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> My car has more controls for the lights alone than my first vehicle had for everything. Literally. As someone driving a 2021 Subaru who grew up in a 99 Integ

by nawgz 5y ago

> My car has more controls for the lights alone than my first vehicle had for everything. Literally. As someone driving a 2021 Subaru who grew up in a 99 Integra and an 01 Civic. I don't see this at all? The controls are extremely familiar for the lighting, except my new car has a no-friction option: I turn on the "Auto" setting and it automatically puts on DRLs or full lights for me given the lighting conditions. It even turns on my lights for me when I pull into my parking garage at midday. How exactly could this be made less complex?

gkop 5y ago
The Subaru auto headlights work great indeed. Other Subaru smart functionality is crap though. For example, the touchscreen and gauges auto-dimming: literally every time it auto-dims or auto-undims, I have to tweak the dimming level. It would be an objectively better car without the auto-dimming.
- nawgz 5y ago
  > For example, the touchscreen and gauges auto-dimming: literally every time it auto-dims or auto-undims, I have to tweak the dimming level I have never noticed this, fingers crossed you didn't Baader-Meinhof me. The feature to aim the lights where you steer and auto-dim high beams when traffic is approaching and re-activate them works quite nicely for me as well, so I would consider the headlights to be a great strength of this vehicle. It is crazy to get into my partner's mid-2010s sedan and laugh at how bad the lights are at nighttime compared to the perfectly aimed and calibrated Subaru lights
  - idiotsecant 5y ago
    >It is crazy to get into my partner's mid-2010s sedan and laugh at how bad the lights are at nighttime compared to the perfectly aimed and calibrated Subaru lights On the other hand, that mid 2010s sedan's headlight system will age gracefully - there are no aiming servos to fail or autodim relay output to stop working or such thing. It's just lights with a switch to turn them on or off. Increased complexity also implies increased maintenance and often more troublesome failure modes when something does fail.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      And whatever those failure modes are, they better be good, because in 20 years those vehicles will be on the road in some state without regular inspections, driven by someone without the money to pay for OEM electrical repairs.
    - nawgz 5y ago
      I would find it hard to believe that the failure mode of these headlights wouldn't be "points straight and doesn't auto-dim ever", which reduces it to the previous implementation's graceful aging modes, but you are right a new possibility is introduced.
      - idiotsecant 5y ago
        I would absolutely believe the failure mode will be that one headlight will stop moving when it's commanded to, which best case means straight headlight, worst case means aimed where it shouldn't be 99% of the time
kube-system 5y ago
I'm not sure what the solution is, or whether it is even a design problem at all, rather than a societal/political/licensing problem. My older vehicles had 3 controls for exterior lighting: parking lights, headlights, high beam. They were simple on-offs with feedback that indicated their current state. If people couldn't see your car, you couldn't see your gauges. My 2021 Honda has SEVEN pages in the owners manual dedicated just to the headlight operation -- not counting the several other sections it calls out for related information. Some sections are called out as US specific and some called out as Canadian model specific. Let's take just the high-beams for instance: Flashing the high beams is a different physical control than turning them on. Activating the auto-high beam functionality is somehow not a separate control, but is done flashing your high beams, and there is a not-very-clear symbol in the instrument panel that indicates the current state. This means that when you flash your high beams, you are also changing the current state of the auto headlights. If you flash it an even number of times you will keep the same state, if you flash them an odd number of times, you change the state. Furthermore if you hold the stick in for 40 seconds, you disable the auto headlight feature entirely. If you hold it in for 30 seconds, you turn it back on. Yes, there are two independent levels of "on" and "off" respectively just for the auto-high beams. It works perfectly fine when you know what it's doing, but it isn't something that a person would automatically know if they were someone who started driving when you turned on headlights by pulling a knob on the dash. Besides that one specific gripe, there's 160+ pages dedicated to just to controls and the instrument panel alone. Anyone who reads a modern 600+ page owners manual will learn something. The problem is that people don't, and sometimes the thing they didn't learn is important.
- nawgz 5y ago
  What you describe here is clearly insanity, although I am slightly unconvinced owner's manual page count is very relevant. I read nothing and intuitively understood my car's controls, this is what I also agree should be the clear state, and it seems to me in some sense it should be legislated to prevent what you describe. It is an interesting point though, should each vehicle manufacturer be obligated to put a light stick with some exact set of controls for the headlights in?
  - 5y ago

by nawgz 5y ago

gkop 5y ago

The Subaru auto headlights work great indeed. Other Subaru smart functionality is crap though. For example, the touchscreen and gauges auto-dimming: literally every time it auto-dims or auto-undims, I have to tweak the dimming level. It would be an objectively better car without the auto-dimming.

nawgz 5y ago
> For example, the touchscreen and gauges auto-dimming: literally every time it auto-dims or auto-undims, I have to tweak the dimming level I have never noticed this, fingers crossed you didn't Baader-Meinhof me. The feature to aim the lights where you steer and auto-dim high beams when traffic is approaching and re-activate them works quite nicely for me as well, so I would consider the headlights to be a great strength of this vehicle. It is crazy to get into my partner's mid-2010s sedan and laugh at how bad the lights are at nighttime compared to the perfectly aimed and calibrated Subaru lights
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  >It is crazy to get into my partner's mid-2010s sedan and laugh at how bad the lights are at nighttime compared to the perfectly aimed and calibrated Subaru lights On the other hand, that mid 2010s sedan's headlight system will age gracefully - there are no aiming servos to fail or autodim relay output to stop working or such thing. It's just lights with a switch to turn them on or off. Increased complexity also implies increased maintenance and often more troublesome failure modes when something does fail.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    And whatever those failure modes are, they better be good, because in 20 years those vehicles will be on the road in some state without regular inspections, driven by someone without the money to pay for OEM electrical repairs.
  - nawgz 5y ago
    I would find it hard to believe that the failure mode of these headlights wouldn't be "points straight and doesn't auto-dim ever", which reduces it to the previous implementation's graceful aging modes, but you are right a new possibility is introduced.
    - idiotsecant 5y ago
      I would absolutely believe the failure mode will be that one headlight will stop moving when it's commanded to, which best case means straight headlight, worst case means aimed where it shouldn't be 99% of the time

kube-system 5y ago

I'm not sure what the solution is, or whether it is even a design problem at all, rather than a societal/political/licensing problem. My older vehicles had 3 controls for exterior lighting: parking lights, headlights, high beam. They were simple on-offs with feedback that indicated their current state. If people couldn't see your car, you couldn't see your gauges. My 2021 Honda has SEVEN pages in the owners manual dedicated just to the headlight operation -- not counting the several other sections it calls out for related information. Some sections are called out as US specific and some called out as Canadian model specific. Let's take just the high-beams for instance: Flashing the high beams is a different physical control than turning them on. Activating the auto-high beam functionality is somehow not a separate control, but is done flashing your high beams, and there is a not-very-clear symbol in the instrument panel that indicates the current state. This means that when you flash your high beams, you are also changing the current state of the auto headlights. If you flash it an even number of times you will keep the same state, if you flash them an odd number of times, you change the state. Furthermore if you hold the stick in for 40 seconds, you disable the auto headlight feature entirely. If you hold it in for 30 seconds, you turn it back on. Yes, there are two independent levels of "on" and "off" respectively just for the auto-high beams. It works perfectly fine when you know what it's doing, but it isn't something that a person would automatically know if they were someone who started driving when you turned on headlights by pulling a knob on the dash. Besides that one specific gripe, there's 160+ pages dedicated to just to controls and the instrument panel alone. Anyone who reads a modern 600+ page owners manual will learn something. The problem is that people don't, and sometimes the thing they didn't learn is important.

nawgz 5y ago
What you describe here is clearly insanity, although I am slightly unconvinced owner's manual page count is very relevant. I read nothing and intuitively understood my car's controls, this is what I also agree should be the clear state, and it seems to me in some sense it should be legislated to prevent what you describe. It is an interesting point though, should each vehicle manufacturer be obligated to put a light stick with some exact set of controls for the headlights in?
- 5y ago