6 ms·

On the "yelling at me" part - I find this an absolutely puzzling design pattern that a number of automakers have adopted. I was driving a Volkswagen ID4 - their

• avhception 3y ago
  Something like this happened in my Skoda a while ago. Driving along on the Autobahn when a really minor irregularity in the road caused the bag I had placed on the passenger seat to be pushed into the seat very gently, triggering the passenger-side seat belt alarm. I had to take the next exit and park somewhere to get it to shut up. Unrelated but also relevant to the story: My father's new car (a brand-new Nissan) starts yelling at you to put the seat belt on the second you start the car. It's really annoying because the rest of the car systems take their precious time to start up, so I like to start the car first so the stupid computers start booting and THEN put my seat belt on. But that means being bullied by a loud alarm every time someone uses that car. Why oh why? My Audi only starts the alarm once you actually start driving, and even then only if you go faster than 10km/h or something.
  • londons_explore 3y ago
    > . I had to take the next exit and park somewhere to get it to shut up This is the safe thing to do. A bag heavy enough to set off the sensors (usually 10kg) is gonna kill someone if not belted in in an accident. It is not uncommon for bags to go through the front windscreen and kill someone in the car that crashes into you.
    • Aeolun 3y ago
      > It is not uncommon for bags to go through the front windscreen and kill someone in the car that crashes into you. With respect. It's uncommon to crash. It's rare to have a 10kg bag in your car. It's vanishingly unlikely to have a 10kg bag in a position where it can fly through the front windshield and hit, and kill, someone in the car that crashes into you. Of course there's enough kilometers driven that it happens, but that doesn't make it anywhere close to 'not uncommon'.
    • avhception 3y ago
      In this case, it was a light shoulder bag containing only a laptop. Considering it's height, it should have bashed into the glove box area on impact. Stripping it down might indeed be more secure, but how do you properly strip that down with only the seat belt?
  • JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 3y ago
    > starts yelling at you to put the seat belt on the second you start the car Unrelated too but in France you must put your seatbelts before starting the car. It’s the law.
    • pflenker 3y ago
      There are exceptions, also in France. I think the most relevant one here is for medical reasons or body shape. So if you have a passenger who is exempt from the rule you have to live with your car yelling at you.
      • Log_out_ 3y ago
        You ca de activate I though in car settings? Or by bridging the speaker with a resistor.
  • mailund 3y ago
    on the flipside, one of my first times when learning to ride a car, I was so focused on adjusting the mirror and seat that I forgot to put on my seatbelt. I was able to get out of the parking lot and get onto a pretty busy road with semi-high speed before the alarm went off! the alarm mostly stressed me out more than realizing I was not wearing a seatbelt, which only made it harder to find a suitable exit so I could stop the car and put the belt on! I think this is mostly an edge case though, because I probably held a much lower speed than expected in the parking lot due to being very inexperienced behind the wheel.
  • lukan 3y ago
    "and even then only if you go faster than 10km/h or something." No idea about other countries, but in germany you are allowed to not wear the seatbelt while driving "walking speed". So that makes some sense.
• justoreply 3y ago
  don't dogs need a seat belt too?
• pharmakom 3y ago
  You probably should have your dog belted in to a chest harness. Check your insurance policy.
  • wolframhempel 3y ago
    Even with the chest harness, she can switch seats. You have to put the seatbelts on the empty seats as well, but that makes it harder for her to lie down comfortably.
• hoseja 3y ago
  Average voters are allowed to own these cars. And the maker then gets blamed when they do average voter things with it.
• crubier 3y ago
  The annoying alarm is actually useful so you don't have to shout on your mother in law to get her damn seatbelt. It does the dirty work for you, you don't have to be that annoying person asking for people to put their seatbelt in your car. In cases like you encountered with your dog, just put the seatbelt on your dog or bag / boxes. It's actually safer for you in case of a crash, they wont get flying into your face. If it's not possible, just put the seatbelt on under your dog just to silence the alarm
• DrBazza 3y ago
  It's a wider problem than just the seatbelts. The whole cockpit of a car is now a distraction from the most critical thing - driving safely. For reasons I don't understand, tactile push buttons, with physical feedback, for most tasks are increasingly being replaced with a touch screen you have to look at rather than looking at the road instead and just reaching over to the dashboard. Hanlon's Razor? It feels like the national road safety bodies world wide, have dropped the ball on this one.
  • Turskarama 3y ago
    It is literally because it's cheaper, but ironically my Kia Rio, one of the cheapest cars on the road, has physical buttons.
    • toyg 3y ago
      Ironically, the savings they get from physical manufacturing they probably lose on expensive developers, lol.
  • avhception 3y ago
    I sat in a friend's Mercedes and the central display had a big flashy full screen warning that said something along the lines of "Don't let [name of their software package] distract you from driving!". It seems the irony of screaming for your attention only to tell you not to pay attention was lost on them.
• msh 3y ago
  If there is a passenger without a seat belt I think most places you are supposed to pull over ASAP to solve the situation.
  • Aschebescher 3y ago
    It's illegal to stop on the Autobahn if your car is still in driving condition.
    • msh 3y ago
      No, its allowed to stop for emergencies. I agree that having a dog on the back seats is not an emergency but the intended purpose of the alarm would be having someone on the back seat who could not fasten their seatbelt. I don't know if that would count as an emergency in a German court but I certainly would count it as a emergency (and it would be illegal).
• plastic3169 3y ago
  ”In 2003, the Transportation Research Board Committee, chaired by two psychologists, reported that "Enhanced SBRs" (ESBRs) could save an additional 1,000 lives a year.[100] Research by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that Ford's ESBR, which provides an intermittent chime for up to five minutes if the driver is unbelted, sounding for 6 seconds then pausing for 30, increased seat belt use by 5 percentage points.[100] Farmer and Wells found that driver fatality rates were 6% lower for vehicles with ESBR compared with otherwise-identical vehicles without.[101]” [1] Not asking nicely for seat belt makes people actually use the seat belt. It’s saving bunch of people every year vs annoying me. And it sure does annoy me, but truth be told sometimes when I move the car just a bit the only reason I use seat belt is that the car is angry at me. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt
  • Turskarama 3y ago
    That's the driver, but I've had similar problems with the car yelling at me when I put a sufficiently heavy bag of shopping on the passenger seat. The only seat where the weight is guaranteed to be a human is the drivers seat. By all means, put an alarm on that seat, but the other seats can contain things other than passengers.
    • evansj 3y ago
      Worth noting that something heavy enough to trigger the seat occupancy sensor can still do you a lot of damage as it flies around the inside of a car in a crash. I put the seatbelt on around boxes and bags if they're on the seat.
      • toyg 3y ago
        This. Even outside crash situations, a brusque movement could send things flying, distracting the driver enough to cause Bad Things. Use the boot, people; at worst, put stuff under the seat, never above.
      • Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
• flir 3y ago
  > It is this idea of "forcing your customer to obey by inflicting discomfort" that's puzzling me. I can't think of any other industry or product that would think this would be a good idea. Telephones. The original UK ringtone was explicitly designed to be as irritating as possible (some really weird time signature, I think?)
• toyg 3y ago
  My dad spent most of his working life on "preaching" road safety for the local health service, reviewing all the data in the world (more or less) to tell people what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, one thing he learned is that every measure of forceful compliance is consistently more successful in preventing accidents and deaths. Seatbelts save lives, but they had to be made compulsory by law to drill the concept into people; and even with that, it takes un-inescapable annoyances like this alarm to get into compliance that last 5-10% of stubborn idiots who just won't do the right thing. Full-face helmets save lives, but so many people insist in using pointless "bowls" or even nothing at all. Respecting speed limits save lives, but it takes speed cameras to actually persuade people to do that. Etc etc. The technical implementations can always improve, of course. And tbh, it takes nothing to fix the issue reported: just fasten the belt "empty" when you have the dog (and accept the poor thing will not survive an impact...). The industry is what it is because People Are Bad At Risk-Assessment, and that's that.
  • wolframhempel 3y ago
    This raises a more fundamental moral issue: if I want to be stupid and I'm only endangering myself - why should't I? I firmly believe that it's not the government's or automakers role to keep me from harming myself - but it is the governments role to protect others from being harmed by me. Consequently, I believe the government should outlaw drunk driving as it endangers others, but it should not force me to wear a helmet on a motorcycle. Just to be clear: I absolutely believe you SHOULD wear a helmet while motorcycling - but I believe if I choose not to and by doing so am only endangering myself, that's my choice.
    • toyg 3y ago
      > if I want to be stupid and I'm only endangering myself - why should't I? I hear you, but - on the road you're not alone even after you die. Someone will have to pick up your remains, see your brain splattered all over the road, and live with the trauma forever. Someone will have to try and resuscitate you, taking time that could be spent helping someone else. Worse, partial helmets could save your life but still get you partially paralized or disfigured, which would further burden society and yourself (treatment etc). Note I'm a rider myself (bonneville ftw), and yeah full-face helmet doesn't fit my Easy Rider fantasy, but if it spares myself and others from the worst consequences, I'm ok with it.