Drivers Are Taking Extreme Measures to Avoid New Car Technology

mcone

Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/cars/driver-assistance-technol...

killdevil

This is why I drive a nearly 30-year-old vehicle. Big, easy-to-use knobs and buttons, no screens, little automation of any kind. I find that slapping my iPhone into a magnetic holder on the dash is far more seamless than CarPlay integration, which sometimes fails to work or fritzes out randomly. The mandated addition of screens to vehicles sold in the US, which happened around 2008 by administrative fiat (for use by backup cameras), was the death knell for simple mechanical human-automotive interfaces.

everybodyknows

Great subject. Too bad about the content: > Even as the price of a new car soars—now hovering around $50,000—automakers argue buyers are getting more bang for their buck, including more safety and entertainment tech features. > For many buyers, that’s exactly the problem. Finding it hard to believe that for "many buyers" safety features are "exactly the problem".

wiskinator

A good friend of mine (we'll call him G) worked at an auto body shop. An older client came in and was bitching about how his brand new Mazda (IIRC) kept freaking out when he changed lanes, and asked G if he could disable the lane departure warnings. G showed him how and said, BTW, these are supposed to be a backup for if you fall asleep - they don't go off if you use your blinker. Dude bro politely asked G to turn the lane departure warning back on.

drop_star

I recently got a newish car 2022 and I like all the features. Way better than my 2008.

kittikitti

I'm waiting for humanoid robots that can drive old school cars. Also, I expected a discussion in the article about EU's newest policies that are relevant for this topic. They are requiring that all new vehicles monitor the driver. https://cybernews.com/security/eu-car-camera-monitoring/ In my personal opinion, I find that the newest car technologies are rife with abuse and fraud already. One of my newest cars can connect to my home WiFi and I started getting more targeted ads based on where I drove to. It's not a feature, it's a bug.

zachwdc

>"Your alternative is to have products in 2026 that don't have state-of-the-art technology." Unthinkable.

gruntled-worker

Not surprising to see the WSJ skipping the surveillance angle entirely. Aside from classic sport cars and to a lesser extent manual transmissions, I've never even heard about someone preferring old models until surveillance started rolling in. I wish the US or EU mandated the separation of "basic driving OS" and "surveillance/infotainment/everything else OS" with the requirement that the vehicle be operable with the latter disconnected completely. It would let you avoid costly repairs when the massively overpriced spy-tablet breaks down on an old car. It would incidentally make everyone safer by not having people drive 30-year old jalopies just because they're not mobile spy stations.

jerlam

I recently got a new car, and my last one was 24 years old. It had a tape deck. All these "convenience" features are annoying as hell. It reminds me of the old days of pop-up ads and no ad-blockers. There's random beeping and a dialog box pops up to distract me from the road, filled with indecipherable text and abbreviations. Even when you turn off the car it makes a bunch of random noise, either about "safe exit assist disabled" or "rear seat reminder". Once in a Tesla, I clicked on one of the pop up dialogs. After five seconds of loading, it opened up the user manual, blocking out the entire navigation pane. Even when you know exactly how the safety features work, they block your UI with a dialog that says "be careful" every time you enable them. I spent the first month turning on and off various settings to get the car to actually help me instead of distract me. I will say I think adaptive cruise control is great and CarPlay is preferable to a small phone screen that tempts you to review your notifications.