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.

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

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!

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

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.

>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).

>>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?

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).

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

What came into effect in 2009?

Same here.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

> lane assist

I prefer the term "lane insist"

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

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.

> 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?

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

yes I can't understand how anyone buys these

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).

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.