Too many gizmos

[myglaren]

Seeing this stuck a chord



My son was here a few days ago. He has dumped his Ford Ranger and bought a Cupra.
Still too big and ugly, but he was demonstrating all the widgets, including lane departure warning (not a warning, it takes over the steering) and the emergency autonomous braking (not emergency brake assist as Ashley puts it).
He spends five minutes turning all this nonsense off before driving off, it has come close to causing collisions and he doesn't trust it one bit.
He is looking to find a way to permanently disable it all.

I have this stuff installed on the recently acquired Mazda 6 but it either doesn't work or is very restrained. Has a camera, radar and a laser built in.
The only thing that has popped up a couple of times, and only with my son driving, is the starty-stoppy function. Easy to turn off but I never even think about it.

[mickthemaverick]

Total waste of time, money and energy in my opinion. Everyone I know who has them installed goes through the turning it all off before driving -hence the waste of time!!

[bobins]

The autonomous emergency braking will be much like the self driving cars in that they won't claim it won't cause ANY deaths..... it'll just cause less deaths than leaving it all solely to the driver. AEB and self driving cars can't be 100% good all of the time, it's just that they'll be marginally better than leaving it all to the questionable person holding the steering wheel.

The solution to the problem ? Buy an old car whilst you still can

[mickthemaverick]

That sums up why I have been slowly renewing the Subaru. Given that it had done 140,000 miles when I started over its first 20 years, I am trusting that it is now equipped to see me to the end of my driving days!! Plus or course the MX3 with only 70k will remain my backup, even if I do have to spend my hard won to keep it that way!!

[the-termin8r]

The Mk2 208 I had as a courtesy car a couple of years ago is the single worst car I've ever been in and driven bar absolutely none. The auto braking nearly got me rear ended at a roundabout and the lane correction nonsense nearly put me into the back of a Transit coming up a slip road because it got confused by the weird lane markings. There was plenty more wrong with that abomination, so much so that I actually posted a long rant on Reddit about it.

[mickthemaverick]

That certainly was a long Rant Rob, but I agree with almost all of your comments there and I only drove one 8 miles for a friend!!

[mickthemaverick]

Incidentally my guess at those bits of trim would be the seat belt covers at the top mounting?

[the-termin8r]

They ended up being the covers on the ends of the front seat rails. I think someone in the comments suggested it.

[mickthemaverick]

Aah right, i didn't read the comments as I tend to ignore the thoughts of those who are unknown to me as you can't tell a wise man from a fool!

[the-termin8r]

Agreed. Funnily enough, that comment came about 2 days after I'd binned the bits...whoops.

[Hell Razor5543]

I have just come up with an idea on how to switch off all these 'driver aids' on one go. Make it a legal requirement that all Government vehicles (which includes the emergency services) conform to the private equivalent road vehicles in that (barring the equipment fitted to allow the vehicle to perform its eventual role) all 'driver aids' behave in exactly the same way as on the privately owned vehicles.

Just imagine the problem this would cause a traffic officer; 'Start the vehicle, turn off the lane assist, turn off the emergency braking, confirm that last option (as it is considered dangerous to turn it off), turn off the attention and drowsiness monitors, turn off the speed warning system, "Car 1234 stand down, the criminal has escaped due to the length of time taken to get your vehicle ready for the high speed pursuit!", turn off the engine, exit the vehicle, lock the vehicle (checking the locks have worked), write up your failed pursuit report, get reports of another need for a traffic officer, return to step one'.

As the UK is no longer part of the EU it should be possible for the Government to require vehicle manufacturers to make their vehicles 'remember' the settings configured by the drivers, rather than require them to turn off the options every time the vehicle is started.

[mickthemaverick]

I agree James but I would say that not fitting all that stuff in the first place in order to bring the price down is an even better option!!

[the-termin8r]

It's exactly this sort of bureaucratic meddling that ended us up in this situation in the first place. I'd much rather someone hacked the firmware and released a version with everything turned off by default.

[Richard_C]

Useful video, thanks.

In April I got a C4 Hybrid, unusually for me because I normally get 1 or 2 year old cars and keep them for 5 or 6 but there was a 'deal' . It has all this stuff. I'm in 2 minds about it and would rather it wasn't there but now use some of it. Bit by bit:

Adaptive cruise, works fine and the Citroen version doesn't hit the brakes if it 'sees' a speed limit sign, instead it flags it on the dashboard and you have to press the OK button on the wheel to accept the suggestion. Fine with that - especially as the sat nav gets funny ideas about what the speed limit is if there are no signs. Manchester Road into Bradford has a 96mph limit you know .... I don't use it much but it's really good in slow long motorway traffic jams, just follows the car in front and brings you to a halt if it has to. Its clever enough not to set off from standing without you telling it to - imagine that when the traffic clears at a roundabout - you do have to lightly press the accelerator to get you going again. So on balance a yes, but its not 'on by default', you have to switch it on so you have a choice.

Lane keep assist - hate it, I turn it off for anything but short local trips if I remember but turning off is a 3 step process - press (physical) button to get to driving aids shortcut, put button to off, press confirm. In it's favour, it only gives a gentle correcting 'tug', you can still steer where you want, and if you use an indicator as you should it ignores the lane change.

Turning off the driver attention alert is the same palaver, never found out what its supposed to do but occasionally it makes loud noises and gives you palpitations. No real use as far as I can see. More likely to shock you into a horrible end through the nearest hedge.

Over speed warning - OK ish as a reminder especially if you are in unfamiliar urban territory where the limits keep changing - sort if bump bump tone not too loud - but you can't rely on it because you can't rely on the satnav speed data. I turn it off on long fast trips - on the motorway it triggers at 72 or 73 and you often cruise a bit above that to go with the flow. Easy to turn off though, deep in the manual I found instructions for holding the adas button for 3 seconds. I wish you could turn off the lane keep assist the same way.

Emergency braking, almost caught me out on day 2 of ownership, there was a parked car miles in front and it hit the brakes. I indicated and pulled out far too early and all was well. I found that you can set the distance, by default its 'far' the you get medium and close. That settting 'sticks' so I've set to close and had no incidents since. Again it can be turned off via several steps.

Oh - and there is a an auto dip setting for the headlights. You can turn that off with a sticky setting, doesn't react to cyclists or motorbikes, or dimm-ish cars or cars in the opposite carriageway of a dual carriageway road. No use at all.

So, not as bad as it might be but aside from the adaptive cruise I would rather not have any of it. I could do without cruise as well.

(My Dyanes both had cruise control. On long motorway trips at night you wedged your shoulder against the door pillar and got the seat position just right so your leg was straight when the pedal was on the floor. Max throttle all the way and only went over 75 on steep downhills.)

You sort of need a pilots checklist: engine started, flaps set, altimeter set .... lane keep off, speed warning off, cabin crew doors to automatic please and setas for take off..... I do like the car though, very comfortable, fairly economical, can be proper quick if you put it in sport and let the hybrid battery help the petrol bit for a few seconds.

I do wonder, in years to come when new drivers have grown up on all this stuff, who gets the blame for accidents. "My car did it not me officer ...."

[bobins]

It'd be interesting to know how the various 'driver aids' sit within Health and Safety law. One of the basic cornerstones of H&S law is that you can't make or supply something that will or can randomly harm somebody. Such risks should be designed out of something before it reaches the public, or at best it should be recalled and modified. Imagine a car component (steering ? suspension ? brakes ?) that could randomly cause a crash - it'd be subject to a recall and need to be modified before going back to the public. But here we have things like Autonomous Emergency Braking that can cause a random and unexpected accident - look at the near miss in the video at the head of this topic caused by the car getting it wrong. I recall seeing a proper collision caught on camera on a BBC report where they happened to be filming a junction from and overbridge - a Tesla being driven in the right hand lane of a dual carriageway misread what a car waiting in the central reservation was doing and applied (erroneously) full emergency braking, the van following didn't stand a chance and went straight into the back of the Tesla. All because the Tesla randomly got it wrong. I'm sure this sort of thing happens on a daily basis, but the upshot is - the car is randomly causing unnecessary accidents. That's the sort of thing H&S law is supposed to rule out
I'm sure there'll be a 'cut out' in H&S law that allows for the continuation of this sort of accident, but it's odd that it's accepted.