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All new cars. At this point I don't know if I'd buy anything made after 2008. Whenever I rent a new car around here (in the EU) I find them very annoying. Th

All new cars. At this point I don't know if I'd buy anything made after 2008. Whenever I rent a new car around here (in the EU) I find them very annoying. The worst is the cruise control that tries to stick to the speed limit -- but its sensors don't always read the signs very well, so you'll often slow to 50 km/h (about 30 mph) for no reason. Then there's the incessant beeping at you, "lane assist" that you can't turn off (looking at you, Volkswagen,) and many more small annoyances. A camera pointed at your face just adds insult to injury.

nathias 4mo ago
yes I can't understand how anyone buys these
- pmontra 4mo ago
  Because there is nothing else left to buy. I only buy second hand cars but sooner or later I'll have to buy a post 2026 car.
driverdan 4mo ago
The intrusiveness of these systems varies significantly between manufacturers. Don't buy one with an annoying, intrusive system.
- CGMthrowaway 4mo ago
  There is a minimum intrusiveness required by law, though. One could even say it's intrusive by design, depending on your perspective
  - driverdan 4mo ago
    OP said after 2008. There are many cars made after 2008 that do not have intrusive systems. For example, my 2018 Camaro has none of that. The only proximity sensors it has are side vehicle indicators and all they do is turn on a light. New cars with intrusive driver monitoring alerts are obviously going to be terrible but you can still buy vehicles made prior to this change.
- A_D_E_P_T 4mo ago
  Most of the rentals around my neck of the woods are VWs or entry-level Mercedes. The two seem approximately equally bad; they both have the exact same problems with cruise control, lane assist beeps, speed limit beeps, "take a break!" beeps, and so on. I've heard that Dacia has some models that are like 2008 throwbacks, with "modern" annoyances kept to a bare minimum, but they're considered too low-market for the rental companies, I suppose. I'd consider that sort of thing if I were looking to buy a new car, money no object. But really a well-maintained vehicle that's ~15-20 years old suits me just fine.
  - VBprogrammer 4mo ago
    Ever driven a Dacia? I had one for a rental in Portugal. Honestly the least comfortable and most irritating vehicle I've ever driven. I'm not just being fussy, we've had plenty of Hyundais, Citroens and the like without a problem.
    - boldlybold 4mo ago
      Same place (and only place) I've driven one. Easy stick shift, a bit underpowered for the more mountainous highways, but it was a good ride.
      - VBprogrammer 3mo ago
        I guess life would be boring if we were all the same. I found the 1.0 litre turbo in the Sandero to be perfectly adequate in power. I hated almost everything else about the car though. And again, I don't usually have this problem, more often I fall in love with the little rental cars we get and start checking how much they are on the used market before remembering we have no need for a second car.
  - uniq7 4mo ago
    I'm the owner of a 2025 Dacia Jogger. It has a physical button to disable all warnings and alarms, which I really appreciate, but I still need to press that button twice (with ~1s of delay between pushes), and I need to do it every time I turn the car on. I bought the model with no internet connection, so the speed limit is automatically read by the front camera, and it's usually wrong. Although the alarm can be disabled, it still shows a distracting visual warning on the dashboard. I covered mine with duck tape, but now everyone who goes into the car asks me why I'm covering a warning with duck tape, and I have to explain them every time. I converted the car into a camper, but some digital features are always on, even when the car is off. For example, the car continuously detects the wireless key, so I bought some Faraday cage wallets to store them while we sleep. However, they don't work, so at the end I had to make my own Faraday cage wallets with aluminum foil and duck tape (yeah, in this project I found that duck tape is really versatile). Another issue that really bothers me is that the car detects movement, even when it is completely off. Whenever I'm sleeping and I change position, the center screen lights on, some relays start to click, and some fan runs for a couple of seconds. Then, after ~10 seconds everything turns off again. It drives me crazy. I got this car just because I wanted something shorter than 4.5m (but that could fit a 120 x 190 cm bed), with a reliable engine (this is a 1.6L from 2005, created by Renault & Nissan, without any known issues), and without internet connection. I reviewed hundreds of cars, and this was basically our only option in our country.
epolanski 4mo ago
Lane assist is also genuinely dangerous when there's men at work on the road and they change the lanes, yet the car tries to stick to the painted ones and I have to fight the car to do what it has to do we don't kill nobody. Also happens it gets confused with freshly painted white/yellow lines when older are still visible.
- stavros 4mo ago
  Tell me you live in a civilised country without telling me you live in a civilised country. Over here, in Greece, whenever you try to avoid a pothole, a double-parked car, a cyclist, a pedestrian, a stray, ANYTHING, lane assist always tries its best to make you hit whatever you're trying to avoid.
  - CobaltFire 4mo ago
    When I loved in Guam we had a joke bout this: How do you tell if someone is driving drunk? They are driving straight! With the unspoken part being anyone NOT drunk was weaving to dodge debris, potholes, etc.
    - Scoundreller 4mo ago
      Same joke in the rust (aka pothole) belt
  - AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
    Earlier this year, I rented a new Toyota Camry (US model). It had lane assist, but it was very easy to override it. I didn't really have to fight it. (And that was nice. I've drive other cars where it was more of a battle.) So, yeah, it's done badly some of the time. But it at least can be done well.
    - stavros 4mo ago
      I don't know, even if it's not that forceful, sometimes I have a light touch on the wheel and I'm going straight, I don't want to suddenly have to fight the car swerving me onto oncoming traffic.
CGMthrowaway 4mo ago
Don't rule out another Cash for Clunkers. The 2009 program destroyed 1 in 300 cars on the road. The next one could be bigger. Also, 3 in 4 cars on the road today are now in states requiring emissions tests for your annual registration, which can pose a significant (and growing, as standards improve) obstacle for older cars.
- Dries007 4mo ago
  The emissions tests only test to the level that the car was first registered (or produced) doesn't it?
  - hnav 4mo ago
    Yup, a bigger issue for old cars trying to pass emissions is that with prices of precious metals, a worn out catalytic converter (diagnostic code P0420 ) means that most of them are mechanically totaled in California, New York, Colorado since they require either OEM or CARB approved replacements.
    - Ar-Curunir 4mo ago
      That’s a good thing, yes?
      - Gigachad 4mo ago
        It's good thing if you like not having cancer.
      - projektfu 4mo ago
        It does promote some catalytic converter theft.
    - Scoundreller 4mo ago
      Must be close to actually worthless if they’re not shipping them out-of-state, no?
peterlk 4mo ago
Over Christmas, I spent several minutes trying to debug my beeping dashboard - it only seemed to happen sometimes while driving, so stopping didn’t let me figure it out. Eventually I discovered that it was beeping at me because my eyes weren’t on the road enough. Of course, figuring that out required me to take my eyes off the road to figure out which blinking signal was associated with this particular alarm. Also, being constantly warned that I was speeding in rural areas where the car missed a speed limit sign caused me to start ignoring the speeding alarm within a few hours of driving the car. I feel like there’s some lesson here in building to the lowest common denominator, and giving people products rather than tools (tools are more dangerous, but more useful), but maybe I’m just grumpy.
- sixtyj 4mo ago
  Imagine driving thru night with kids sleeping and suddenly car starts beeping. Is there a way how to switch sensors off for similar situations?
  - ShellfishMeme 4mo ago
    You can switch them off but only until the engine is turned off again. Most manufacturers have a shortcut on the dashboard or steering wheel though. Eventually you just get used to doing that every time you start driving.
    - londons_explore 4mo ago
      There'll be firmware hacks to force that mode soon enough.
      - Scoundreller 4mo ago
        You wouldn’t download a bookmarklet on your car
        bigiain 4mo ago
afarah1 4mo ago
EU driving assists are obtrusive to the point of making driving less safe in my experience. Great video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-S76WEl25k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-S76WEl25k
- cellular 4mo ago
  How many bells would sound if SUNGLASSES hid your eyes?!
  - EA-3167 4mo ago
    I can answer this, since I have a new car with this camera and polarized sunglasses. MOST of the time it's good about telling when I'm looking and when I'm not, out of maybe... 5 alerts over the previous 8 months all, but one occurred when I was in fact looking away for one reason or another. Likewise when it's correct my lane-keeping it's been right about me drifting. Given how inattentive I see other drivers being, on their phones for example, and taking into account that I'm (based on my record) a good driver who is attentive... I appreciate these additions. I doubt that they make us less safe, we just dislike anyone or anything telling us how to drive, because "we already know what we're doing." The subjective experience of being distracted however isn't usually so clear-cut, it FEELS like you're paying attention. Note: This is a new model Lexus, so I expect this represents that brand as well as Toyota, but beyond that I don't know.
    - dylan604 4mo ago
      Just because it's available in a Lexus does not mean it's available in a Corolla
      - Reason077 4mo ago
        In Europe it does. ADDW is required in all new vehicles, including Corollas.
    - Brian_K_White 4mo ago
thegrim33 4mo ago
Well yeah, that's the point. They want to enshitify cars and make driving as expensive and as annoying as possible to force people out of cars. They know they can't just ban cars outright, so they enshitify this little thing this year, mandate this other thing the next year, add a new tax/fee the next year, add a new restriction the next year, reduce speed limits the next year, etc., etc., all in the name of safety / "save the kids", until decades later they finally get to where they want to be.
- Forgeties79 4mo ago
  You had a point until > to force people out of cars. All that stuff following is also nonsense. “They” don’t want people out of cars, the companies want that sweet sweet revenue stream from vacuuming up data. That’s all this is
  - Slow_Hand 4mo ago
    Yeah. Whenever someone starts explaining to me that "they" - meaning some vague and undefined cartel - want you to (blank) I immediately flag their reasoning as suspect until proven otherwise. More often than not it's indicative of a lack of serious critical thought. Examples include some version of "They want us to act like slaves" or "They want to control our minds". More often than not the simplest explanation is short-sighted profit motive, or institutional dysfunction, or multiple parties with conflicting motivations with no central agenda. It's far less likely to be a grand coordinated conspiracy.
- drnick1 4mo ago
  You forgot the bike lanes that take up road space but nobody uses. Every socialist mayor's favorite anti-car policy.
  - stackghost 4mo ago
    >You forgot the bike lanes that take up road space but nobody uses. Where I live (city in the PNW), bike lanes see heavy use year-round.
altern8 4mo ago
Same here. I drive a 1991 Honda Prelude and I don't think I'll want to drive anything else probably ever.
- tjwebbnorfolk 4mo ago
  93 Honda Civic here. 100% agree. I don't appreciate anything on a car that does stuff on its own without my direct input.
- derf_ 4mo ago
  I drove an '89 Prelude (with a carburetor!) that had been used hard before I acquired it, until it left me stranded by the side of the road one too many times. I am happy to report that a 2000 Acura Integra is a very reasonable upgrade. Basically the same car, except better (fuel injection, ABS brakes, airbags, etc.). The only thing I miss is that the Prelude had a tighter turning radius.
- Gigachad 4mo ago
  I suspect owning a car will become increasingly rare as self driving improves. You'd take public transport for the bulk of trips with self driving cars for odd routes / late night trips PT doesn't cover.
  - hparadiz 4mo ago
    That sounds good in theory but the first time you get into a dirty one with a weird smell will be the last time you use it.
  - ghaff 4mo ago
    You presumably live in or near a city.
  - altern8 4mo ago
    I live in the Polish countryside and there is no public transport :-D
- __turbobrew__ 4mo ago
warp 4mo ago
I have a Volkswagen ID3, I love the adaptive cruise control. Yes, it gets it wrong in some spots (signage isn't great here in Asturias, Spain), and it gets it wrong in both directions (too slow at certain locations, too fast in others). But I still appreciate the convenience of not having to keep an eye on the speed nor the distance between the my car and the vehicles in front of me when driving on the freeway, where it generally doesn't make mistakes.
- scandox 4mo ago
  But you do have to keep an eye on those things. It can make the adjustments but you can't take your eye off them.
- mort96 4mo ago
  I drive a Nissan Ariya sometimes, which has adaptive cruise control. It's ... okay, but I'm not sure my own car's "dumb" cruise control is any worse to be honest. My own car's cruise control is just three large buttons on the steering wheel: one which says "keep going this speed when I take my foot off the gas", one cancel button, and one "go back to the previous speed" button. It works wonders and is quite comfortable to use. Never messes up, I can rely on it 100% to do its one simple job. The Ariya is much more fancy, but it's so much less reliable. If it's snowing outside it sometimes just randomly turns itself off because sensors got covered in snow, leading to a rapid deceleration until I intervene. Sometimes it refuses to turn on because sensors are covered in snow. And its braking curve is uncomfortable; when the car in front stops (e.g in stop and go traffic), it gets way close to the car in front and brakes hard, instead of slowly coming to a stop at a comfortable distance. Oh and it's connected to the nav system; I've had it just suddenly slow the car down to a crawl because the nav system had chosen a stupid route, it slowed down to take an exit while I stayed on the highway. I'll take dumb but reliable any day over smart and unreliable. Even if it means I sometimes have to actually adjust speed myself. Relatedly, I don't actually mind having to drive the car. I like cruise control because my foot gets fatigued when pressing the gas pedal for hours on end, but making manual adjustments to my speed? Changing gears? Listening to the engine to make sure it's at a happy RPM? I feel like that stuff just gives me small stuff to do so I keep paying attention to the driving. The incessant beeping in modern cars on the other hand is just a distraction. Luckily, the Nissan lets you configure it so that 2 quick button presses on the steering wheel disables all the useless alarms. I'm so happy I don't have to do that manually for each "safety" feature every time I get in.
snapetom 4mo ago
Last year, I rented a Kia. I was coasting downhill on a curve and approached a group of bikers. Everything was fine. I was a little below the speed limit, they were in the bike lane, I was in my lane, it was a sunny day. The car detected them as a hazard to avoid and STRAIGHTENED AND LOCKED MY STEERING WHEEL in the middle of the curve turn. I ran into a shallow ditch, but holy shit, what if it took control and over corrected onto an oncoming car?
- benjiro29 4mo ago
  > on a curve O yea, that is driver lane assist ... A Toyota rental had the same issue. In a specific steep exit corner (that goes up facing the sun), how many ** times the lane assist tries to force the car to go straight (as in, off the hill! ). The first few times when it happens, scares the ** out of me. Another fun one is going down a hill in a Rental Opel, roundabout with some cars, no problem. Slowing down naturally, while i see the cars accelerate to enter the roundabout. No need to break as by the time i get close, the cars will have started to accelerate. So my speed will have matched the last vehicles speed by the time i am close. Suddenly, emergency break slam on !!! Because "the car was going to hit the cars in front". Like, wtf!! That created a extreme dangerous situation if there was a car behind. I really see no benefits for a lot of those new safety features. The old ones like traction controle etc, great, keep them. But all this external monitoring, internal monitoring ... If your a safe driver, those features can make it more dangerous.
  - fuzzzerd 4mo ago
    > If your a safe driver That's the issue. So many people are burried in their phone or just simply driving irresponsibly for the conditions, these features may be better for them. As someone who respects the responsibility of driving a vehicle, they're definitely making things less safe in some situations.
    - benjiro29 3mo ago
      I have a hard time imaging how those people can drive with the eye tracking features. Beep beep beep beep ... Do people like zone it out like parents with kids are able to zone out their little screaming devils? lol
grg0 4mo ago
> I find them very annoying I cannot tell you how many times I've punched the steering wheel. I want to find that source of beeping and rip its goddamn guts out of the system. Then I want to find who put it there and rip their guts too. I will rip their infernal existence out of this dimension. And fuck cameras. Blatant privacy violation, how is this getting past legislation?
- HoldOnAMinute 4mo ago
  Legislation isn't for your personal benefit, silly. It's for the corporations.
  - Gigachad 4mo ago
    It's for the benefit of everyone else around you so you don't kill them while flying down a street scrolling instagram reels.
    - linksnapzz 4mo ago
      Presumptuous busybodying as a service.
Spooky23 4mo ago
I bought a fancy Toyota SUV after my trusty 2008 Honda was damaged in an accident. The nagging is ridiculous. I’m actually not quite sure what lane assist does, but if I look at my side mirror it chastises me for not being attentive. It also has locked up the brakes and made me think I hit somebody when backing into my driveway. I wish I had fixed the Honda!
- FunHearing3443 4mo ago
  Are you talking about an old Honda or some issue with new Hondas?
  - soupbowl 4mo ago
    They had a 2008 Honda which was damaged and bought a new Toyota which has modern issues. Did you read their comment at all?
- c2h5oh 4mo ago
  I've got a fairly new Toyota and I when I found myself needing a 2nd car for my family I ended up buying a 20 year old Honda and I have to say I enjoy driving it much more. I might also be safer in it - oversensitive security systems nagging me with false positives almost constantly don't pair well with my ADD
nubg 4mo ago
> lane assist I prefer the term "lane insist"
- sunshine-o 4mo ago
  some might even say "lame insist"
consp 4mo ago
We have an 80 kph sign about 6m after the autoweg sign (100kph), why they didn't combine them is anyone's guess. My detection system always misses it, and often there are speed checks. Fortunately I can disable sign recognition for the cruise control.
- mort96 4mo ago
  Wait does your cruise control automatically accelerate by default when it thinks it sees a sign..? That sounds terrifying! I've only seen systems which give you a prompt to switch speed which you can accept with a button
  - timc3 4mo ago
    Mine did until I turned it off, and on an early software version it would do it at full acceleration of the car - and considering it has over 600 horsepower was really terrifying. It also slowed down violently once, misreading a sign on the motorway.
    - mort96 4mo ago
      I've noticed this too! The Nissan's adaptive cruise control doesn't accelerate automatically after a sign, but when it does accelerate automatically, e.g because I accepted the prompt to change target speed or because the slow car in front changed lanes or took an exit, it accelerates so bloody quick. Way quicker than I would've if I'm just driving manually.
mrtksn 4mo ago
It BS article, no cameras pointed at your face are required. They require "Advanced Driver Distraction Warning System", don't specify how it should be implemented. Here's the text describing the system: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2023/2590/oj/eng https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2023/2590/oj/eng It specifically mentions that it is illegal to use the cameras from such system to identify the person. It is pretty much the opposite of what people think its going to do. I am sorry you don't like that its not 1984 law but the discussion is bullshit, which means in that instead of 1984 dystopia we are getting the Brave new world dystopia where bullshit prevails in the brave new world. I am sick and tired of BS rage bates of the endless entertainment; I would take 1984 dystopia anytime, at least we would know who the bad guys are.
- QuercusMax 4mo ago
  You'd know the bad guys are Eastasia. Or is it Eurasia?
- eastof 4mo ago
  Is it BS if this is the only way to implement such a system? Then it is practically required. Legal or not these cameras will be used to identify you, car companies do all kinds of shady stuff with the data they collect with all their fancy new sensors. Besides, cars have famously lagged in security standards, so this data will be exfiltrated. By comparison, your comment is more hysterical sounding than the article. It is very reasonable to not want even more invasive systems installed in cars, especially when this may bleed into US models and then used against us here where the company can absolutely legally sell your data.
  - mrtksn 4mo ago
    If you want to believe that when light shines on a CCD chip the only option is to record the data and transmit it to the corporations and the governments then keep believing it. Everything needs to be extreme after all, right?
    - eastof 4mo ago
jhallenworld 4mo ago
>2008 I bought a 2017 Kia Forte S recently.. ($4000 for 137K miles) no touch screen, but many safety features that are not too bad like radar collision detection and blindspot warning. 2019 they started with the touchscreen, and in 2023 they added "Kia Connect" with OTA updates. Anyway definitely check the year. Problem with 2008 is some cars didn't even have Bluetooth audio or backup camera yet (like my 2010 VW CC- I had to add an aftermarket radio). Also don't get direct inject only engine. At least for Kias, the non-turbo engines are much more reliable (but underpowered for sure).
mfro 4mo ago
For those interested or forced to buy a new car — I recently picked up a brand new Hyundai and was impressed the new tech does not get in the way. ‘Driver attention warning’ does not have a face camera, it just uses the front sensor to confirm you’re not all over the place. It can also be disabled. Lane assist can be disabled with one button on the wheel. Almost all important controls are real (non capacitive) buttons. Warnings can be customized. Smart cruise control can be customized. As someone who really liked his 90s Toyota, I’m impressed.
- stavros 4mo ago
  I have a BYD Seal I bought last year, and it doesn't have a face camera. My mom's new BYD Dolphin does, so maybe it's just very recent. I have to disable the traffic sign warnings and lane keeping assistance every time I start the car. It's a swipe and three taps, but still annoying. I wish it could at least stay disabled for some time.
- cloverich 4mo ago
  We have two new Hyunadai's. My experience is mixed. For one, I get the "consider taking a break" warning constantly - possibly my sleepy eyes? In the Sante Fe, the cruise control disengages constantly b/c it can't see my face when I drive with left hand (my default) - this does not happen in our Ioniq though. Rear view camera + warning has been helpful on one occasion, but both rear and side cameras have fully disengaged my ability to drive many (30+) times when it was safe to do so. Basically in a city where you need to pull out and weave into traffic, if you begin moving too early it'll stop the car and also prevent the gas pedal from working (even if you let off and press many times). My most favorite is it would do this in my kids school drop off (cars are close and all moving at 5mph). The traffic helper knew this would happen to me and we had many laughs about it, after the first few times of them waving me a bit aggressively (why aren't you moving yet?). "Did you forget something in backseat" alarm goes off every time I park, I suppose from kid's car seats. Lane assist is nice when helpful, but very annoying when not (~10% helpful, 90% FP). My general read on the lane assist warning is its simply too sensitive. I disable the lane assist on cruise control, otherwise the adaptive cruise control is 90% good (it only can't seem to figure out to speed up when passing a semi, and will slow down instead). Very generally speaking, if I could disable all of the safety features I definitely would, they are almost exclusively false positives in my case and occur every time I drive. Yet its only two specific ones that are genuinely a nuisance (rather than annoying): The face detection on cruise control, and the car-disabling when I'm pulling out (which at times is out right dangerous).
BeetleB 4mo ago
> The worst is the cruise control that tries to stick to the speed limit -- but its sensors don't always read the signs very well I would assume all such cars have an option to turn this off.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
bitwize 4mo ago
The good news is that by making cars more trouble than they're worth, this may speed us closer to walkable, bikeable neighborhoods that can only be reasonably navigated on foot or by bike, connected by extensive public transit networks (which already do track where you're going).
- linksnapzz 4mo ago
  Nah. It's giving votes to whatever politician promises to put certain regulatory regimes out to pasture. You may find that you like some of their other policies far, far less than "seeks to restrain creeping safetyism".
lnxg33k1 4mo ago
But to be honest I bought a VW Polo this year, in february, it's amazing, it's invasive, but full of optionals, sensors, and comforts I was a bit scared by reading on internet people complaining about cars full of electronics, it's been a bless for me, for real useful context, I live in Naples, Italy, it's a city made for horses
c2h5oh 4mo ago
People are selling those older cars at a significant discount compared to previous years, because they got banned from low emission zones - you need euro 5 for diesel and euro 4 for petrol to be allowed in centers of many of large EU cities.
- Gigachad 4mo ago
  I've heard China has something similar where you need an electric vehicle to drive in many city centers. Part of a huge effort to fix air pollution issues.
hylaride 4mo ago
> Then there's the incessant beeping at you As a Canadian that did a road trip through the balkans over the winter, the rental car was constantly beeping at me for something. It was misreading signs and due to the bad weather (it was during a huge snowstorm in January) the roads weren't very clear and it was constantly confused. I also had some very unhappy drivers (especially in Albania) furiously trying to get around me, causing the car to further slow down to "avoid collisions". I was already stressed enough driving through countries with mixed driving records, but any actual defensive driving caused the car to nag me. Sorry in advance to any Bulgarians, of which the car had plates from, for probably tarnishing your reputation.
- LtWorf 4mo ago
  My friend rented a car and he told me that the wheel was moving by itself trying to follow the road. Then he tried taking his hands off and see if the car would follow the line. Nope, it would go straight into a wall (he of course was going slow for the experiment and didn't hit the wall). So it was more like fighting some "smart" feature that distracts you even more from actually pointing the car where you want it to go.
- elros 4mo ago
  I moved to Bulgaria last year, and while I love the country and its... rugged and quaint people, let me assure you, tarnishing their driver's reputation is impossible. On an unrelated note, studying Bulgarian brought me a lot of joy.
dwa3592 4mo ago
>>The worst is the cruise control that tries to stick to the speed limit is this a feature really? is it only applied in European cars?
- imp0cat 4mo ago
  It's one of the travel assist features where the cars try to stick to the changing speed limits, slow down for corners etc... .
belorn 4mo ago
The speed sign detection can be a bit funny at times. Mine often read signs that are for roads next to the one I'm driving, which occasionally include train tracks. Seeing a maximum speed that is 200 km/h is a bit funny, through less so when the camera catches a small road parallel with the highway with speeds that's 1/4th that of the highway. If the cruise control would follow those, the first one would be very illegal and the second one quite dangerous and possibly illegal if it got stuck like that. It also has detected a 357 km/h (or around that) while driving in the city, possibly by random patterns from a shop's street window. The lane assist can also become confused by shadows created by a fence next to the road when the sun is just slightly above the horizon. The car thought I was driving between two roads and tried to steer me to the side, but it was a single lane highway. That was the last time I had it enabled.
- userbinator 4mo ago
  It also has detected a 357 km/h (or around that) while driving in the city, possibly by random patterns from a shop's street window. Unless you have one of the very few cars that can even approach that speed[1], it sounds like some software "engineer" most certainly did not understand the meaning of "sanity checking". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_car_speed_records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_car_speed_r...
  - ZiiS 4mo ago
    A Citroën Ami can't do more then 45km/h but it would be odd if it refused to believe there were 90km/h signs?
gmac 4mo ago
Renault have nailed this. In their latest cars (the EVs, at least) you set up which features you do and don’t want, then a single button press when you get in the car makes it so. Some of their implementations, such as lane keeping, are good enough to keep. Others, such as speed limit detection, aren’t (though it’s much better at French speed limits than UK ones, which I suppose makes sense).
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- gmac 4mo ago
  (It's a double-press, which I think of as one action but I guess it's technically two button presses, because I believe the EU mandates that)
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
austinl 4mo ago
I recently rented a new car, and just wanted to sit with the windows open while waiting. After I shut the engine off, the interior lights and dash display would remain on for 5+ minutes. If I locked the doors, the interior lights would shut off, but it would automatically roll up all of the windows. Examples of "features" that are infuriating.
- gs17 4mo ago
  That sounds like the kind of feature where there's a setting buried in the menus for it.
pigeons 4mo ago
What came into effect in 2009?
Scoundreller 4mo ago
> but its sensors don't always read the signs very well, so you'll often slow to 50 km/h (about 30 mph) for no reason. Ah, did your car pick up the speed limit sign on the French auto-route for… motorcycles filtering between lanes too?
xattt 4mo ago
How vulnerable are road sign cameras to, say, someone sticking a vertical strip of black electrical tape to make the 50 appear as a 150? Is there any cross-referencing to an onboard GPS database? GPS-based speed alerts are a feature of base-model Hyundais/Kias in Canada, so it doesn’t seem to be too far of a stretch for a failsafe.
- gs17 4mo ago
  I don't know about 50 to 150, but someone near me appears to have put up their own speed limit sign and the font is slightly off, so my car sees it as 75 instead of 25 (and fortunately doesn't set itself to it, but helpfully gives me a single-button way to set my cruise control to match).
peibye 4mo ago
In the states, buy a manual car if you can get one. I have a manual Subaru crosstrek from 2021 and the only features it has is cruise control and a backup camera.
numitus 4mo ago
automatic speed control in the Toyota Yaris works absolutely terribly. On the highway, it constantly misreads signs and suggests driving at 40 km/h instead of 120 km/h. It can even interpret a 10-ton weight limit sign as a 10 km/h speed limit! And you can't turn off the audio warning, so I've just gotten used to it and now I ignore it.
bigiain 4mo ago
> At this point I don't know if I'd buy anything made after 2008. At this point I'm contemplating finding a a late 60s/early 70s Beetle - or some other car with no more complex electronics in it than headlight switches and dizzy/points type ignition. Nobody is gonna be able to sewt that to remote brick itself when it thinks I'm ignoring it's incessant beeping.
- userbinator 4mo ago
  Unless you're going to be staying within a small city with almost entirely short trips, you probably want a bigger and less primitive car from that era than a Beetle.
  - bigiain 4mo ago
    Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I drove a '72 Superbug reasonably regularly from Sydney to Brisbane and Melbourne, even Adelaide a few times. They're 800-1000km trips each way and 1600km for Adelaide. Admittedly my muscles and bones ache and complain more now than when I was in my late teens and early 20s. And I'd almost certainly regret not having air con and working heating if I owned one now. But realistically? 98+% of all my driving is trips or 5-15km or so. And probably still 95% of my driving (at least by trip count if not by km travelled) would be less than 50km trips. I think a "suitable for around town" car supplemented by taxis or rentals at airports because I choose to fly most of my 800+km trips these days would work out just fine for me. The last 5 or 6 years the only long trips I've driven have been in a campervan borrowed from a friend to go to music festivals in Queensland - partly because a camper van is really nice compared to a tent (especially if the weather goes bad) and partly because that friend really likes lending it out (at leat to people he trusts).
bigbuppo 4mo ago
I have a highway 98 near me. My car reads it as a speed limit.
OptionOfT 4mo ago
In Europe semi-truck trailers have stickers on them representing their speed limit. Those speed limits differ by country, so quite often you see a truck with 60,70,80 and 90 sticks on it. So then you're driving in Germany at 200km/h and the camera picks up the 90km/h and brakes aggressively. I absolutely hate it.
stephen_g 4mo ago
Noticed this with hire cars, we have 'school zones' that only operate within certain times (like 7am - 9am and 2pm - 4pm) and new cars pick up the 40 km/h from the sign but obviously aren't smart enough to read the times and realise it's not in effect, so the car thinks you're speeding by 20 km/h and you get all these beeps and bobs. I also had one that couldn't tell the difference between a speed sign and a speed 'ahead' sign so it'd start screaming at you hundreds of metres before you reach the actual speed zone! Then there was the fun of driving on a highway at 110 km/h (I think with a friend with a Tesla) and we passed a school bus that had a '40 km/h when lights flashing' sign on the back but with 40 is in the red circle like our speed signs (like [1]). So the car decided that was the speed of the road and the cruise control suddenly slammed on the brakes! Obviously the lights were not flashing (and wouldn't unless it was stopped at a bus stop and letting off children) but the car is also not smart to interpret any of that! I'm glad neither of the cars our family owns has any of these features! 1. https://www.austockphoto.com.au/image/40-when-lights-flash-sign-on-back-of-bus-hnHbK https://www.austockphoto.com.au/image/40-when-lights-flash-s...
- A_D_E_P_T 4mo ago
  > Then there was the fun of driving on a highway at 110 km/h (I think with a friend with a Tesla) and we passed a school bus that had a '40 km/h when lights flashing' sign on the back but with 40 is in the red circle like our speed signs (like [1]). So the car decided that was the speed of the road and the cruise control suddenly slammed on the brakes! Oh man, the incessant beeps are annoying, but speed limit monitoring in cruise control is hands-down the dumbest default "safety" feature on new cars. When that sort of thing happens on the highway, it feels legitimately dangerous, like any other kind of near-miss incident.
  - userbinator 4mo ago
    It reminds me of an old article about how often self-driving cars would get rear-ended for abruptly braking on highway on-ramps because they thought there was an obstacle ahead, and naturally the cars behind it were all accelerating and the human drivers in them would never think of stopping as they saw clear road ahead. In many areas, doing a "brake check" is illegal.
cptskippy 4mo ago
> looking at you, Volkswagen I have a new Volkswagen and there's an annoying amount of arrogance behind the technology decisions in the vehicle that really sour the experience. Perhaps the most annoying is that many notifications like "you can't do that while driving" are toast style notifications that disappear before you can notice or read them. It has 360 degree cameras but it gets to decide when you can activate them. Want to know if you have enough room on the passenger side to go around a vehicle stopped in front of you without scratching up your tires? Too bad, the car doesn't detect a parking spot. Wireless charger refuses to charge phone and puts up a notification saying it can't charge it any time you place your phone on it. There's a menu setting to disable the wireless charger, and that puts up a persistent notification telling you to re-enable wireless charging. You put the re-circulation fan on, perhaps because you don't like smelling exhaust fumes? Car quietly turns it off again in the not to distant future. You adjusted your volume, car readjusts it for you because reasons. You can see some of those reasons buried deep in the menu system, but not all of them. Car will adjust your volume again at a later date without your consent. The car sends notifications about the status of the car but doesn't update or remove them when they're no longer true. I wake up most mornings to several "Your doors are unlocked" notifications but the doors are locked. Did they unlock? Why did they unlock? How long were they unlocked? Nobody knows... Walk away car locking? Works 100% of the time when get out of the car at home and walk two feet away from the car. Fails to work the first time you park it downtown and someone rifles through your car and steals your charging adapter. You got home and are unloading groceries from the trunk, the car is going to honk at you that the trunk is ajar before you can even get inside the house. You'll receive alerts on your phone that the trunk is open as well. Car honks any time a door is left open or the car isn't locked even if you're standing less than 2 feet from the car holding the key. You have a charge schedule setup so your car only charges during off-peak times. Want to charge at a pay-charger or outside of that schedule? Sure, just click the button on screen which permanently disables the charge schedule and requires to you go deep into menus to re-enable it. Similar situation with State of Charge limits. Want to charge to 100% for a road trip? Sure that's the new permanent setting, and we're going to remind you it's bad to charge to 100% all the time. Tesla gets dumped for so much, but their software is so well tuned compared to this garbage.
- 4mo ago
leptons 4mo ago
They are trying to make it as unpleasant to drive as possible, and I don't really blame them - cars are a big factor in climate change, smog, etc. I gave up driving in the 90's because it was pretty obvious even back then.
tiew9Vii 4mo ago
2016-2017 seems peek car from a car owner/driving perspective. Before the beeps, bongs, giant screens started and button removal took over. Currently driving a 2010 euro hot hatch, when that dies will be looking at a 2016-2017 vintage. I watched a very interesting video over the weekend, the lost discipline of the alarm. It goes in to the research of alarms and alarm fatigue negative consequences. Seems very relevant to the latest generation vehicles. https://youtu.be/Ira28fgSF7M?si=-GrsTTGemLY1LwLw https://youtu.be/Ira28fgSF7M?si=-GrsTTGemLY1LwLw If I ever buy a “modern” car I’ll pull the fuse for all the annoying beeps and bongs and safety features. The only safety features I care about are traction control, abs, parking sensors and maybe blind spot mirrors. Blind spot mirrors are a double edged sword as it means people now stop doing shoulder checks relying on the blind spot mirror light only.
- matheusmoreira 4mo ago
  > I’ll pull the fuse for all the annoying beeps and bongs and safety features. I wonder if this will remain possible. To kill my car's annoying beeps, all I had to do was cut some wires. That implies it was just an optional "feature" that they tacked on. What happens when they start deeply integrating this nonsense?
throwaway2037 4mo ago
> At this point I don't know if I'd buy anything made after 2008. You might as well stick to horses. What is so specific about eighteen years ago (2026 - 2008 ~= 18)? Does that mean that you will never drive an electric car?
hansvm 4mo ago
Not just beeping. I had a rental Nissan recently violently pull me straight off the road when it couldn't read the lines very well in a thick fog. Apparently you can disable that deep in some settings menu through some magic button presses divorced from the main settings menus, but it was frightening. For most manufacturers, almost none of this tech is good enough to even make optional and non-default, much less legislatively mandated, and that supposes I trust you not to sell my daily mood or whatever bullshit to data brokers.
devmor 4mo ago
The "steering assist" feature in new cars is terrifying, and has almost severely injured or killed me once. When my car was last receiving service, I was given a loaner vehicle with this new feature. I was driving home in the rain, and an aggressive driver passed me very closely, triggering the collision avoidance system - this forced the steering wheel to turn away from the car, made the car hydroplane and nearly flung me into a ditch at 55MPH. I had to force back against the steering and creatively spin my vehicle against the turn.
90d 4mo ago
I was driving my mom's brand new Mercedes suv on a family road trip (for perspective I have a 2006 diesel van with 300k+ miles on it). Absolutely hated the thing. The worst was I was causing on the highway atb74mph and that auto adjust crap slowed ke down to 30mph! On the highway! Not sure if it was a service bug or what but kinda terrifying.
CommanderData 4mo ago
> 2008 Governments will tax older cars out of existence.
dzhiurgis 4mo ago
> 2008 I was looking for a car recently for a 3 month visit in Europe. 2008 is the bottom of the barrel at this point. Basically deciding between scraping and trying to make few more years out of it.
pontussw 4mo ago
A camera pointed at people’s face is going to have some insanely positive effects targeting one of the absolute biggest problems on the road though. On my daily commute about 50% of drivers are on their phones at 90 km/h, would be great if their cars were beeping at them since no one else is going to do anything about it. I find this especially great since one of them rear ended me earlier this year and practically admitted he was fiddling with his phone at the time
- 4k93n2 4mo ago
  if all that happens is the car beeping at them then i would imagine that number will stay at 50%
  - akramachamarei 3mo ago
    I see potential for selling driver distraction data (adjusted with forthcoming studies on real risk impacts thereof) to insurance companies. Ideally, meaningfully risky drivers (phone users, etc) get penalized with their premiums, and the safe drivers may not have to pay as much. Not that I support mandatory driver cams, just thinking out loud...
  - pontussw 3mo ago
    I might be naive but I believe that >0 tiktok addicts who can’t put their phone down even while driving, might be persuaded to quit when even their car beeps condescendingly at them
thefz 4mo ago
> A camera pointed at your face just adds insult to injury. What is preventing car owners to cover it with electrical tape and move on?
matthews3 4mo ago
Is 2008 a good cut-off? My 2016 BMW doesn't really have any annoying electronics or nannies compared to my 2005 model (other than electronic power steering :))
- haspok 4mo ago
  I drive a 2019 Passat, with lane assist, tempomat, road sign detection etc - it only beeps when there is no more washer fluid (but then it does beep every fcking 5 minutes - easily the most annoying feature of this car).
pavlov 4mo ago
I just took delivery on a new European made car (DS no 8) last week and it’s been great. The driver assist features are useful, automatic lane switching works perfectly, and the driver awareness nags are very modest. I’d never want to go back to an old non-EV. My previous car was a Tesla, and the DS is as good or better in every respect that matters to me. It’s a Stellantis brand on their shared platform, so I assume their other brands are similarly fine (Fiat / Opel / Citroen / Peugeot etc, also American Dodge / Chrysler use the same platforms).
vim-guru 4mo ago
For speed-limits, I believe most of these new cars use multiple sources; so likely information found in the map at your location and cameras to spot signs. For some freak, unknown reason, the map-data is usually more trusted with the car vendors then the camera's it seems. Just don't rely on map-data for speed-limits and this would be a solved problem I think.
deleted 4mo ago
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72deluxe 4mo ago
I have a 2016 Beetle and a 2014 Mini Countryman and neither have these stupid features, thankfully! Keeping them for as long as I possibly can! In fact, my Beetle doesn't properly support Android Auto so I can't ever plug my phone into it (and the Mini only does bluetooth audio + playlists/song info for my wife's iphone integration), and my Beetle has a button on the steering wheel that I have to pay VW to use (no thanks). So I can concentrate on driving. I also have a 1972 Beetle which has zero infotainment nonsense to distract me (the engine is deafening anyway), where you actually concentrate on driving. It seems all this modern nonsense to warn drivers is because they've stuffed the car cockpit with all manner of distractions and giant screens, or non-tactile interfaces that you have to look at instead of feeling, thereby reducing concentration on actually driving. Rather than making new methods to ensure someone is concentrating, just reduce the amount of screens in the cockpit! My sister-in-law's Tesla is horrendous. She can't easily change the temperature whilst driving. There's a reason the space shuttle and airplanes have actual switches to change settings... Keeping these cars for as long as I possibly can. I went around Iceland in a Fiat van (a "camper", tiny thing to sleep in) and the week was ruined with the incessant beeping of the car as it moved from speed limit to speed limit. I know the speed limits were changing because there were signs in the road, but instead I had to constantly look at the dashboard to try to find out why the stupid thing was beeping, which I presume was the same tone as any other error, thereby masking any real problem. Absolute garbage. Incidentally, the Fiat also had that annoying "lane assist" feature which wobbles the steering wheel but it did it all the time when there were no lanes (unpaved roads etc) and it felt IDENTICAL to the car skidding to my "untrained"/"used-to-a-proper-car" hands, since the motion of the steering wheel versus car direction didn't match for a split second, and there was no real connection to the rack/pinion steering mechanism. I felt like a passenger even as the driver. Horrible. Absolutely horrible.
duskdozer 3mo ago
I dread ending up with a modern car though I know it's inevitable for me some day, exactly for these kinds of things that I know will infuriate me. All I can hope for I guess is that people will find ways of bypassing some of them
queenkjuul 3mo ago
My 2016 corolla is very low-tech, but new enough to have Bluetooth and a backup camera, so everything i want. With any luck it'll outlive me.
ivell 3mo ago
This is why I don't trust self driving cars. It is hard to say when it will make a wrong decision and we are too slow to react as we are not actively engaged in driving.

nathias 4mo ago

yes I can't understand how anyone buys these

pmontra 4mo ago
Because there is nothing else left to buy. I only buy second hand cars but sooner or later I'll have to buy a post 2026 car.

driverdan 4mo ago

The intrusiveness of these systems varies significantly between manufacturers. Don't buy one with an annoying, intrusive system.

CGMthrowaway 4mo ago
There is a minimum intrusiveness required by law, though. One could even say it's intrusive by design, depending on your perspective
- driverdan 4mo ago
  OP said after 2008. There are many cars made after 2008 that do not have intrusive systems. For example, my 2018 Camaro has none of that. The only proximity sensors it has are side vehicle indicators and all they do is turn on a light. New cars with intrusive driver monitoring alerts are obviously going to be terrible but you can still buy vehicles made prior to this change.
A_D_E_P_T 4mo ago
Most of the rentals around my neck of the woods are VWs or entry-level Mercedes. The two seem approximately equally bad; they both have the exact same problems with cruise control, lane assist beeps, speed limit beeps, "take a break!" beeps, and so on. I've heard that Dacia has some models that are like 2008 throwbacks, with "modern" annoyances kept to a bare minimum, but they're considered too low-market for the rental companies, I suppose. I'd consider that sort of thing if I were looking to buy a new car, money no object. But really a well-maintained vehicle that's ~15-20 years old suits me just fine.
- VBprogrammer 4mo ago
  Ever driven a Dacia? I had one for a rental in Portugal. Honestly the least comfortable and most irritating vehicle I've ever driven. I'm not just being fussy, we've had plenty of Hyundais, Citroens and the like without a problem.
  - boldlybold 4mo ago
    Same place (and only place) I've driven one. Easy stick shift, a bit underpowered for the more mountainous highways, but it was a good ride.
    - VBprogrammer 3mo ago
      I guess life would be boring if we were all the same. I found the 1.0 litre turbo in the Sandero to be perfectly adequate in power. I hated almost everything else about the car though. And again, I don't usually have this problem, more often I fall in love with the little rental cars we get and start checking how much they are on the used market before remembering we have no need for a second car.
- uniq7 4mo ago
  I'm the owner of a 2025 Dacia Jogger. It has a physical button to disable all warnings and alarms, which I really appreciate, but I still need to press that button twice (with ~1s of delay between pushes), and I need to do it every time I turn the car on. I bought the model with no internet connection, so the speed limit is automatically read by the front camera, and it's usually wrong. Although the alarm can be disabled, it still shows a distracting visual warning on the dashboard. I covered mine with duck tape, but now everyone who goes into the car asks me why I'm covering a warning with duck tape, and I have to explain them every time. I converted the car into a camper, but some digital features are always on, even when the car is off. For example, the car continuously detects the wireless key, so I bought some Faraday cage wallets to store them while we sleep. However, they don't work, so at the end I had to make my own Faraday cage wallets with aluminum foil and duck tape (yeah, in this project I found that duck tape is really versatile). Another issue that really bothers me is that the car detects movement, even when it is completely off. Whenever I'm sleeping and I change position, the center screen lights on, some relays start to click, and some fan runs for a couple of seconds. Then, after ~10 seconds everything turns off again. It drives me crazy. I got this car just because I wanted something shorter than 4.5m (but that could fit a 120 x 190 cm bed), with a reliable engine (this is a 1.6L from 2005, created by Renault & Nissan, without any known issues), and without internet connection. I reviewed hundreds of cars, and this was basically our only option in our country.

epolanski 4mo ago

Lane assist is also genuinely dangerous when there's men at work on the road and they change the lanes, yet the car tries to stick to the painted ones and I have to fight the car to do what it has to do we don't kill nobody. Also happens it gets confused with freshly painted white/yellow lines when older are still visible.

stavros 4mo ago
Tell me you live in a civilised country without telling me you live in a civilised country. Over here, in Greece, whenever you try to avoid a pothole, a double-parked car, a cyclist, a pedestrian, a stray, ANYTHING, lane assist always tries its best to make you hit whatever you're trying to avoid.
- CobaltFire 4mo ago
  When I loved in Guam we had a joke bout this: How do you tell if someone is driving drunk? They are driving straight! With the unspoken part being anyone NOT drunk was weaving to dodge debris, potholes, etc.
  - Scoundreller 4mo ago
    Same joke in the rust (aka pothole) belt
- AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
  Earlier this year, I rented a new Toyota Camry (US model). It had lane assist, but it was very easy to override it. I didn't really have to fight it. (And that was nice. I've drive other cars where it was more of a battle.) So, yeah, it's done badly some of the time. But it at least can be done well.
  - stavros 4mo ago
    I don't know, even if it's not that forceful, sometimes I have a light touch on the wheel and I'm going straight, I don't want to suddenly have to fight the car swerving me onto oncoming traffic.

CGMthrowaway 4mo ago

Don't rule out another Cash for Clunkers. The 2009 program destroyed 1 in 300 cars on the road. The next one could be bigger. Also, 3 in 4 cars on the road today are now in states requiring emissions tests for your annual registration, which can pose a significant (and growing, as standards improve) obstacle for older cars.

Dries007 4mo ago
The emissions tests only test to the level that the car was first registered (or produced) doesn't it?
- hnav 4mo ago
  Yup, a bigger issue for old cars trying to pass emissions is that with prices of precious metals, a worn out catalytic converter (diagnostic code P0420 ) means that most of them are mechanically totaled in California, New York, Colorado since they require either OEM or CARB approved replacements.
  - Ar-Curunir 4mo ago
    That’s a good thing, yes?
    - Gigachad 4mo ago
      It's good thing if you like not having cancer.
    - projektfu 4mo ago
      It does promote some catalytic converter theft.
  - Scoundreller 4mo ago
    Must be close to actually worthless if they’re not shipping them out-of-state, no?

peterlk 4mo ago

Over Christmas, I spent several minutes trying to debug my beeping dashboard - it only seemed to happen sometimes while driving, so stopping didn’t let me figure it out. Eventually I discovered that it was beeping at me because my eyes weren’t on the road enough. Of course, figuring that out required me to take my eyes off the road to figure out which blinking signal was associated with this particular alarm. Also, being constantly warned that I was speeding in rural areas where the car missed a speed limit sign caused me to start ignoring the speeding alarm within a few hours of driving the car. I feel like there’s some lesson here in building to the lowest common denominator, and giving people products rather than tools (tools are more dangerous, but more useful), but maybe I’m just grumpy.

sixtyj 4mo ago
Imagine driving thru night with kids sleeping and suddenly car starts beeping. Is there a way how to switch sensors off for similar situations?
- ShellfishMeme 4mo ago
  You can switch them off but only until the engine is turned off again. Most manufacturers have a shortcut on the dashboard or steering wheel though. Eventually you just get used to doing that every time you start driving.
  - londons_explore 4mo ago
    There'll be firmware hacks to force that mode soon enough.
    - Scoundreller 4mo ago
      You wouldn’t download a bookmarklet on your car
      - bigiain 4mo ago

afarah1 4mo ago

EU driving assists are obtrusive to the point of making driving less safe in my experience. Great video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-S76WEl25k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-S76WEl25k

cellular 4mo ago
How many bells would sound if SUNGLASSES hid your eyes?!
- EA-3167 4mo ago
  I can answer this, since I have a new car with this camera and polarized sunglasses. MOST of the time it's good about telling when I'm looking and when I'm not, out of maybe... 5 alerts over the previous 8 months all, but one occurred when I was in fact looking away for one reason or another. Likewise when it's correct my lane-keeping it's been right about me drifting. Given how inattentive I see other drivers being, on their phones for example, and taking into account that I'm (based on my record) a good driver who is attentive... I appreciate these additions. I doubt that they make us less safe, we just dislike anyone or anything telling us how to drive, because "we already know what we're doing." The subjective experience of being distracted however isn't usually so clear-cut, it FEELS like you're paying attention. Note: This is a new model Lexus, so I expect this represents that brand as well as Toyota, but beyond that I don't know.
  - dylan604 4mo ago
    Just because it's available in a Lexus does not mean it's available in a Corolla
    - Reason077 4mo ago
      In Europe it does. ADDW is required in all new vehicles, including Corollas.
  - Brian_K_White 4mo ago

thegrim33 4mo ago

Well yeah, that's the point. They want to enshitify cars and make driving as expensive and as annoying as possible to force people out of cars. They know they can't just ban cars outright, so they enshitify this little thing this year, mandate this other thing the next year, add a new tax/fee the next year, add a new restriction the next year, reduce speed limits the next year, etc., etc., all in the name of safety / "save the kids", until decades later they finally get to where they want to be.

Forgeties79 4mo ago
You had a point until > to force people out of cars. All that stuff following is also nonsense. “They” don’t want people out of cars, the companies want that sweet sweet revenue stream from vacuuming up data. That’s all this is
- Slow_Hand 4mo ago
  Yeah. Whenever someone starts explaining to me that "they" - meaning some vague and undefined cartel - want you to (blank) I immediately flag their reasoning as suspect until proven otherwise. More often than not it's indicative of a lack of serious critical thought. Examples include some version of "They want us to act like slaves" or "They want to control our minds". More often than not the simplest explanation is short-sighted profit motive, or institutional dysfunction, or multiple parties with conflicting motivations with no central agenda. It's far less likely to be a grand coordinated conspiracy.
drnick1 4mo ago
You forgot the bike lanes that take up road space but nobody uses. Every socialist mayor's favorite anti-car policy.
- stackghost 4mo ago
  >You forgot the bike lanes that take up road space but nobody uses. Where I live (city in the PNW), bike lanes see heavy use year-round.

altern8 4mo ago

Same here. I drive a 1991 Honda Prelude and I don't think I'll want to drive anything else probably ever.

tjwebbnorfolk 4mo ago
93 Honda Civic here. 100% agree. I don't appreciate anything on a car that does stuff on its own without my direct input.
derf_ 4mo ago
I drove an '89 Prelude (with a carburetor!) that had been used hard before I acquired it, until it left me stranded by the side of the road one too many times. I am happy to report that a 2000 Acura Integra is a very reasonable upgrade. Basically the same car, except better (fuel injection, ABS brakes, airbags, etc.). The only thing I miss is that the Prelude had a tighter turning radius.
Gigachad 4mo ago
I suspect owning a car will become increasingly rare as self driving improves. You'd take public transport for the bulk of trips with self driving cars for odd routes / late night trips PT doesn't cover.
- hparadiz 4mo ago
  That sounds good in theory but the first time you get into a dirty one with a weird smell will be the last time you use it.
- ghaff 4mo ago
  You presumably live in or near a city.
- altern8 4mo ago
  I live in the Polish countryside and there is no public transport :-D
__turbobrew__ 4mo ago

warp 4mo ago

I have a Volkswagen ID3, I love the adaptive cruise control. Yes, it gets it wrong in some spots (signage isn't great here in Asturias, Spain), and it gets it wrong in both directions (too slow at certain locations, too fast in others). But I still appreciate the convenience of not having to keep an eye on the speed nor the distance between the my car and the vehicles in front of me when driving on the freeway, where it generally doesn't make mistakes.

scandox 4mo ago
But you do have to keep an eye on those things. It can make the adjustments but you can't take your eye off them.
mort96 4mo ago
I drive a Nissan Ariya sometimes, which has adaptive cruise control. It's ... okay, but I'm not sure my own car's "dumb" cruise control is any worse to be honest. My own car's cruise control is just three large buttons on the steering wheel: one which says "keep going this speed when I take my foot off the gas", one cancel button, and one "go back to the previous speed" button. It works wonders and is quite comfortable to use. Never messes up, I can rely on it 100% to do its one simple job. The Ariya is much more fancy, but it's so much less reliable. If it's snowing outside it sometimes just randomly turns itself off because sensors got covered in snow, leading to a rapid deceleration until I intervene. Sometimes it refuses to turn on because sensors are covered in snow. And its braking curve is uncomfortable; when the car in front stops (e.g in stop and go traffic), it gets way close to the car in front and brakes hard, instead of slowly coming to a stop at a comfortable distance. Oh and it's connected to the nav system; I've had it just suddenly slow the car down to a crawl because the nav system had chosen a stupid route, it slowed down to take an exit while I stayed on the highway. I'll take dumb but reliable any day over smart and unreliable. Even if it means I sometimes have to actually adjust speed myself. Relatedly, I don't actually mind having to drive the car. I like cruise control because my foot gets fatigued when pressing the gas pedal for hours on end, but making manual adjustments to my speed? Changing gears? Listening to the engine to make sure it's at a happy RPM? I feel like that stuff just gives me small stuff to do so I keep paying attention to the driving. The incessant beeping in modern cars on the other hand is just a distraction. Luckily, the Nissan lets you configure it so that 2 quick button presses on the steering wheel disables all the useless alarms. I'm so happy I don't have to do that manually for each "safety" feature every time I get in.

snapetom 4mo ago

Last year, I rented a Kia. I was coasting downhill on a curve and approached a group of bikers. Everything was fine. I was a little below the speed limit, they were in the bike lane, I was in my lane, it was a sunny day. The car detected them as a hazard to avoid and STRAIGHTENED AND LOCKED MY STEERING WHEEL in the middle of the curve turn. I ran into a shallow ditch, but holy shit, what if it took control and over corrected onto an oncoming car?

benjiro29 4mo ago
> on a curve O yea, that is driver lane assist ... A Toyota rental had the same issue. In a specific steep exit corner (that goes up facing the sun), how many ** times the lane assist tries to force the car to go straight (as in, off the hill! ). The first few times when it happens, scares the ** out of me. Another fun one is going down a hill in a Rental Opel, roundabout with some cars, no problem. Slowing down naturally, while i see the cars accelerate to enter the roundabout. No need to break as by the time i get close, the cars will have started to accelerate. So my speed will have matched the last vehicles speed by the time i am close. Suddenly, emergency break slam on !!! Because "the car was going to hit the cars in front". Like, wtf!! That created a extreme dangerous situation if there was a car behind. I really see no benefits for a lot of those new safety features. The old ones like traction controle etc, great, keep them. But all this external monitoring, internal monitoring ... If your a safe driver, those features can make it more dangerous.
- fuzzzerd 4mo ago
  > If your a safe driver That's the issue. So many people are burried in their phone or just simply driving irresponsibly for the conditions, these features may be better for them. As someone who respects the responsibility of driving a vehicle, they're definitely making things less safe in some situations.
  - benjiro29 3mo ago
    I have a hard time imaging how those people can drive with the eye tracking features. Beep beep beep beep ... Do people like zone it out like parents with kids are able to zone out their little screaming devils? lol

grg0 4mo ago

> I find them very annoying I cannot tell you how many times I've punched the steering wheel. I want to find that source of beeping and rip its goddamn guts out of the system. Then I want to find who put it there and rip their guts too. I will rip their infernal existence out of this dimension. And fuck cameras. Blatant privacy violation, how is this getting past legislation?

HoldOnAMinute 4mo ago
Legislation isn't for your personal benefit, silly. It's for the corporations.
- Gigachad 4mo ago
  It's for the benefit of everyone else around you so you don't kill them while flying down a street scrolling instagram reels.
  - linksnapzz 4mo ago
    Presumptuous busybodying as a service.

Spooky23 4mo ago

I bought a fancy Toyota SUV after my trusty 2008 Honda was damaged in an accident. The nagging is ridiculous. I’m actually not quite sure what lane assist does, but if I look at my side mirror it chastises me for not being attentive. It also has locked up the brakes and made me think I hit somebody when backing into my driveway. I wish I had fixed the Honda!

FunHearing3443 4mo ago
Are you talking about an old Honda or some issue with new Hondas?
- soupbowl 4mo ago
  They had a 2008 Honda which was damaged and bought a new Toyota which has modern issues. Did you read their comment at all?
c2h5oh 4mo ago
I've got a fairly new Toyota and I when I found myself needing a 2nd car for my family I ended up buying a 20 year old Honda and I have to say I enjoy driving it much more. I might also be safer in it - oversensitive security systems nagging me with false positives almost constantly don't pair well with my ADD

nubg 4mo ago

> lane assist I prefer the term "lane insist"

sunshine-o 4mo ago
some might even say "lame insist"

consp 4mo ago

We have an 80 kph sign about 6m after the autoweg sign (100kph), why they didn't combine them is anyone's guess. My detection system always misses it, and often there are speed checks. Fortunately I can disable sign recognition for the cruise control.

mort96 4mo ago
Wait does your cruise control automatically accelerate by default when it thinks it sees a sign..? That sounds terrifying! I've only seen systems which give you a prompt to switch speed which you can accept with a button
- timc3 4mo ago
  Mine did until I turned it off, and on an early software version it would do it at full acceleration of the car - and considering it has over 600 horsepower was really terrifying. It also slowed down violently once, misreading a sign on the motorway.
  - mort96 4mo ago
    I've noticed this too! The Nissan's adaptive cruise control doesn't accelerate automatically after a sign, but when it does accelerate automatically, e.g because I accepted the prompt to change target speed or because the slow car in front changed lanes or took an exit, it accelerates so bloody quick. Way quicker than I would've if I'm just driving manually.

mrtksn 4mo ago

It BS article, no cameras pointed at your face are required. They require "Advanced Driver Distraction Warning System", don't specify how it should be implemented. Here's the text describing the system: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2023/2590/oj/eng https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2023/2590/oj/eng It specifically mentions that it is illegal to use the cameras from such system to identify the person. It is pretty much the opposite of what people think its going to do. I am sorry you don't like that its not 1984 law but the discussion is bullshit, which means in that instead of 1984 dystopia we are getting the Brave new world dystopia where bullshit prevails in the brave new world. I am sick and tired of BS rage bates of the endless entertainment; I would take 1984 dystopia anytime, at least we would know who the bad guys are.

QuercusMax 4mo ago
You'd know the bad guys are Eastasia. Or is it Eurasia?
eastof 4mo ago
Is it BS if this is the only way to implement such a system? Then it is practically required. Legal or not these cameras will be used to identify you, car companies do all kinds of shady stuff with the data they collect with all their fancy new sensors. Besides, cars have famously lagged in security standards, so this data will be exfiltrated. By comparison, your comment is more hysterical sounding than the article. It is very reasonable to not want even more invasive systems installed in cars, especially when this may bleed into US models and then used against us here where the company can absolutely legally sell your data.
- mrtksn 4mo ago
  If you want to believe that when light shines on a CCD chip the only option is to record the data and transmit it to the corporations and the governments then keep believing it. Everything needs to be extreme after all, right?
  - eastof 4mo ago

jhallenworld 4mo ago

>2008 I bought a 2017 Kia Forte S recently.. ($4000 for 137K miles) no touch screen, but many safety features that are not too bad like radar collision detection and blindspot warning. 2019 they started with the touchscreen, and in 2023 they added "Kia Connect" with OTA updates. Anyway definitely check the year. Problem with 2008 is some cars didn't even have Bluetooth audio or backup camera yet (like my 2010 VW CC- I had to add an aftermarket radio). Also don't get direct inject only engine. At least for Kias, the non-turbo engines are much more reliable (but underpowered for sure).

mfro 4mo ago

For those interested or forced to buy a new car — I recently picked up a brand new Hyundai and was impressed the new tech does not get in the way. ‘Driver attention warning’ does not have a face camera, it just uses the front sensor to confirm you’re not all over the place. It can also be disabled. Lane assist can be disabled with one button on the wheel. Almost all important controls are real (non capacitive) buttons. Warnings can be customized. Smart cruise control can be customized. As someone who really liked his 90s Toyota, I’m impressed.

stavros 4mo ago
I have a BYD Seal I bought last year, and it doesn't have a face camera. My mom's new BYD Dolphin does, so maybe it's just very recent. I have to disable the traffic sign warnings and lane keeping assistance every time I start the car. It's a swipe and three taps, but still annoying. I wish it could at least stay disabled for some time.
cloverich 4mo ago
We have two new Hyunadai's. My experience is mixed. For one, I get the "consider taking a break" warning constantly - possibly my sleepy eyes? In the Sante Fe, the cruise control disengages constantly b/c it can't see my face when I drive with left hand (my default) - this does not happen in our Ioniq though. Rear view camera + warning has been helpful on one occasion, but both rear and side cameras have fully disengaged my ability to drive many (30+) times when it was safe to do so. Basically in a city where you need to pull out and weave into traffic, if you begin moving too early it'll stop the car and also prevent the gas pedal from working (even if you let off and press many times). My most favorite is it would do this in my kids school drop off (cars are close and all moving at 5mph). The traffic helper knew this would happen to me and we had many laughs about it, after the first few times of them waving me a bit aggressively (why aren't you moving yet?). "Did you forget something in backseat" alarm goes off every time I park, I suppose from kid's car seats. Lane assist is nice when helpful, but very annoying when not (~10% helpful, 90% FP). My general read on the lane assist warning is its simply too sensitive. I disable the lane assist on cruise control, otherwise the adaptive cruise control is 90% good (it only can't seem to figure out to speed up when passing a semi, and will slow down instead). Very generally speaking, if I could disable all of the safety features I definitely would, they are almost exclusively false positives in my case and occur every time I drive. Yet its only two specific ones that are genuinely a nuisance (rather than annoying): The face detection on cruise control, and the car-disabling when I'm pulling out (which at times is out right dangerous).

BeetleB 4mo ago

> The worst is the cruise control that tries to stick to the speed limit -- but its sensors don't always read the signs very well I would assume all such cars have an option to turn this off.

deleted 4mo ago
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bitwize 4mo ago

The good news is that by making cars more trouble than they're worth, this may speed us closer to walkable, bikeable neighborhoods that can only be reasonably navigated on foot or by bike, connected by extensive public transit networks (which already do track where you're going).

linksnapzz 4mo ago
Nah. It's giving votes to whatever politician promises to put certain regulatory regimes out to pasture. You may find that you like some of their other policies far, far less than "seeks to restrain creeping safetyism".

lnxg33k1 4mo ago

But to be honest I bought a VW Polo this year, in february, it's amazing, it's invasive, but full of optionals, sensors, and comforts I was a bit scared by reading on internet people complaining about cars full of electronics, it's been a bless for me, for real useful context, I live in Naples, Italy, it's a city made for horses

c2h5oh 4mo ago

People are selling those older cars at a significant discount compared to previous years, because they got banned from low emission zones - you need euro 5 for diesel and euro 4 for petrol to be allowed in centers of many of large EU cities.

Gigachad 4mo ago
I've heard China has something similar where you need an electric vehicle to drive in many city centers. Part of a huge effort to fix air pollution issues.

hylaride 4mo ago

> Then there's the incessant beeping at you As a Canadian that did a road trip through the balkans over the winter, the rental car was constantly beeping at me for something. It was misreading signs and due to the bad weather (it was during a huge snowstorm in January) the roads weren't very clear and it was constantly confused. I also had some very unhappy drivers (especially in Albania) furiously trying to get around me, causing the car to further slow down to "avoid collisions". I was already stressed enough driving through countries with mixed driving records, but any actual defensive driving caused the car to nag me. Sorry in advance to any Bulgarians, of which the car had plates from, for probably tarnishing your reputation.

LtWorf 4mo ago
My friend rented a car and he told me that the wheel was moving by itself trying to follow the road. Then he tried taking his hands off and see if the car would follow the line. Nope, it would go straight into a wall (he of course was going slow for the experiment and didn't hit the wall). So it was more like fighting some "smart" feature that distracts you even more from actually pointing the car where you want it to go.
elros 4mo ago
I moved to Bulgaria last year, and while I love the country and its... rugged and quaint people, let me assure you, tarnishing their driver's reputation is impossible. On an unrelated note, studying Bulgarian brought me a lot of joy.

dwa3592 4mo ago

>>The worst is the cruise control that tries to stick to the speed limit is this a feature really? is it only applied in European cars?

imp0cat 4mo ago
It's one of the travel assist features where the cars try to stick to the changing speed limits, slow down for corners etc... .

belorn 4mo ago

The speed sign detection can be a bit funny at times. Mine often read signs that are for roads next to the one I'm driving, which occasionally include train tracks. Seeing a maximum speed that is 200 km/h is a bit funny, through less so when the camera catches a small road parallel with the highway with speeds that's 1/4th that of the highway. If the cruise control would follow those, the first one would be very illegal and the second one quite dangerous and possibly illegal if it got stuck like that. It also has detected a 357 km/h (or around that) while driving in the city, possibly by random patterns from a shop's street window. The lane assist can also become confused by shadows created by a fence next to the road when the sun is just slightly above the horizon. The car thought I was driving between two roads and tried to steer me to the side, but it was a single lane highway. That was the last time I had it enabled.

userbinator 4mo ago
It also has detected a 357 km/h (or around that) while driving in the city, possibly by random patterns from a shop's street window. Unless you have one of the very few cars that can even approach that speed[1], it sounds like some software "engineer" most certainly did not understand the meaning of "sanity checking". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_car_speed_records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_car_speed_r...
- ZiiS 4mo ago
  A Citroën Ami can't do more then 45km/h but it would be odd if it refused to believe there were 90km/h signs?

gmac 4mo ago

Renault have nailed this. In their latest cars (the EVs, at least) you set up which features you do and don’t want, then a single button press when you get in the car makes it so. Some of their implementations, such as lane keeping, are good enough to keep. Others, such as speed limit detection, aren’t (though it’s much better at French speed limits than UK ones, which I suppose makes sense).

deleted 4mo ago
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gmac 4mo ago
(It's a double-press, which I think of as one action but I guess it's technically two button presses, because I believe the EU mandates that)

deleted 4mo ago

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austinl 4mo ago

I recently rented a new car, and just wanted to sit with the windows open while waiting. After I shut the engine off, the interior lights and dash display would remain on for 5+ minutes. If I locked the doors, the interior lights would shut off, but it would automatically roll up all of the windows. Examples of "features" that are infuriating.

gs17 4mo ago
That sounds like the kind of feature where there's a setting buried in the menus for it.

pigeons 4mo ago

What came into effect in 2009?

Scoundreller 4mo ago

> but its sensors don't always read the signs very well, so you'll often slow to 50 km/h (about 30 mph) for no reason. Ah, did your car pick up the speed limit sign on the French auto-route for… motorcycles filtering between lanes too?

xattt 4mo ago

How vulnerable are road sign cameras to, say, someone sticking a vertical strip of black electrical tape to make the 50 appear as a 150? Is there any cross-referencing to an onboard GPS database? GPS-based speed alerts are a feature of base-model Hyundais/Kias in Canada, so it doesn’t seem to be too far of a stretch for a failsafe.

gs17 4mo ago
I don't know about 50 to 150, but someone near me appears to have put up their own speed limit sign and the font is slightly off, so my car sees it as 75 instead of 25 (and fortunately doesn't set itself to it, but helpfully gives me a single-button way to set my cruise control to match).

peibye 4mo ago

In the states, buy a manual car if you can get one. I have a manual Subaru crosstrek from 2021 and the only features it has is cruise control and a backup camera.

numitus 4mo ago

automatic speed control in the Toyota Yaris works absolutely terribly. On the highway, it constantly misreads signs and suggests driving at 40 km/h instead of 120 km/h. It can even interpret a 10-ton weight limit sign as a 10 km/h speed limit! And you can't turn off the audio warning, so I've just gotten used to it and now I ignore it.

bigiain 4mo ago

> At this point I don't know if I'd buy anything made after 2008. At this point I'm contemplating finding a a late 60s/early 70s Beetle - or some other car with no more complex electronics in it than headlight switches and dizzy/points type ignition. Nobody is gonna be able to sewt that to remote brick itself when it thinks I'm ignoring it's incessant beeping.

userbinator 4mo ago
Unless you're going to be staying within a small city with almost entirely short trips, you probably want a bigger and less primitive car from that era than a Beetle.
- bigiain 4mo ago
  Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I drove a '72 Superbug reasonably regularly from Sydney to Brisbane and Melbourne, even Adelaide a few times. They're 800-1000km trips each way and 1600km for Adelaide. Admittedly my muscles and bones ache and complain more now than when I was in my late teens and early 20s. And I'd almost certainly regret not having air con and working heating if I owned one now. But realistically? 98+% of all my driving is trips or 5-15km or so. And probably still 95% of my driving (at least by trip count if not by km travelled) would be less than 50km trips. I think a "suitable for around town" car supplemented by taxis or rentals at airports because I choose to fly most of my 800+km trips these days would work out just fine for me. The last 5 or 6 years the only long trips I've driven have been in a campervan borrowed from a friend to go to music festivals in Queensland - partly because a camper van is really nice compared to a tent (especially if the weather goes bad) and partly because that friend really likes lending it out (at leat to people he trusts).

bigbuppo 4mo ago

I have a highway 98 near me. My car reads it as a speed limit.

OptionOfT 4mo ago

In Europe semi-truck trailers have stickers on them representing their speed limit. Those speed limits differ by country, so quite often you see a truck with 60,70,80 and 90 sticks on it. So then you're driving in Germany at 200km/h and the camera picks up the 90km/h and brakes aggressively. I absolutely hate it.

stephen_g 4mo ago

Noticed this with hire cars, we have 'school zones' that only operate within certain times (like 7am - 9am and 2pm - 4pm) and new cars pick up the 40 km/h from the sign but obviously aren't smart enough to read the times and realise it's not in effect, so the car thinks you're speeding by 20 km/h and you get all these beeps and bobs. I also had one that couldn't tell the difference between a speed sign and a speed 'ahead' sign so it'd start screaming at you hundreds of metres before you reach the actual speed zone! Then there was the fun of driving on a highway at 110 km/h (I think with a friend with a Tesla) and we passed a school bus that had a '40 km/h when lights flashing' sign on the back but with 40 is in the red circle like our speed signs (like [1]). So the car decided that was the speed of the road and the cruise control suddenly slammed on the brakes! Obviously the lights were not flashing (and wouldn't unless it was stopped at a bus stop and letting off children) but the car is also not smart to interpret any of that! I'm glad neither of the cars our family owns has any of these features! 1. https://www.austockphoto.com.au/image/40-when-lights-flash-sign-on-back-of-bus-hnHbK https://www.austockphoto.com.au/image/40-when-lights-flash-s...

A_D_E_P_T 4mo ago
> Then there was the fun of driving on a highway at 110 km/h (I think with a friend with a Tesla) and we passed a school bus that had a '40 km/h when lights flashing' sign on the back but with 40 is in the red circle like our speed signs (like [1]). So the car decided that was the speed of the road and the cruise control suddenly slammed on the brakes! Oh man, the incessant beeps are annoying, but speed limit monitoring in cruise control is hands-down the dumbest default "safety" feature on new cars. When that sort of thing happens on the highway, it feels legitimately dangerous, like any other kind of near-miss incident.
- userbinator 4mo ago
  It reminds me of an old article about how often self-driving cars would get rear-ended for abruptly braking on highway on-ramps because they thought there was an obstacle ahead, and naturally the cars behind it were all accelerating and the human drivers in them would never think of stopping as they saw clear road ahead. In many areas, doing a "brake check" is illegal.

cptskippy 4mo ago

> looking at you, Volkswagen I have a new Volkswagen and there's an annoying amount of arrogance behind the technology decisions in the vehicle that really sour the experience. Perhaps the most annoying is that many notifications like "you can't do that while driving" are toast style notifications that disappear before you can notice or read them. It has 360 degree cameras but it gets to decide when you can activate them. Want to know if you have enough room on the passenger side to go around a vehicle stopped in front of you without scratching up your tires? Too bad, the car doesn't detect a parking spot. Wireless charger refuses to charge phone and puts up a notification saying it can't charge it any time you place your phone on it. There's a menu setting to disable the wireless charger, and that puts up a persistent notification telling you to re-enable wireless charging. You put the re-circulation fan on, perhaps because you don't like smelling exhaust fumes? Car quietly turns it off again in the not to distant future. You adjusted your volume, car readjusts it for you because reasons. You can see some of those reasons buried deep in the menu system, but not all of them. Car will adjust your volume again at a later date without your consent. The car sends notifications about the status of the car but doesn't update or remove them when they're no longer true. I wake up most mornings to several "Your doors are unlocked" notifications but the doors are locked. Did they unlock? Why did they unlock? How long were they unlocked? Nobody knows... Walk away car locking? Works 100% of the time when get out of the car at home and walk two feet away from the car. Fails to work the first time you park it downtown and someone rifles through your car and steals your charging adapter. You got home and are unloading groceries from the trunk, the car is going to honk at you that the trunk is ajar before you can even get inside the house. You'll receive alerts on your phone that the trunk is open as well. Car honks any time a door is left open or the car isn't locked even if you're standing less than 2 feet from the car holding the key. You have a charge schedule setup so your car only charges during off-peak times. Want to charge at a pay-charger or outside of that schedule? Sure, just click the button on screen which permanently disables the charge schedule and requires to you go deep into menus to re-enable it. Similar situation with State of Charge limits. Want to charge to 100% for a road trip? Sure that's the new permanent setting, and we're going to remind you it's bad to charge to 100% all the time. Tesla gets dumped for so much, but their software is so well tuned compared to this garbage.

4mo ago

leptons 4mo ago

They are trying to make it as unpleasant to drive as possible, and I don't really blame them - cars are a big factor in climate change, smog, etc. I gave up driving in the 90's because it was pretty obvious even back then.

tiew9Vii 4mo ago

2016-2017 seems peek car from a car owner/driving perspective. Before the beeps, bongs, giant screens started and button removal took over. Currently driving a 2010 euro hot hatch, when that dies will be looking at a 2016-2017 vintage. I watched a very interesting video over the weekend, the lost discipline of the alarm. It goes in to the research of alarms and alarm fatigue negative consequences. Seems very relevant to the latest generation vehicles. https://youtu.be/Ira28fgSF7M?si=-GrsTTGemLY1LwLw https://youtu.be/Ira28fgSF7M?si=-GrsTTGemLY1LwLw If I ever buy a “modern” car I’ll pull the fuse for all the annoying beeps and bongs and safety features. The only safety features I care about are traction control, abs, parking sensors and maybe blind spot mirrors. Blind spot mirrors are a double edged sword as it means people now stop doing shoulder checks relying on the blind spot mirror light only.

matheusmoreira 4mo ago
> I’ll pull the fuse for all the annoying beeps and bongs and safety features. I wonder if this will remain possible. To kill my car's annoying beeps, all I had to do was cut some wires. That implies it was just an optional "feature" that they tacked on. What happens when they start deeply integrating this nonsense?

throwaway2037 4mo ago

> At this point I don't know if I'd buy anything made after 2008. You might as well stick to horses. What is so specific about eighteen years ago (2026 - 2008 ~= 18)? Does that mean that you will never drive an electric car?

hansvm 4mo ago

Not just beeping. I had a rental Nissan recently violently pull me straight off the road when it couldn't read the lines very well in a thick fog. Apparently you can disable that deep in some settings menu through some magic button presses divorced from the main settings menus, but it was frightening. For most manufacturers, almost none of this tech is good enough to even make optional and non-default, much less legislatively mandated, and that supposes I trust you not to sell my daily mood or whatever bullshit to data brokers.

devmor 4mo ago

The "steering assist" feature in new cars is terrifying, and has almost severely injured or killed me once. When my car was last receiving service, I was given a loaner vehicle with this new feature. I was driving home in the rain, and an aggressive driver passed me very closely, triggering the collision avoidance system - this forced the steering wheel to turn away from the car, made the car hydroplane and nearly flung me into a ditch at 55MPH. I had to force back against the steering and creatively spin my vehicle against the turn.

90d 4mo ago

I was driving my mom's brand new Mercedes suv on a family road trip (for perspective I have a 2006 diesel van with 300k+ miles on it). Absolutely hated the thing. The worst was I was causing on the highway atb74mph and that auto adjust crap slowed ke down to 30mph! On the highway! Not sure if it was a service bug or what but kinda terrifying.

CommanderData 4mo ago

> 2008 Governments will tax older cars out of existence.

dzhiurgis 4mo ago

> 2008 I was looking for a car recently for a 3 month visit in Europe. 2008 is the bottom of the barrel at this point. Basically deciding between scraping and trying to make few more years out of it.

pontussw 4mo ago

A camera pointed at people’s face is going to have some insanely positive effects targeting one of the absolute biggest problems on the road though. On my daily commute about 50% of drivers are on their phones at 90 km/h, would be great if their cars were beeping at them since no one else is going to do anything about it. I find this especially great since one of them rear ended me earlier this year and practically admitted he was fiddling with his phone at the time

4k93n2 4mo ago
if all that happens is the car beeping at them then i would imagine that number will stay at 50%
- akramachamarei 3mo ago
  I see potential for selling driver distraction data (adjusted with forthcoming studies on real risk impacts thereof) to insurance companies. Ideally, meaningfully risky drivers (phone users, etc) get penalized with their premiums, and the safe drivers may not have to pay as much. Not that I support mandatory driver cams, just thinking out loud...
- pontussw 3mo ago
  I might be naive but I believe that >0 tiktok addicts who can’t put their phone down even while driving, might be persuaded to quit when even their car beeps condescendingly at them

thefz 4mo ago

> A camera pointed at your face just adds insult to injury. What is preventing car owners to cover it with electrical tape and move on?

matthews3 4mo ago

Is 2008 a good cut-off? My 2016 BMW doesn't really have any annoying electronics or nannies compared to my 2005 model (other than electronic power steering :))

haspok 4mo ago
I drive a 2019 Passat, with lane assist, tempomat, road sign detection etc - it only beeps when there is no more washer fluid (but then it does beep every fcking 5 minutes - easily the most annoying feature of this car).

pavlov 4mo ago

I just took delivery on a new European made car (DS no 8) last week and it’s been great. The driver assist features are useful, automatic lane switching works perfectly, and the driver awareness nags are very modest. I’d never want to go back to an old non-EV. My previous car was a Tesla, and the DS is as good or better in every respect that matters to me. It’s a Stellantis brand on their shared platform, so I assume their other brands are similarly fine (Fiat / Opel / Citroen / Peugeot etc, also American Dodge / Chrysler use the same platforms).

vim-guru 4mo ago

For speed-limits, I believe most of these new cars use multiple sources; so likely information found in the map at your location and cameras to spot signs. For some freak, unknown reason, the map-data is usually more trusted with the car vendors then the camera's it seems. Just don't rely on map-data for speed-limits and this would be a solved problem I think.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

72deluxe 4mo ago

I have a 2016 Beetle and a 2014 Mini Countryman and neither have these stupid features, thankfully! Keeping them for as long as I possibly can! In fact, my Beetle doesn't properly support Android Auto so I can't ever plug my phone into it (and the Mini only does bluetooth audio + playlists/song info for my wife's iphone integration), and my Beetle has a button on the steering wheel that I have to pay VW to use (no thanks). So I can concentrate on driving. I also have a 1972 Beetle which has zero infotainment nonsense to distract me (the engine is deafening anyway), where you actually concentrate on driving. It seems all this modern nonsense to warn drivers is because they've stuffed the car cockpit with all manner of distractions and giant screens, or non-tactile interfaces that you have to look at instead of feeling, thereby reducing concentration on actually driving. Rather than making new methods to ensure someone is concentrating, just reduce the amount of screens in the cockpit! My sister-in-law's Tesla is horrendous. She can't easily change the temperature whilst driving. There's a reason the space shuttle and airplanes have actual switches to change settings... Keeping these cars for as long as I possibly can. I went around Iceland in a Fiat van (a "camper", tiny thing to sleep in) and the week was ruined with the incessant beeping of the car as it moved from speed limit to speed limit. I know the speed limits were changing because there were signs in the road, but instead I had to constantly look at the dashboard to try to find out why the stupid thing was beeping, which I presume was the same tone as any other error, thereby masking any real problem. Absolute garbage. Incidentally, the Fiat also had that annoying "lane assist" feature which wobbles the steering wheel but it did it all the time when there were no lanes (unpaved roads etc) and it felt IDENTICAL to the car skidding to my "untrained"/"used-to-a-proper-car" hands, since the motion of the steering wheel versus car direction didn't match for a split second, and there was no real connection to the rack/pinion steering mechanism. I felt like a passenger even as the driver. Horrible. Absolutely horrible.

duskdozer 3mo ago

I dread ending up with a modern car though I know it's inevitable for me some day, exactly for these kinds of things that I know will infuriate me. All I can hope for I guess is that people will find ways of bypassing some of them

queenkjuul 3mo ago

My 2016 corolla is very low-tech, but new enough to have Bluetooth and a backup camera, so everything i want. With any luck it'll outlive me.

ivell 3mo ago

This is why I don't trust self driving cars. It is hard to say when it will make a wrong decision and we are too slow to react as we are not actively engaged in driving.