One In Five Drivers Switches Off The Safety Tech Meant To Save Their Lives
2 months ago by sanitation to c/technology
I had a few times where my lane assist thinks I'm turning when coming up on a left turn lane for some reason.
I'm never turning that shit off though. I'll deal with the random beeps and resistance if I get too close to the line or something.
I remember reading a reddit thread a couple years ago where someone legitimately asked "what if there's a bicyclist on the road?" I replied with the proper precautions to take when that happens, and the same dumbass replied with "but the beeps are annoying if I try to go over the line when lane assist is on!"
I was driving home from the dealership after buying my last car, and the second I felt the wheel jerk out of my hands to take a corner on the highway differently than I typically do (I still stay in the lane, ofc), that shit got turned off and will never be reenabled. One of the most dangerous things is the car doing something unexpected while someone is driving and they try to correct/overcorrect for it out of shock/surprise and cause a crash.
Yeah this happened to me too when I drove my ex's car. Cars should not be jerking the wheel. The sensors are notoriously inaccurate at sunrise/sunset when the sun is glaring right in the sensors, and it causes glitches. Especially in wet conditions where the road is slippery and there's reflected glare as well… almost spun out from that shit once when I tried to turn and the car said NOPE and jerked me back into the straight lane. This was with indicators, mind you.
I also remember one time we were driving on the freeway and the car suddenly spotted an "invisible fake ghost pedestrian", and SLAMMED on the brakes. Like screeching halt from 80kmph (50mph) in the middle of the busy road. Dunno how on earth we didn't cause an accident; the people behind us were locked in or something.
Never drove that car again, fuck that. My ex likes that unruly beast for some reason; though they also liked horse riding, which features vehicles that are similarly unpredictable and dangerous, so I suppose it makes sense. I'm ok with beeping, that's fine and a sensible warning feature I can choose to ignore if it's wrong. I'm not ok with the car wrenching control of the vehicle out of my hands
I was driving a rental car with that feature once and it recognized one of those big arrows on the ground (that show a lane is ending e.g.) as side lanes. It was on a fast street with multiple lanes, so I was going over 100 km/h and the car jerked the steering wheel towards the goddamn wall and out of the lane. IDK what would've happened if I didn't react in time...
In our car, there's three levels of lane assist.
- Hey, try to stay in the lines. If you start to veer, the steering wheel will do the smallest corrections and vibrate a lot.
- The car will actively help keep you in the middle of the lane. (I mostly turn this on if I'm swapping my prescription glasses for sunglasses, then it goes right off again).
- Same as #2, but if you put on a turn signal to change lanes the car auto changes when it's clear. (If you put your signal on with all this off and a car is in your blind spot it freaks out with beeps and vibrations).
I fucking hate #3. The only good part is it forces you to turn on the turn indicator. It both wants your hands on the wheel for the maneuver, but also will cancel the change if it feels any "driver correction".
There are two roads mine is always trying to turn down on my way home from work. I keep meaning to go that route during a not busy time of day to see if it actually makes the turn if I don’t stop it or if it will just jog to the right a bit.
There are a bunch of black squiggly lines on the road from repairs and it gets confused there.
I turn it on when I'm on the highway. In the city, our roads are way too fucked up for it to work.
I also have an auto emergency brake, and that's gone off when it doesn't need to once or twice, but I'm not disabling that one. I'd rather get rear-ended than hit someone.
But if you indicate like your supposed to there are no beeps when crossing lines.
These guys are idiots that complain about the end results of not knowing how to drive themselves.
This is the correct answer. Most of this stuff is half baked at best.
For me they have often created a more dangerous situation than the one I was already working on unfucking
Really depend on the safety tech. My partner's Honda Civic is so bad, that turning off CMBS (Collision Mitigation Braking System) and LKAS (Lane Keep Assist System) is essential to operating the car safely, as accidentally leaving these systems on has almost wrecked the car on more than one occasion. Meanwhile, the same systems on my fake Mustang work great. Sometimes backing out of the driveway, it will panic and warn me that I might crash into the ground, but it doesn't slam the brakes. The hands-free driving is actually really good, and a feature I would continue to use if it wasn't several hundred dollars a year. In comparison to Honda, Ford's safety tech is much more predictable and reliable.
This is my personal experience with two cars that I drive relatively frequently, so other people may have other opinions and experiences that are completely valid.
God, every time.
Lane keep assist. Don't tell me how to drive my own car.
You can't even show me the right speed limit due a sign on a different road that say 5MPH, when I'm on a 30MPH road, and suddenly you start beeping at me cause I'm going too fast?
Randomly flashing up the BRAKE! Warning for no reason at all?
None of this tech works correctly, and until it does, it all gets turned off every single time 8 start the engine.
Lane assist that pulls you into a pothole you moved over to dodge and loses its collective shit if the lines change.
Collision detection that flips out and hits the brakes to avoid a car that just completed its turn.
Blind spot monitoring that screams at you in a turn lane.
One car couldn't tell the difference between open sky and the backside of clean white truck so it accelerated to get to the speed limit. Maybe clean trucks were not in the training data.
You can’t even show me the right speed limit due a sign on a different road that say 5MPH, when I’m on a 30MPH road, and suddenly you start beeping at me cause I’m going too fast?
Insurance company using police report: "Sorry, your rates are going up because you were going 25MPH over the speed limit. What were you thinking?"
A place has a sign with 5 ton max weight. One car I had would always see that as 5 kph speed limit. Systems can be stupid like that.
Lane assist almost crashed me once. Lines were painted over as the lanes were rerouted due to a construction. This must have confused the system, as it tried to pull me into the concrete wall to the right.
I stopped and turned it off at the next gas station. Never again
The speed limit warning beep is fine if it's just once on speed limit update or when you go above, so at least you can make your own judgement.
Not sure what feature you have that flashes the BRAKE! warning, only I one I know of is the collision detection one that makes a warning sound that is quite reliable.
I never had problems with the collision detection (flashing BRAKE), up until I drove a Fiat 500e recently. It seems to differ by make and model I guess.
That Fiat was insanely obnoxious though: It plays a very loud DING and flashes the entire dash red, even if you're going quite slow and can literally come to a complete stop with enough space between you and the car in front, just by taking your feet off the pedals and using regenerative braking.
I drove it once and I got that warning like five times. Never had it before with Ford, Opel, Renault, ...
I’ve driven the Renault 4 a couple of times now as a rental, and it has the absolute worst combination of driver attention detection and beeps. It’ll beep randomly for … something, you look at the dash and then it’ll beep because you’re not looking at the road. Or god forbid you look in the mirror, instant warning beeps. Definitely never getting a Renault after dealing with that.
- adaptive cruise control
- AR HUD
- driving mode
None of these were meant to save lives
Also, both lane assist and auto emergency brakes are mostly poorly implemented. Even the ones that aren't really bad don't fare well with the chaos of the roads.
Also, voice assistant is bullshit. You know what would be better? That's right, physical buttons.
I was driving a newer Skoda on vacation last winter and the windshield started fogging up as I was passing through a narrow little village in blowing rain bordering on snow. In my car at home (and probably most of the cars ever made) there are three knobs to control the heat which can be operated by purely tactile means. In this particular car, I had to go through pages of menus with no tactile feedback on the touchscreen while driving. I was only seconds away from having to stick my head out the window and limp it to the next safe stopping spot. I am glad it didn't happen on the motorway at 140km/h. Who thought this was smart? The only modern car I drove that didn't suck was a Mazda with their multi-axis joystick and physical climate controls. The touch screen disables at speed and the tactile joystick is a comparative delight. The display sticks out of the top of the dash so when you are looking at it you can still see the road beyond it.
My partner and I test drove a Honda with no volume knob. You have to use the touch screen. Wtf? I am so glad we didn't buy that car. I now have two base model standard transmission cars, mid-2010s, neither of which suck and both of which are in good condition. Never gonna trade these cars in. Not even for a Bentley!
Lane keep drives me of the fucking road when it’s sunny and the cameras can’t see straight.
Automatic braking loses it because of shadows but misses the goddamn elk.
I really love adaptive cruise, but i can see how many people (especially with lane centring) tune out - and make it a liability.
What most people don’t do is drive many vehicles. The difference between safety features on cars - and it’s not always price that is the differentiator - is staggering. Stability control isn’t the same between a Toyota and a BMW. Not halfway. A $90,000 GM and a $15,000 smart car are generations apart - the smart wins, at least on traction control. Unfortunately it’s not easy to test all these features empirically.
It’s no wonder people turn it off.
My favorite was when a car runs a yellow light at the same time I ease my foot off the brake to get the engine started in preparation for going forward. The autostart and brake assist had a little tiff of errors and stalled the vehicle.. I had to turn the engine off and restart it to reset it.
That was great.
So lane assist is off, adaptive cruise control is off, driver attention is off (with some electrical tape over the fucking stupid thing) and brake assist is off. The only things on is the blind spot monitoring because that sort of works and the backup camera.
Last time I was had a rental car, I was driving down a rural curvy road with no traffic. So I cut the corners whenever visibility allowed it. The computer freaked the fuck out and finally turned off after tossing a "Maintenance needed error". I laughed my ass off over that one.
If your talking about the auto stop/start that happened when you push the brake down at the lights you should 100% disable this.
They implemented it thinking it would be great that you would be not burning fuel and emissions for 30s while the lights were red but in reality what happens is that as soon as the engine stops your oil pressure drops, then your restarting with no oil in the cylinder and that causes an extreme amount of wear on your piston rings and other components. I dont remember the exact figure but starting and stopping while the oil pressure is low is responsible for like ~90% of engine wear.
Depending on how many lights you encounter you could be doing exponentially more basically cold starts and your going to need to service your car much more often, replace the oil and filter, replace other components that wear (+ costs of increased servicing) just to save a couple minutes of idling emissions and fuel. I can tell you which is much worse for the environment.
There is a german channel on youtube that literally did this as a lab test with a real engine to show how much extra wear was happening to your engine.
The system was a 'good on paper' idea but they overlooked some key factors i think.
Nope. They have an electric oil pump that keeps working when the engine is off. It's not a cold start, an electric motor turns the engine to top dead centre and fires the plug on a hot engine .
Are you talking about the CVT oil pump? Or have some manufacturers started doing doing this on the engine oil pump?
Edit:
Well i looked it up myself and it seems that newer cars, especially more expensive cars have addresed the wear issues by upgrading the crankshaft bearing, hardened internal components, upgraded altenator and a specific type of battery for this use. (No mention of electric oil pump motors for average cars)
You also need to replace the (more expensive) battery every 3-5 years, so the cost is still comong back to you. Higher quality upgraded components + the more expensive and often replaced battery will all end up back on your pocket, like i said the system probably isnt worth the cost of the fuel and emissions savings.
And if you have an older car with this function, then you also have the component wear issues, see the video i mentioned in the first comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu8cJ2t_ja8&pp=ygUpYXV0byBzdG9wIHN0YXJ0IGVuZ2luZSB3ZWFyIHRlc3RlZCBnZXJtYW4%3D
"Safety tech". OK. I was visiting a mate in the states, and the rental gave me a Nissan. Apparently, there's a lot of construction going on in that state, and the Nissan tried to literally run me, at 100kmh, into a median, because it recognized the (clearly) scratched off lane markers and not the (clearly) newly painted lane markers. I had to use nearly all my upper body strength (whatever little of it I had left after a 13hr trip), to force the wheel to the left and away from death. And that fucker bitched at me the entire time! would have 100% died. All because of their fucking "safety" tech. I turned that shit off as soon as I parked. All of it. I'm still so angry at them for that shit.
After my skirt with death because of this thing, it's a 'no sale' feature.
I hate it even on highways. Some cars assist is gentle and more of a ‘hey be careful’ reminder which is the best option and the one I can get behind but others have an aggressive ‘you have to fight me’ attitude even if your indicators are on. Those can burn in hell.
I have driven some number of hundred thousand miles and departed the highway once to avoid an oncoming semi and 0 times for any other reason. I have operated a vehicle with lane assist turned on for some 10s of miles and they have attempted to take control to depart my lane/the highway a handful of times, which results in me parking the vehicle and figuring out how to turn it off.
I've disabled safety tech in cars I drive because the signal to noise ratio was bad.
You're going over the speed limit, says the shitty sign recognition that missed the one outside that says otherwise.
You're tired, says the racist eye closure camera that can't deal with Asian eyes.
Your seatbelt is undone, says the sensor that can't discern between your backpack and a person. (To be fair, this one is just for the power of threes. Buckle in heavy objects. Secure your load.)
My seat sensor is capacitive so if I have something sufficiently wet (like chinese takeout) or my phone plugged into the charger with the cord slack on the seat it thinks there is a person and beeps incessantly.
My 2015 would have the 'collision alert' because a car was in an adjacent turn lane, but the road curved and it didn't know that.
It also would go off most days on a stretch of road because it was certain I was going to slam into the guardrail of the curve. Again, the system had no cameras, no map awareness, so it just had radar saying 'something metal ahead'.
It was slightly annoying but left it on, just in case.
Now my 2023 on the other hand hasn't had a false positive that I can recall, in fact if not for one incident, I wouldn't even know it was doing anything. Someone pulled right out in front of my kid learning to drive. I had just enough time to think "oh, we are going to hit or my kid is going to yank this thing off the road". Instead, my kid executed a shockingly perfect evasive swerve that landed perfectly into the free lane. Then I find out that it also would take over steering and as a result, I'm pretty certain it saved me a pretty significant wreck.
Then I find out that it also would take over steering
Um. This is kind of terrifying.
Based on what I saw and what I read, it only took over of it detected you trying to swerve and an obstacle that would hit and change it into an aggressive lane change. The steering into was at least roughly the maneuver desired, but it just corrected it.
Though it may sound scary, it absolutely worked in my scenario. I've never ever seen it activate accidentally.
I can't even be sure whether it activated or not that time, I wasn't driving. It just seemed like a scenario and maneuver unlikely for a barely driving 15 year old to pull off so perfectly. I'm not so sure even I would have avoided an accident, but even if I did, I doubt I would have hit the maneuver so spot on.
Two hours ago, I was driving in my little town. Speed limit is about 35. At the edge of town is one of those giant freeway-style lighted signboards that flashes some info about upcoming construction starting soon. When you see them on the freeway, they don't look as big. When you're up close to one, you realize they're pretty freaking big.
Anyway, the signboard is now on it's back, all fucked up, twisted and broken. Looks like a dinosaur picked it up, bit it and threw it. A little farther up the road is a late model kia sedan with the front torn off and some fucking twat of a driver taking pictures of his car.
So I don't know what model he was in, but it was one of the larger sedans, so not an Elantra or something cheap. I know darn well that it at least had to have automatic emergency braking, maybe even some other driver aids. Somehow, this muppet was able to NOT see the giant lit up, bright orange signboard and his car did nothing to stop anything by the looks of it.
So it doesn't surprise me that people turn this shit off, not one tiny bit. It's always the people who need to have them on the most, as usual.
Maybe if half of it didn't spy on you ...
When it was created, this was true. However, now cars have systems that log just about everything you do and send it to the manufacturer, who then sells it on to insurance, ICE, anyone with money.
So it started off ok, but now I would imagine that if your car has a sensor, it is reporting data back to that central telemetry unit which is sending it up up and away.
Then they'll just report to the insurance that you turned it off and also report all the sensor data anyway.
And you can just rip out the antennas for the telemetry and that won't magically make your safety systems stop working.
You can switch off the safety systems if you want to, but don't pretend you're doing it for privacy reasons.
It's more "is it practical to access the cameras" than "can someone access the cameras".
Look at it this way... How are "they" going to access your cameras? Are they going to have a mobile broadband connection for your vehicle, and upload realtime video data from multiple cameras in real time? Maybe for one car, but to do it for every car, they would end up choking out all the cell towers in an area. What about storing your data in the car and accessing it later? Well, storage is relatively cheap, but when you add in the compute required to encode that video, and depending on how much you want to store, it could easily be a few hundred dollars to include all that, and let's face it, manufacturers want to cut costs, so who is going to pay for it? To top it off, if this repository of compute and storage existed, computer nerds would have found it and publicized it, so it seems unlikely to me that it exists for most cars. Finally, what data would "they" hope to get from real time-video of your car that is not already documented in other ways? The GPS unit can log your position and velocity with ease, your phone is an active listening device that follows you everywhere, so there are simpler and cheaper ways to get the same useful data as a realtime camera feed of the side of the road that don't involve some huge conspiracy.
Well, the cars all have modems and quite a lot of processing. They don't need to send a lot of data anywhere to check if it has seen familiar faces.
Modern cars are literally cameras with wheels.
I will admit that changing the settings on the safety tech changes nothing in this regard.
Are they going to have a mobile broadband connection for your vehicle
Yes, they have a mobile broadband connection in your vehicle. Selling your data more than covers the cost for them.
Cameras sound like a really expensive and inefficient way to gauge distance and speed differential between yourself and another object. I doubt many cars (besides, famously, Tesla) use cameras for LKAS or ACC.
I'm not even sure if they use cameras for driver attention systems.
Cameras are always used for LKAS, even things like Waymo mix cameras with LIDAR. That’s the only way to see the lines on the road, etc.
Now for ACC that’s always radar except for newish Tesla. Same with blind spot monitoring and parking sensors unless those are ultrasonic or something, but not cameras except for Tesla.
See comma.ai how one can basically do LKAS and adaptive cruise with one camera, but IME it typically uses the radar based ACC built into the car already.
They are used, not exclusively except by Tesla, but yeah. Lane keep is legit hard to do without a camera, acc is OK but using a multi sensor system is a lot more reliable.
The problem with some of these "safety" features is they malfunction at such a high rate they seem more likely to kill me than save my life. They also don't anticipate future consequence in any way.
The collision detection malfunctions regularly giving a loud beep or applying breaks when nothing is ahead.
The lane departure does not understand situations where you had someone wander into your lane and you may drive onto the shoulder quickly before signalling. I don't need my car fighting me while im making the correct call. I also think having the car take over, even gently, is so startling that it could cause the accident it was meant to prevent. If I'm startled I might over correct and lose control. While that has never happened, with everything considered, it seems safer to leave some of these features off.
I don't need to be an early adopter on flawed technology that could get me killed.
I drove a rental that had collision detection in it. Three or four times, it suddenly slammed on the brakes for no discernable reason, and with no regard to how close/fast traffic behind me was moving. I had to pull off, download the manual, and figure out how to turn it off before the car killed me.
One of the most important things in safely operating a vehicle is using gradual, predictable movements. My car braking without my input makes predictable movement impossible.
The lane departure does not understand situations where you had someone wander into your lane and you may drive onto the shoulder quickly before signalling
This is one of the biggest things I hate about my parents car. You almost have to fight against the lane detection when when changing lanes, being in a merge lane, or more importantly when another car starts drifting into you lane. It's great if you're on a long haul but it's detrimental because it's conditioning you to not have to pay attention as much.
The emergency braking I understand, I've driven some downright paranoid vehicles with that tech.
I had my Tesla slam on its brakes from 55 mph because it was convinced the car sitting at a stop sign at a crossroad was about to turn into my lane. Last time I trusted Autopilot in anything other than stop-and-go traffic. Not really in a hurry to find out if the Ioniq I have now does it any better.
Give me fully autonomous vehicles on roads where human drivers aren't allowed, or let me keep control, thank you very much.
I had a similar incident; I was in the second lane of a freeway and a truck was going to merge into the first lane from a cloverleaf, and my Tesla freaked the fuck out and slammed on the breaks. I was lucky there wasn’t a car behind me for a bit.
For what it’s worth, I hear that Tesla has by far the worst tracking for their adaptive cruise control and auto brake feature, especially after moving to camera based tracking. I’ve owned 3 cars with adaptive cruise control and never had any real issues. Biggest problem was a 2011 Volvo that would sometimes keep tracking vehicles going out in a turning lane, but never braked hard for no reason. Probably your Ioniq will work fine as well.
I recently also experienced this for the first time in a rental car, some Toyota SUV-style model. Super annoying half the time, the other half it did work but I was anyway already about to break. Not sure I liked it overall.
Even better when it also does "emergency avoidance" and sends you right into guardrails or oncoming traffic. That happens only once to you unwanted during the lifetime of the car and you immediately turn that shit off forever.
25 Subaru Outback Wilderness- I was backing up to do a u turn since there was a bigass tree down on the trail road I was driving, the radar saw a singular weed on the shoulder and emergency braked. I had my mom in the passenger seat and she thought we had straight up slammed into a log.
Mine's decided that my mountain bike on the back of the car was an obstacle I was about to hit before.
My "parking assist" feature got immediately turned off when it slammed on the brakes because I backed into a parking spot and it saw the concrete parking block 6ft behind me...
I got out of the car thinking an animal had ran under a tire where I couldn't see it, then figured out it was just the car being "helpful".
AND that's the problem with "safety" tech. It doesn't act as an assistant it acts as a nanny. A nanny that makes mistakes. Sometimes harmless, sometimes irritating, and sometimes dangerous. Each driver should be allowed to decide what level of assistance they need/want without being forced or shamed about it. If we can't trust drivers to drive then maybe we shouldn't have cars and should redirect resources to public transportation infrastructure instead. (Personally I'm very on board with the latter.)
I like the one that thinks wet potholes are pedestrians so it will just stop while I'm fucking driving in traffic. Absolutely beautiful technology you got there.
I especially love the ones that beep all the fucking time and shake my steering wheel into thinking I blew a tire cause these motherfuckers think my shitty roads with poorly marked lane dividers are me drifting off the road.
The real icing on the cake are the new cameras facing the driver who ask me to remove sunglasses when driving on a sunny day to confirm my eyes are on the road.
Holy shit, fuck car manufacturers! I am never buying any of these smart ass cars.
Source: I rent a lot of new cars with the shittiest features you can imagine.
That's a great summary of why so many people don't use these features.
I can't stand lane assist that tries to keep you in the lane by actually moving or vibrating the steering wheel. To me, it feels like the car is slipping. That shit gets turned off right away. But I have driven some cars where the lane assist just beeps, and doesn't force the wheel at all, I can deal with that.
I find HUDs extremely distracting, they get turned off too.
Adaptive Cruise Control is extremely useful, I love that one.
Pro tip, if you signal when you change lane it stops the wheel vibrating. As a bonus it lets other drivers know what you're planning on doing.
Except every car I've ever seen it implemented in malfunctions 1000 times more than it ever works properly. I always signal and find lane departure to be incredibly dangerous. If you trust your cars algorithm more than your own eyes, I don't trust you on the road.
I drove a Transit that had the vibrating steering wheel. Hated it. The lane assist didn't even work right anyway so that got turned off pretty quickly.
My only experience with a car that had lane-keeping assist was that the car actively tried to kill me by steering me into oncoming traffic.
That car also thought I was sleeping when I wore sunglasses and again tried to kill me by scaring me with the loudest beep to 'wake me up' again.
If that is how well this tech works it is not adding any safety. Quite the opposite actually.
I also really started to wonder how bad the government ageny that tests these cars operates to certify this safety risk on wheels.
The ones I am familiar with just beep loudly with the reason why super-imposed barely legibly on the dash.
Constantly distracting, for me I'd rather pay attention to the road then look for your various pop-ups.
I am not exaggerating, anytime you'd look away from the road it would alert. There's another road there and I am looking at the traffic. Shut the fuck up.
ETA it resets with an update. Intolerable.
I am not buying a new car again, something has happened to quality and design standards in my opinion. Old man yelling at clouds.
because they are awful!
I got a car 2 months ago and i’m incredible frustrated by the automatic cruise control. it has two modes “ICC” and “ACC”. I have no idea about the difference but the thing keeps switching between them and alerting me with a red alert every time!
I stopped using it after two weeks
I had to look these up, and it looks like it's Adaptive Cruise Control (regular distance based), and Intelligent Cruise Control (ACC + lane keeping). Most likely it switches between if it can't find the road lines.
I only have ACC in mine, and there's still situations where I turn it off like in heavier traffic. It reacts too slowly so it ends up braking harder than it needs to, and then waits to accelerate and leaves a huge gap. It effectively makes traffic worse than if I drive manually.
I've also turned the lane departure system to warning-only because I've had it try to push me off the road before while I was towing a trailer. On narrow windy roads, it's basically required to hug the lines so I don't end up clipping trees with the trailer.
it switches between them because it decides i am not moving the steering wheel enough (on a straight line). If I shake the wheel a bit the ICC reengages after a couple of seconds.
I get it is a failsafe so people don’t treat it as autopilot, but the thing complains constantly with both my hands are holding the wheel. mostly on straight lines or long constant curves
I had a literal rage out over that. It kept prompting me to keep both hands on the wheel and I was doing exactly that. It ended up shortening the duration between prompts and then eventually just started beeping loudly at me so I decided to drive like I had Parkinsons, just fucking shaking the wheel constantly through the slop zone until I could find a safe place to pull over and figure out how to turn the fucking thing off.
This makes me sound like I'm irresponsible. I'm not, I just happen to have a car with dangerously poorly designed "safety tech".
My car has sign recognition, cruise control, and lane keep assist. I use a single one, and one I can't turn off permanently.
Lane keep assist insists on making me drive way too far left, so I turned it off after it tried to kill me by forcing me into a super wide load truck coming towards me.
Cruise control keeps wanting to switch setting to the recognised speed limit. But it picks up all sorts of stuff. So driving by a highway on ramp will make it suggest that I put the speed limiter to 130km/h, on a 70km/h road. But turning off sign recognition requires me to go through several menus and is reset when I park.
On top of that the speedometer is 4-5km/h too slow, so I'll be going 84km/h according to the speedometer, my GPS says I'm going 80km/h, and I'll go by a sign and the speed limiter will pop up suggesting that I set it to 80. And btw that the speedometer is displaying a faster speed than I'm going, has nothing to do with wheel circumference. The car's odometer is spot on. If google maps says a trip is 300km then the odometer advances 300km, not 298 or 302.
It's mind boggling how poorly designed most of these systems are. These are multi-billion dollar corporations and they can't do a simple thing correctly for the most part when it comes to these systems.
For example, I don't know why this isn't the top and foremost thing but a car should NEVER be able to override when the human driver is trying to do. Sure, beep and adjust if veering out of the lane but as soon as any resistance it met by the wheel it should immediately turn off and let the driver do what they want to do.
Oh fuck yeah, I'll be driving the posted 130km/h and it suddenly catches a fucking 40km/h speed limit sign from a roundabout from fuck-knows-where and tries to e-stop in the middle of the highway. God damnit Nissan. Audi on the other hand works more or less flawlessly. From the lane control to the matrix headlights, I really like the systems on Audi.
My car is from the same group as nissan. Luckily it doesn't get to set the speed limiter automatically. If that was the case I'd traded it long ago.
Infiniti? I hate that fuckin' auto reset speed warning every single time I turn the car on. I'm so glad my personal vehicle doesn't have that.
Meanwhile the Quashqai here in Denmark is roughly $54k USD.
Yeah... If the Qashqai was under 20k €, it would perhaps be acceptable. But essentially, base model, you're paying 30k€ for a shitty FWD hatchback that has comparable fuel economy to my more spacious and heavy 20 year old wagon. Which has about twice the power. And all-wheel drive. And will last much longer, if maintained*.
The last noteworthy Nissans IMO were the GT-R and the Leaf. The GT-R ended its 18 year production run (yes, 18 years of a single model) last year and the Leaf has been outclassed by other cheap EVs for years now.
I also drove the Armada when I was in the US a few years ago. That's supposed to be their flagship, the big bad SUV. Sure it had a V8 with a nice sound, but at like 50k miles or 80k ish kilometers, it was already falling apart...
Things were made worse when they decided to partner up with Mitsubishi and acquired a large stake in that company. Another dying company that hasn't made anything noteworthy in decades and closed down production of their iconic models. Neither company has innovated in any meaningful way lately. No real advancement in engines, transmissions, etc...
*Knew someone with the previous gen Qashqai. Less than 10 years and 200k km and the engine was considered toast.
I drove a newer rental car and tried all the safety assist features. I felt the same way after less than at hour of driving and turned everything except cruise and emergency brake off.
Don't even get me started on how useless the voice control system was. The car voice control is usually significantry worse than the Google provided version. I frankly do not understand how Google has done such a garbage job. Voice control on Google seems to have gotten worse since it came out, not better. At least for actually getting things done rather than just asking silly questions. I can't even effectively take a note on my motorcycle reliably by voice.
After my car suddenly slammed on the brakes for the third time on wide open highway while screaming warning beeps at me I went to the settings and disabled everything. I had enough "safety" thanks.
Semi truckers have been fighting this for years. And they're not allowed to turn it off unless they own the truck. Most truckers work for someone else.
The typical scenario, approaching an overpass in broad daylight, the sensor sees the shadow on the road and freaks out, stomping the brakes.
Name and shame please!
When the person in front of me has turned right, and I have full clearance to proceed, my CX-5 sometimes still thinks that car is in my travel path and applies the automatic brakes. Based on my experience, this feature is much more likely to get me rear-ended than it is to stop me from hitting someone.
I got licensed by my country to drive, I am insured to drive. Everytime I start the car I have to confirm I will drive in line with the rules of the road. I can't select my profile or use the system until I am driving as a result. Stupid system.
Headline should read "One in five drivers switch off 'safety' tech meant to appease lawyers in a lawsuit-happy culture"
I have quite a few issues with modern cars. Most I've had the opportunity to be in are asinine.
Important, rare warnings get lullaby tones, while the most common ones sound like someone's actively dying on life support.
One had the genius behavior of showing a large ice detected message that took up the entire dashboard and hid away all the dials.
Most also show a tutorial for how to start the damn thing, as if it in any way differs from any other car. And as if you don't need to pass a practical exam before driving it.
Adaptive cruise control emergency braked when a vehicle in the lane next to me slowed. Turned that right the fuck off. Lane assist confused trying to go straight on a bend in the road. Turned that right the fuck off.
In the EU it is only getting worse as these features are now mandatory.
Worst is the inbuilt flock camera that monitors your face continuously and will keep telling you to keep your eyes on the road.
Fuck em. Gaffer tape the damn thing.
I'm still waiting for confirmation on if that will cause the warning to be constant, the car no longer starting or something like that.
I had way more issues with phantom braking in the 3 months it was enabled than I've had with actually crashing in 20 years of driving.
I want graded licences so people who have no crashes don't get forcibly subjected to bad technology just because those that can't drive need it.
My daily driver is a 2003, I had to buy an aftermarket stereo to get Bluetooth. Recently I borrowed a friend's Tesla for a week, and that was a god damned hostile experience. Shift into reverse - from a touchscreen, mind - and suddenly the entire cabin comes alive with beeps and pings, the dashboard changes to 3 different cameras, none of which show me what's happening to the sides of the car. The 3d overview diagram does almost a good enough job, but is that a trash can, a person, or a telephone pole? The computer isn't sure. On top of that, the blind spots are huge and the back window is tiny and heavily tinted, so I have to use the screens to some extent. If I was my car, I'd have turned half that shit off.
It’s about finding the balance. If it’s constantly annoying and bothersome people will turn it off. If it’s in the background and ready when needed, then awesome.
My wife’s car (I’m sure a lot of others do too) lets you fine tune the help. I left on most of it after turning it down a bit - for me, she sets her own.
This article is 2/3 fluff. The majority is about convenience features, not safety.
That said, I recently moved from a ~15 year old car to a modern one, and have driven several newer models with the features described.
Adaptive cruise: it‘s often poorly designed. It brakes far too rapidly and abruptly should traffic or a car ahead slow, and there‘s absolutely no reason to apply as much throttle as it does should it decide acceleration is appropriate. Also for uphill driving the cruise control often drops into far too low a gear in order to maintain speed. It‘s more of a nuisance than an aid, and it‘s even worse if traffic increases or you‘re in a lane with jackasses that can‘t maintain a steady speed. Adaptive cruise attracts idiots, too. The new versions will stay engaged and slow to a complete stop. If the driver has set the following distance to maximum the car will stop with a 4-5 car distance from the car ahead. They‘re treating it like some kind of autopilot that will run the car for them.
Lanekeeping: there‘s a huge span of quality here. Some are shit, some are far too aggressive, some are “jerky” following a segmented plotted line rather than a smoother curve. They can overcorrect and really make for an unstable drive attempting to counter intentional driver input. Some “give up” and disengage with little warning, the audible alerts are often weak. Some briefly follow merge, exit, or widening lines for an additional lane pointing you off the road before they get confused and disengage with the car pointed in an unsafe direction.
Auto braking: in my experience it has engaged every time when I was already braking, or engaged when there was no need to brake. The few times I thought it should have engaged, it didn’t. It’s a nuisance at best, ineffective at worst.
Reverse cameras don’t provide a full picture and are awful in developing driver proprioception about the dimensions of their car. They’re fine for what’s immediately behind you, but use of mirrors and looking around is far better for backing out and looking for approaching people or cars. That said, I love the “360°” view ones. Those are great for centering oneself in a parking space.
So I completely understand why drivers don’t use them. They’re often low-quality, inappropriate overcorrections for the situation, and make for a worse ride and potentially even detrimental to safety. That’s saying a lot considering the quality of a lot drivers on the road today.
I run 80% of the time with adaptive cruise and lanekeeping off. I can’t disable the autobrake, if I could I would.
The study found 58.3 percent of buyers say they couldn’t live without Bluetooth connectivity
Strange, when smartphones no longer come with 3.5 mm sockets... The consumer never asked for the majority of these "features": they already had access to most of them (through their smartphone or other standalone device), or was easily and cost-effectively installed as an aftermarket gadget. All of these "safety" features, that coincidentally also happen to constitute a (future) privacy-nightmare, were pushed for by: legislators, insurance companies, and the automotive industry itself. Consumers effectively got conned into buying a duplicate of products they already owned, but which are instead subject to terms and conditions dictated by aforementioned stakeholders.
I like Bluetooth as well so I added a Chinesium Bluetooth to 3.5mm adapter to my dumb older car. Got a phone mount as well for when I need maps. Having tried Android Auto, I can say my setup works just as well for me and it comes without any of the shit software or the hardware lock-in.
Right on, same here. :)
How about cleaning the snow off your car properly? I've seen plenty of drivers, in the USA, with covered headlights, rear lights, windows and half of the front windshield. If these lazy asshats do not know how to use an ice scrapper, pull them over and take their FOB/keys away.
This title is so misleading as to be incorrect
I still trust drivers more than I trust tech.
ABS was the last good life-saving technology added to cars. That thing saved my dumb arse several times already.
Now I want to get a new car because the old one is getting too degraded, but I dread the fuckery I'll find in new models. I just wanted a 3.5 cm audio jack and simple controls. I guess I won't have much luck.
I cut my teeth on a '93 Geo Metro. Approximately 30 lbs wet, not weighed down by things like an automatic transmission or air bags or a tachometer. Had to learn the car's language, listen when she told me to shift gears. God I miss that little toy car
I miss my girl too the 45mpg was top notch. Unfortunately my wife made me still it when I started driving on the highway everyday. I regret selling it.
Yeah, if it's anything like the assists in the Sprinter I've used for work, that shit can get annoying and I don't blame people for disabling them. Yeah I keep them enabled most of the time, but these systems fail to have any nuance. For instance the lane assist doesn't realise I may have a reason for drifting out of the lane be that an obstacle, a bicyclist, construction or otherwise. The car jerking the steering wheel around doesn't help me to drive very well, does it, but it has caused me to try and counteract it with bad steering inputs. The blind spot sensor is more useful and yet it still cries wolf by beeping at me in double turn lanes or in the rain or sometimes on a sunny day while 2m from a traffic post... so I have started to put much less stock in it.
the lane assist doesn't realise I may have a reason for drifting out of the lane be that an obstacle, a bicyclist, construction or otherwise.
Where I live you are meant to indicate in such scenarios and then the lane assist will not complain.
If it is a time-sensitive obstacle, I am not going to think about signalling before manouvering. As for construction zones no one signals when they cross lines here when there is an obvious right of way. If I saw someone else signal halfway through a construction zone I'd wonder if they were turning off...
You are right that it can sometimes solve the issue, especially with cyclists and the like, but I still find the feature obnoxious.
I can't back up my own driveway with "maneuvering assist" enabled or it slams on the brakes every time it gets close to a completely harmless fern on the passenger side. Every time it happens it's so infuriating that I could actually scream. So it's now off.
Yeah, same. And this article is playing like thats on us.
I deliberately sought out a car without that stuff when I had to buy a new(er) car recently. It's usually quite annoying - the worst was a rental car that had an alarm buzz whenever I activated my turn signal while there was another car anywhere near my blind spot.
IMO the only technological improvement from the last decade and a half that's worth having is a backup camera, and that's only because I must shamefully confess to being terrible at parallel parking without one despite having years of practice. (I was tempted to buy a Miata since they still have real dials, but ultimately I did settle for a car with a digital display instead of an instrument panel.)
Maybe this makes me sound like a jerk, but my thinking in that regard was "I don't have children and rarely drive near other people's loose children. Why should I pay for hardware I don't need?"
I meant that I would be paying extra for it as opposed to a hypothetical car manufactured without the requirement. So it would be like having my taxes raised to pay for providing me something I didn't want.
Knowing that something rolled up just behind your car can be a saver in many ways... not running over surprise debris, for one, not hitting the neighbor's anti-cut boulder on the edge of the grass that you can't see when looking behind you for another...
None of my hyundai safety features are turned off. Some of these complaints I'm reading in the comments do happen but infrequently and it's never been something I needed to wrestle with the car to correct. 🤷
As in, the correction is so light that you can overpower it with a single finger
I think Hyundai/Kia have relatively unintrusive driver assistance systems (so far).
I've driven a VW Golf that almost got me killed when the "smart" cruise control slammed on the brakes to "avoid" a car in the turning lane and a mate drives an Amarok that nags him to rest every few minutes because it doesn't like the shape of his eyes.
Yeah, the replies in this post bun me out. Everyone thinks they’re a good driver. It’s always everyone else causing the problem! All it takes is one small lapse in attention to hurt yourself, loved ones, or strangers just living their lives.
I bought my first new car a few years ago, and it came with a lot of nice safety features. I’ve left them all on. I’ve only had minor annoyances. Lane assist can require me to override when construction has messed up normal roadways. Once in a rare while it’ll tell me to keep my hands on the steering wheel when they already are, but these are easy to adapt to.
Turning off these features because you’re a good driver and don’t need them, and thinking others are the bad drivers is such a self-centered view. Remember, to me, you’re the other driver and I’m the good driver.
Another 10-15 years as cars without these features get replaced we could live in a world where catastrophic traffic accidents are rare, but only if folks get over themselves and leave the safety features enabled.
I drive a Ford, nothing special. These complaints are overblown, and your ego is putting people at needless risk.
I had a rental car with that lane assist on, and it tried to drive me into oncoming traffic. I don't care how "rarely" it tries to kill me and others, it only needs to happen once before I turn it off and swear it off forever.
That lane keep assist could actually be making your car more dangerous since it can make mistakes but it gives you a false sense of security and makes you less alert. That's different from something like automatic braking that doesn't change your perception because it isn't actively doing anything most of the time
I use all the features available to me, but my adaptive cruise control likes to slam on the breaks when a car in the turning lane next to me brakes to make their turn. Particularly on curves and the sensors decide the car in that lane is actually in front of me. It happens so often that I've come to expect it. Some safety features are just not ready for prime time.
I turn off all that shit for one reason: too many electronic nannies mean less attention is required to drive. I rarely even use old cruise control.
If it's a white suburban kid with a blonde millennial mom it's spelled Breighkh
and 41 percent use heated windshields.
What are they talking about here, the defroster?
I feel like this is either talking about heated seats or a heated steering wheel and some AI couldn't parse out the difference when they used it to summarize the results of the study.
I know a couple people who one could describe as “twat” who turn off traction control and abs, thinking they are going to be rally drivers on the way to McDonalds. They tend to end up in the ditch.
Subaru has been good. The lane warning was the only thing we turned off because it was just obnoxious. If something is beeping constantly and erratically, what’s the point? The lane centering had a tendency to pull towards semis when passing but that seems to have been fixed in an update. The only other thing that is more a quality of life is a way easily and preemptively to turn off the backup warning and breaking assist when pulling a trailer.
Whenever I get into a modern hire car the first thing I do after starting it is turn all the 'safety' features off. They either don't work well, are annoying, or both. Sometimes they're downright dangerous. It was a large part of the reason I chose to buy a slightly older vehicle when I needed to change my car. The later models all had the annoying stuff.
I have a car from 2020 with most of the “modern” safety features. I have most of them off, but I do like the radar cruise control, makes long trips less stressful since it will adapt to traffic in front of me.
Most of this tech is way to intrusive, and a good chunk of drivers have become to reliant on it in some cases.
Hell, I know people that have no idea how to reverse a car if it does not have a rear view camera. Completely forgot how mirror functioned, and this goes for both older folks and the younger drivers.
I am 54, so not a boomer, but I've been driving me entire adulthood with any of this crap on my car. I think I know how to drive without it. My client car is a 2005. So no I don't need any of it I turn out all of in rental cars too. I hate it
So glad my 2019 car is a standard but still has CarPlay.
Like, CarPlay is about the most "smart" feature I need/want. I just want a good map and the ability to play podcasts and listen to music easily. That's it.
Since it's a standard the car couldn't get any of the "smart" features I didn't want anyway.
I'll drive the car, thanks.
This is me too with my 2020 Crosstrek. A little screen for the backup camera that also shows the navigation and Spotify from my phone. No lane monitoring or any of that stuff. And I do like deciding when I want to shift.
When I was in Australia last year I was overwhelmed by how much modern cars beep at you. The worst offender by far was a 2025 Kia Carnival that had different beeps for every possible thing the system might label a driving error.
It was more distracting than helpful to be honest.
One interesting finding relates to driving modes. While almost all new cars have them, just 27.3 percent of respondents say they regularly use their vehicle’s driving mode. Those aged 25 to 34 were more likely to use them, at 38.3 percent.
so what, all these people are always driving in reverse...??
25.9 percent of owners whose cars have adaptive cruise control never switch it on
I know someone with adaptive cruise control who technically turns it on, but only when there's no car in front of them...
Nearly 18 percent steer clear of lane-keeping assist
I suspect these are also people who don't like to use turn signals. They don't like the car fighting their ill-advised lane change.
21.3 percent disable automatic emergency braking
I've never experienced actual automatic braking, though I did have a car that had a fairly high false positive rate on the collision alert that could have inspired someone to turn it off, and could easily imagine it if the car actually did brake. There's also people that are afraid it might have a false positive and turn it off pre-emptively.
Voice assistants go unused by 17.8 percent.
I'm shocked that number is so low. I have so little interest in what my car's voice assistant can do for me. In a family car I gave it a spin because it purported to be "fancier" but I didn't like it and it was also pretty useless. I don't see this as a big "meant to save their lives" thing, it's just a gimmick.
Augmented reality head-up displays fare no better: 17.1 percent of drivers who have one refuse to turn it on
I know someone in this boat, they don't like their view being obstructed, and the car model they wanted had this as base equipment. I would also say this is more gimmick than life saving. A glance to a speedometer or nav screen isn't going to be a super risk thing so long as those displays are appropriately located, they don't need to be right on the windshield.
massaging seats, just 22 percent say they use them regularly
Ok, really off the topic of the headline now. I have sat in a "massaging seat" in a car and am not surprised. It vaguely vibrates a bit, hardly worth anything.
only 22.4 percent use AR head-up displays when fitted
But they said AR HUD was rejected only by 17.1 percent of drivers? Guess the question would be what the definition of 'used' is if they have it on but somehow don't "use" it?
24.5 percent use remote start functions
In many cases, this is of pretty limited utility. If it's a keyfob-only capability, you have to be close enough to the car that, by that point, well you might as well get in and start it instead of digging out your keyfob. If it's got a gas engine, then it's not something you probably want to do out of sight. I will say for an electric car with internet controllable remote 'start', it's nice to get it going while you are getting ready to leave at the end of a workday or when you are paying the check at a restaurant.
45.7 percent of respondents say they regularly use reversing cameras
I actually saw someone this week who spent years ignoring his backup camera finally decide that his back up camera was handy. He's also the worst at parking I know, so here's hoping he starts backing up with his camera and gets better...
41 percent use heated windshields.
So what do the rest do when their window fogs up otherwise? This seems... hard to believe.
Nearly 18 percent steer clear of lane-keeping assist
I suspect these are also people who don't like to use turn signals. They don't like the car fighting their ill-advised lane change.
I'm one, but not because of "ill-adviced lane changes". In my case it's because I prefer to drive in the middle or little to the right of the lane. Note, I almost only drive on roads with a single lane in each direction.
I've had lane keep assist attempt to assassinate me, by jerking left in the lane, right as I was approaching a truck with a super wide load, with ΔV around 140km/h. After that I don't care how "safe" it makes me, I prefer to stay alive.
disables lane assist presumably by people who changes without signals
No. By people who adapt their lane position to the situation, like cooperatively riding shoulder lines to not be mirror to mirror with a truck in the middle of a desert. By people driving vehicles that can't consistently pick a lane position. By people who have experienced the camera wrongly identifying a tight dashed line as a solid line and reacted aggressively. By people who have tried to fight lane assist politely, had the vehicle fail to allow it, exerted extra pressure on the wheel than should have been exerted at highway speeds, then had the system suddenly detect the input and relinquish control, jerking the whole car into the line or further. By people who've driven a system that picked a lane position based on the lines, came up to an exit lane cutout, had the vehicle glide into the new larger "center" and point off the road, then had the vehicle realize it lost the lines and relinquish control as you suddenly got pointed at the crash barrier, all in under a second (aka the Tesla method, disengage prior to crash, deny responsibility).
I have an older car (not a tesla, either) that has a system that stays disabled when I turn it off and isn't even a persistent lane assist, but more of an emergency drift correction system. I set it to vibrate the wheel without actually steering.
And I use my turn signals religiously.
I suspect these are also people who don’t like to use turn signals. They don’t like the car fighting their ill-advised lane change.
The "Lane keep" in my car only seems to see road lines whenever construction is going on and I'm diverted to an odd pattern... Then proceeds to scream at me that I'm leaving my lane as I avoid the giant orange cones to the front of the car.
My "Adaptive Cruise" is set to the farthest back follow distance it can be but brakes very late and always slams on the brakes when a car is fully in a left or right designated turn lane.
I have learned to adapt to the car's 'personality' and keep my thumb on the cruise button so I can click it off when needed or apply throttle before the car can hit the brakes.
There's another thing, when you press the throttle, you override the "automatic" braking. That means homie saw the big sign and floored it on through.
Only? Jeez.
This percentage notably overlaps the amount of Boomers on the road.
https://safetrec.berkeley.edu/...
They are used to ignore the shitton % of rules that were established after they started driving, and when they leave safety features on, the car goes bonkers.
The alarm is fucking stupid on some models.
I will not put on my seatbelt when I take the car out of the garage for a wash 2 feet in front of it.
I would also like the car to be "smart" enough not to beep that it's in reverse before I had the chance to change it out of reverse myself. And of course, the tone is a 120hz sine wave and way too loud. Great to calm the nerves right before work or a long road trip.
And you know what's the bonus point? The headlight on alarm is quiet like a fucking lullaby. Of course my battery died once.
I can guarantee the tones being as loud and obnoxious as they are is the reason people turn them off or buy those clamps to fake wearing a seatbelt.
Even when people use them, they do, they annoy and distract. Which causes accidents.
I'm not going to claim that they cause more accidents than they prevent, but I will claim that these are the most preventable accidents as they are actively caused by literal safety features!
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The lane keeper fucks up and tries to drive on the shoulder, driver turns it off, research group acts surprised that it's turned off
save