- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
People are getting fed up with all the useless tech in their cars — For the first time in 28 years of JD Power’s car owner survey, there is a consecutive year-over-year decline in satisfaction, wit…::People are dissatisfied with the technology in their cars, according to a new survey from JD Power. They especially don’t like the native infotainment systems.
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Fuck all of this, and insurance companies that want to track your driving behavior with a module installed in your car.
I have been saying this for years. The last thing your car should do is take your eyes off the road. This is a 1-3 ton box of metal hurdling at 60+ miles down the highway next to a bunch of other metal boxes that can all kill each other.
And car manufacturers seem to be in love with the idea of you forgetting you’re even driving. Add on all the bs lane assisting, warning bells, alerts, automatic correction, and the driver is convinced that the car will protect them.
These are all systems built on software. Last time I checked, that shit has never been reliable. If the software fails, the manufacturer can just hide behind “They weren’t paying attention!”
Mfer, YOU TRAINED THEM TO IGNORE IT. I don’t know what I’m going to do when all the cars from before touchscreens and digital gauges are no longer running or affordable because I hate the idea of having to look at a screen to change volume or turn on the AC.
Modern cars can suck a fuck.
Mfer, YOU TRAINED THEM TO IGNORE IT
Remember when a self-driving car killed someone walking their bike in Arizona, while the car’s “handler” was watching a movie on their tablet?
Yeah, the employee should have been paying attention, but it’s not realistic to expect someone to stay alert for an 8-hour shift where the task is as monotonous as watching a car drive itself. That’s why commercial transport drivers have mandated breaks and why two pilots are in charge of an airplane at a time.
To be clear, I am in favour of self-driving cars and don’t think they need to be perfect, just better than the average human, but the companies training them need to have standards that are both realistic and safe.
but it’s not realistic to expect someone to stay alert for an 8-hour shift where the task is as monotonous as watching a car drive itself.
It wasn’t an 8 hour shift and watching the car was the actual job, come on! The driver was the tester. They were testing a system which wasn’t yet ready to go untested. The accident is entirely the fault of the driver in that case.
And it’s not like their reflexes were slower because of boredom. No. They were not paying any attention at all. They were watching a video. That is gross negligence and not the fault of the car or of the manufacturer.
They were testing. While it almost certainly wasn’t explicit, they were also testing the worst self-driving car operators. And human nature. Yes, it was their job and they should have been paying close attention every second. But if they were… Is it possible a worse (less-safe) self-driving car would have made it to market? I think fatalities from self-driving cars are going to happen regardless, whether during or after the testing process, and I also think that’s horrible…
But if they were… Is it possible a worse (less-safe) self-driving car would have made it to market?
The purpose of the testing was to make sure that good products made it to the market. Events like these which are human error have created bad press and have set the concept back by years. And these are not years of research, no. These are years in which the projects have been put on the back burner and we’re getting small increments like lane assist which are bad (as in poor quality) most of the time and give users the false feeling that they have a self driving car.
I think fatalities from self-driving cars are going to happen regardless, whether during or after the testing process, and I also think that’s horrible…
I don’t think that’s the correct way to look at it. Accidents will happen. It is impossible to prevent all of them. But the total number of fatalities would go down dramatically if self driving cars would be more present on the roads and that is a huge win.
42,795 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in US alone in 2022. I think that even with the current technology, this number would still be reduced by half and that is a huge win.
The purpose of the testing was to make sure that good products made it to the market.
No, the purpose of testing is to make sure profitable products make it to market. Even the most good-intentioned company (do they exist?) has their priorities set by shareholders.
For example, airlines have a set price they will pay the families of people killed by them. Is it moral? Is it ethical? No. It is financial. What can they offer, without having to enact costly behavior and safety overhauls…
What can they offer, without having to enact costly behavior and safety overhauls…
Flying is the safest, most regulated, way of travel. There are virtually no accidents because of these regulations. Why would there be a need for an overhaul?
I mean, these things are going to happen. But that person was attempting to cross 5 lines of traffic after crossing 2 just before. It’s a terrible idea to try that. Here is a picture: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2018/03/20/self-driving-uber-death/7ed17129da41763ed1c6f0bf194fa32d10bda7dc/accident-diagram-1050.png
The driver also ignored safety instructions. You can only plan for so much. Let’s say you put two drivers in the car. They could both be watching the movie and not paying attention. I have no sympathy for the driver being “bored”. I used to have a long boring commute. I listened to audio books and podcasts. I did not fiddle with my phone or watch movies. If you pilot a veihicle with autonomous driving or not pay attention. Most people can handle that just driving themselves around. This person had it as a job. No excuse.
I’ll note that you were actually doing something during that long, boring commute - you were driving the car (I assume). In the other case, the person wasn’t doing anything at all and had nothing to focus on…that’s MUCH harder.
Oh, please, tell me, otacon239, how exactly does one suck a fuck?
I’d argue that the safety assistance tech is very, very good and should continue.
Fucking touch screens for HVAC and audio controls are a menace though. How do regulatory agencies allow this?
Then there’s the fucking warning message not to look at your screen that starts every time I turn it on. 90% of the time I am not looking at the screen, so I don’t realize I have to click through their warning message until I’m already driving. All they achieved is distracting me and making me look away from the road.
I don’t understand why some cars have these warnings and not others? I drive a Tesla Model S 2014. I never get any annoying warnings or distractions that pop up. My dad drives a Audi Q4 Sportback. It has an annoying popup every time you start the car and will also randomly notify you about stuff that you do not really care about while driving? My mothers old Subaru also has a popup every time you start the car that you have to press okay on just to use the fucking radio. So you can’t get in and go you have to wait for it to display it’s shitty little warning. Then press go, then start driving. And this is on old diesel. So it’s not like this is new.
I understand not everyone wants a touchscreen / large display in their car but coming from a Kia Sportage 2012, I am very happy in the Tesla, even if it ment losing some buttons. Most things are controlled with the buttons on the steering wheel.
I find it stupid as hell that there are conditionary alerts and changed UI when in “car” mode on phone apps, as well as Bluetooth pairing being disabled while driving.
I get it, they want you to not use the apps while driving. But you know what’s even more distracting than messing with a device while driving? Trying to troubleshoot unexpected UXs while driving
Not to mention that passengers exist. Convincing my friend to pull over and put the car in park so I can be navigator and DJ for our little road trip was certainly more distracting than just having an open and predictable UX
I was in a wreck three weeks ago that may have been avoided if I had not needed to look back and check my blindspot. I made damn sure that my new car had blindspot monitoring. 360° cameras is a bit much but just that little bit of tech can make a big difference.
I’d argue that the safety assistance tech is very, very good and should continue.
Not in our Mazda. Frequent false alarms (and in that time, not a single “real” alarm triggered), a nails-on-a-chalkboard sound that irritates me every time I hear it, and the lane “assist” feature likes to steer me back toward obstacles I was trying to avoid, like cyclists, animals, large potholes, oversized loads…
I would like to see the statistics that demonstrate that that technology is reducing crashes and/or reducing the severity of crashes. Because I know ours has trained me to ignore that alarm. I haven’t asked many people, but a few people I know have turned the alarms off.
My wife’s old Volt would beep at fucking everything. Parallel parked and backing up? You’d think the car was about to explode. Put in drive with enough room to pull out? Same.
Really cemented my desire to drive my old beater into the ground.
I was driving with Waze once, on the highway but first gear like 10km/h because trafic. A popup came and I wanted to discard it because I was nearly at my turn and didn’t want to lose it so I pushed the cross. By the small time I spent doing this, I was already going sideways off my lane.
Lesson learned. Next time it happens I’d rather stay in my lane and take the next exit. But fk the people putting Ads in my car. Let me focus.
…useless tech
Oh, it is “useful”; to the real ‘owners’ of “your” car…
Yup. I’m in Automotive, I work for a company that makes software for basically any car brand you can think of. I just recently left an internally developed project that aimed to create a personal assistant in the car. It was terribly ran and will go nowhere, but other departments in other companies will probably have more success, especially since the rise of chatgpt.
To add to your point though - the main idea on how to sell this assistant to car makers was the features, but the driving force behind developing the project was customer data. Collect a huge amount of info from customers, info that is shared with the car brand, but also accessible to us. To give some credit, discussions were never about using it for evil purposes - imagine a secretary knowing their boss’ schedule, our software would make suggestions like “you can’t make your 1 PM luch appointment with the client, would you like to reschedule it” and “I see you’re headed to Chicago and will arrive in 2 hours, should I make a reservation at that restaurant you like?” or some shit like that. But we all know that it’s not the engineers who decide what the company does with the data once access to that data exists. And knowing where a user eats, having access to their calendar, having access to their phone… This shit can get out of hand so easily when a budget-oriented executive type decides it’s time for this project to be even more profitable by selling the data to advertisers.
Last I heard before I left, the plan was to “get consent” to process this data through a disclaimer when booting the car’s infotainment system, saying that attached devices share data with our servers etc. Read the manuals, ToS and pop-ups and don’t connect your devices to systems that do this. You’re already the client when buying a car worth thousands of dollars. Don’t also be the product.
such bullshit. how can engineers not let this happen?
Unfortunately I think engineers, as employees of a company, don’t have a lot of power. You aren’t typically the one making feature decisions. You can always try to talk product people out of bad ideas, but at some point if you refuse to do what you’ve been told to, you lose your job. Some engineers are in a financial position to take that high road, but a lot aren’t. And then even if you do quit, there will always be someone else willing to do what you aren’t.
I think as long as there is money in doing unethical (but legal) things, those things will continue to happen
so this is why i think that reasonable engineers (and most actual engineers are reasonable, hence being an “engineer”) should get together and make good stuff. stuff that is not corrupted by perverse incentives. an engineer is capable of understanding the flaws of an economy and how that can be detrimental to the functionality of some tool or system.
unfortunately as long as they’re still subject to the whims of global capitalism, they will never be free from perverse incentives
subject to the whims of global capitalism
so how can we make that not be the case? this is what engineers and innovators are thinking about. we are thinking about what the next system will be and planning how to get there.
systemic change is required, that’s for sure. as to the how of that? fucked if i know tbh
I’ve never had a car with a touch screen or whatever fancy centre panel - but I have scrapped old cars because the ECU decided that there was an airbag fault which was not resolved with a new airbag. I’m a full time sysadmin/developer - my car does not need a computer to go, and if it must have one, it shouldn’t be a brick covered in epoxy.
I somewhat long to return to dumb electromechanical components like distributors, rather than unimaginably expensive, irreparable, interdependent systems.
#RightToRepair
The battle against requiring a computer for your car to run was lost over 30 years ago. It’s just been gradual expansion since then.
A computer running the car isn’t inherently bad. Direct injection with a computer running the show is very efficient for fuel usage. But at that point for commuter vehicles they might as well be electric motors
This is exactly the reason why they do it. They can put a hidden countdown or just outright brick your vehicle over the air and you can’t really prove they did.
As a sysadmin/dev you should know its not a computers = bad situation. It’s God awful system implementation, trash software, trash components, and even worse redundancies.
It’s like you’re saying “why use email, when i can send a physical letter” in some aspects
But I agree these manufacturers produce shit products in the form of vehicle electronics.
My 1991 4Runner doesn’t even have a diagnostic port (pre OBDII), but you can get it to tell you what it thinks is wrong.
To do this, you need to use a paperclip to jump two terminals in a box under the hood, then turn the ignition to ON, count the number of times the check engine light blinks, write that down, then look up what that code means, in a book.
(Granted, the book is a PDF these days, but still)
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I read an article about how much gas it saved over a long period of time and it was a trivial amount.
Nearly every article I can find says they save around 3% with air conditioning on when it’s warm and around 10% with AC off or when AC isn’t very active. Saving 10% of fuel is really good over the life of a car. Saving 3% isn’t much over the life of a car for you, but it’s huge when multiplied by a few billion cars worldwide.
True story. Next car I own will be a manual. Won’t even bother setting up the electronic junk if it comes with it.
I couldn’t care less about all of the proprietary “infotainment” stuff, but I’ll never buy another car that doesn’t have Apple car play or maybe Android auto if I ever switch back to Android one day. Some manufacturers have talked about killing support.
I have a 2018 car and the android auto on it doesn’t seem to be compatible with the android auto on phones anymore. It worked fine for a few years, but not anymore. I highly doubt they release a software update for it to make it compatible again.
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If you can’t figure out how to put all the extra stuff in the console as a knob or button then it probably doesn’t belong there, or isn’t wanted in the first place.
Our Subaru nags you to check your text messages constantly while driving. Can’t be disabled if you want to use carplay.
Every time I’ve connected my phone through Carplay I have to explicitly give the car permission to access my texts. If you refuse that permission, does the car still nag you about texts?
EDIT: Maybe it’s only Android Auto that makes you explicitly give the car access to texts. I don’t remember if my Apple workphone asks for permission.
The mindless march for ever-more pointless tech in cars has pushed me into getting into classic cars more and more. Hopping into a old car is such a transformative experience. My smartphone connected through Blutooth into the stereo system is the most advanced thing in the car. The windows are huge and visibility is amazing. The ride is smooth and very forgiving. I can actually feel what the road is like because there aren’t 10 layers of computers and electronics between the steering wheel and the tires.
Nowadays, all these companies are doing is trying to use technology to solve a problem created by technology to begin with. I don’t need a million cameras and sensors around my car, if I have good sight-lines. I don’t need a sensor to remind me to look at the road, if the driving experience wasn’t so goddamn boring and devoid of fun and excitement to begin with.
I simply don’t need more shit in my cars.
I don’t need a million cameras and sensors around my car, if I have good sight-lines.
While I agree with your earlier point on more technology not always being good, I disagree on the point of sensors and cameras. A backup-camera and sensor can tell me about approaching cars that I’m not aware of/cannot see physically. Additionally, I’ll take extra reminders of cars when switching lanes at highway speeds.
In a classic car with thin pillars between the windows and lots more glass, you don’t need the sensors because you can actually see well.
I have been unlucky enough to drive behind a person on the way home for the past 3 days who does not look when she moves to another lane. She just moves. There has been a car directly to her left, and she just fuckin slides right on over.
These are the people I want cameras and sensors for. These people out here (America) in these giant ass cars feel so protected in them they just stop caring. If we can’t get them to stop being stupid I will have to depend on technology. I don’t want to depend on technology but here we are.
Yeah exactly, tech should only be in the form of safety measures like proximity alerts, lane stabilizing if you drift, cameras, etc. It’s when they complicate basic controls like HVAC, radio, seats, mirrors, etc that pisses me off. That’s not even starting to talk about other paywalls like a subscription for heated seats or whatever; also didn’t I just read that Mercedes requires a yearly subscription if you want to fully accelerate your vehicle?
Good strategy! I currently own 5 cars; 91, 93, 97, 09, and 11 (and the last two are a utility van and a base model hatchback with no electronics).
I had a job in college working on information security for automotive systems. I’m actually pretty good at fixing cars with electronics, but the DRM where you have to go back to the manufacturer is too far for me. If I can’t fix it with what’s in my garage, I’m not interested.
It’s also more eco-friendly than constantly scrapping/upgrading cars.
My problem with it is that “standards” aren’t really standards. I have a car from 2015. It has an LCD panel that’s supposed to connect to your phone. Too bad that the standards changed in 2015… Now it sits there totally useless.
Heh - my car from 2006 has 2 SD card slots behind the radio/nav screen for my MP3 and M4A files.
I also ripped out the CD changer for a BT integration, but I still use the SD cards sometimes.
I use rental cars quite often. There’s so much garbage in newer cars. Why is there something trying to control my steering wheel, seriously who thought that was a good idea. Also nothing is tactile responsive anymore. It’s like being sold a bloat ware filled phone where you can only use garbage native apps. They made it so much more dangerous.
The Polestar by Volvo is absolutely going to convince someone to never touch an EV again. Not because of the charging, that was fine. But oh my god the interior design and the UX of their infotainment is among the worst I have ever had to tolerate. I wanted to drive the car into the ocean.
It’s still better to drive than a tesla, but I agree that the Polestar UX is crap.
Yeah my 2013 Honda has Hondalink, whatever the heck that is and an outdated GPS system which I refuse to pay to upgrade. I typically buy a five or six year old honda which I don’t look forward to next go round, bc I’m sure the tech will be woefully outdated.
When you need a manual just to find out, how to turn on the radio, something is definitely wrong.
Yeah there’s something about choosing form over substance that triggers the shit out of me. I like nice things but easy simple user friendly designs are paramount IMO especially for something that can get multiple people killed like a car.
Related: I stayed at a fancy hotel recently and the shower had a digital control panel to turn on the water, control temperature and pressure, multiple spouts etc. Take a guess how well it worked once it got steamy.
Knobs and buttons guys, jeez.
Still rolling my old 2000 Honda CRV. I know nothing about any of this new car witchery.
Nice, how many miles? Did you buy it new, or how did it come to be yours?
I bought it brand new 23 years ago! We’re at 208k. I’m pushing for 300 we goin all the way!
