to be disabled by pulling a fuse, or else disabled via button every time the car is on, like a takeoff checklist for an airplane. I hear a lot of people do that for the auto start/stop feature on cars in the US. And the INEOS Grenadier, which has an alarm go off if it detects you are going above the speed limit. Every time you turn the car on, you have to navigate a touchscreen menu to turn that off.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago

A friend of mine spends the first minute of all trips in their car turning off all the auto-safety BS loaded in by regulation these days. All on by default the next time the car is switched on. Also, I pretty much wear sunglasses 100% of the time I'm either outdoors or driving. That attention detection is not fit for purpose. Squinting through road glare literally makes me tired. The dangers imposed on self and society by driving are poorly matched to the requirements of getting a license. Unfortunately participation in much of society requires the ability to drive one's self from one place to another; it's been built around this requirement.

kjkjadksj 1y ago

Why not return the car for an actual sane one from 5 years ago?

SuzukiBrian 1y ago
I would, but once I fully understood the problem it was too late to return it. When I got the car I simply turned off the features, and because I don't drive a lot I didn't notice that the car would turn them on again until I was outside the return period. I really just didn't have the imagination to think that it could possibly be a problem. Even the manual says that it stays turned off once disabled.

watwut 1y ago

I live in EU and my car does not have any of that.

therein 1y ago
Obviously the reason will be revealed as you get into questions like what year was your car manufactured and at which stage of integration is your country.
SuzukiBrian 1y ago
It's required in new cars from 2025 and onwards.