A couple of years ago I rented some Toyota which had collision warning. I got on the exit from the highway, it was a big round swing with high, thin marker poles by the sides. The car suddenly started to emit a maddening high-pitch beeping tone that scared the shit out of me. I hit the brakes to slow down to snail speed (fortunately, there was nobody behind me) and then I figured out on the display that it was collision warning. The next thing I did is to read the user manual and disabled the shit.
> Lane assists and emergency braking assists are going to be mandatory safety features in the EU from 2022.
WTF?! We should make a website collecting all stories of almost-accidents due to these features.
I can see the use of emergency braking, but not lane assist. As someone with a 2003 Golf, I have never found it difficult to stay in my lane.
What is the "logic" behind mandating this? What problem are they trying to solve?
But boy, how afraid I am when it triggers in the construction zones!
I am never, ever, buying a brand-new car.
As a cyclist it made me wonder how many of the close-passes I experience, where drivers just full on don't change course and blast past me with inches to spare, are actually due to the car not wanting the driver to move out of the lane.
I think this is because the driver was being a bit lazy and didn't bother turning on the signal. If you indicate intent, then the system won't think you're messing up.
But a lot of folks simply half-change lanes when passing cyclists and then go back.
As a motorcyclist the half-change is annoying since (a) you're blocking both lanes, and (b) if they did a full lane change I could zip past since I can fit quite comfortably next to the bicyclist.
I've got no problem with your complaint about them half-changing and blocking both lanes, it's the concept of nipping between them, knowing full-well their next move will be back in.
(UK) My instructor taught me to judge each situation. An indicator might cause more confusion. There is definitely no rule in the Highway Code that states you must always indicate. A system which relies on such an assumption is defective.
If you're intending to cross a lane marking you should signal. Under what circumstances would this not be true?
> Rule 103: Signals warn and inform other road users, including pedestrians (see ‘Signals to other road users), of your intended actions. You should always: use them to advise other road users before changing course or direction, stopping or moving off
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/general-rules-t...
Isn't going into another lane, even partially, a change in course or direction?
However I do stand corrected as code does say that you must always indicate if you are changing course or direction.
"Signals warn and inform other road users, including pedestrians (see ‘Signals to other road users), of your intended actions. You should always
- give clear signals in plenty of time, having checked it is not misleading to signal at that time
- use them to advise other road users before changing course or direction, stopping or moving off
- cancel them after use
- make sure your signals will not confuse others. If, for instance, you want to stop after a side road, do not signal until you are passing the road. If you signal earlier it may give the impression that you intend to turn into the road. Your brake lights will warn traffic behind you that you are slowing down
- use an arm signal to emphasise or reinforce your signal if necessary. Remember that signalling does not give you priority."
Picking a rented car, I normally don't spend much effort trying to figure out all features. Just basics - adjust the seat, the mirrors, reset the trip, rarely link up the phone. Touch-n-go.
It always gets irritating later, as I would try to figure some needed feature while already on the go. Climate, radio, what's that beeping, which side is the fuel port (while already pulling to the pump), the curiously long-lasting parfum on the seat-belt from the previous renter at times triggering unexpected memories...
I guess, it's just a mild form of self-inflicted road rage. RTFM would be an easy answer, but we all know how that works out.
When I first had the car, I found this to be totally ridiculous. Whoever heard of a car that automatically turns on the radio when it starts? But, after having had the car for a month, the problem is already fading, as I've developed a habit of turning the volume down before I turn off the car. At this rate, six months from now, like you, I'll be defending this anti-feature. (Hey, you're going to turn the radio on anyway when you drive, so why not have the car do it for you on startup?)
I agree that the key word is rental, but my conclusion is exactly the opposite of yours. The fact that this is an unfamiliar rental is what is allowing the OP to see the issues with the car's UX clearly. If the car were his daily driver, he'd have adapted to it, and he wouldn't notice himself getting distracted.
[1]: https://www.subaruxvforum.com/forum/interior-audio-hvac/1460...
In every other car I've owned, if I press the volume knob to turn off the radio, the radio stays off. The next time I start the car, I have to press the volume knob again to turn the radio back on. In the Subaru, the radio turns on and starts playing when I start the car, even if I specifically pressed the volume knob to turn it off before turning off the car last time.
I encourage you to go try this in your (presumably non-Subaru) car. Start the car. Turn on the radio. Turn off the radio. Shut off the car. Start the car again. Is the radio playing audio or not?
As for the freshness of a renter's UX observations, personally, I'd find it less reliable due to different objective vs. a future owner. I would dismiss a lot of seeming inefficiencies of design just due to my unfamiliarity with vendor 'concept' and would kludge it for the short duration of the rental.
On the other hand, if shopping for a new car, test-driving one, my mindset would be a lot more critical.
I remember, at one time having to pull over the highway just to figure out, where was the headlights switch on the fine Dodge Charger. Used to Japanese cars, I would not expect it to be off the steering wheel stalks, but as a knob near the door. Turns out, it's another 'concept'.
Another example is the hand-brake pedal (!). Makes sense in a way. That one entered my memory bank via a nice Toyota Prius, at 4 in the morning, starting my the way to the airport from the darkness of parking lot. Previous share driver left it engaged, manifested itself with a dash warning and very squeeeeky and slow drive.... Luckily, there was a user manual in the car.
I have a 2016 Hyundai Tucson with a similar, but slightly different feature.
Turning the volume all the way down before switching off the engine does not effect the startup volume. When the engine starts, the radio comes back on at a preset, but reasonable, volume.
However, if I turn the entire screen off, by pushing the volume knob in until it clicks, before stopping the engine, then on start-up the radio will be off, but so will the entire screen, which also controls navigation, bluetooth connectivity and the reversing camera.
My first action after starting my car is 90% of the time to turn the volume down on the radio.
However, I must say that's really the only niggle I have with the Tucson. Everything else I'm pretty pleased with. While it does have a touch screen, I hardly use it, as everything can be controlled with tactile knobs and buttons. The touchscreen is used most when stationary and inputting a new destination address for navigation.
My Subaru has the same behavior, minus the backup camera remaining off. In reverse, the screen turns on and displays the image from the backup camera. It turns off again once you switch into drive. It's certainly a solution to the problem I described, but it's obviously not ideal for all the reasons you've enumerated. Turning off Bluetooth, navigation, and (in my case) Android Auto is certainly a drastic way of dealing with this radio behavior.
I'm wondering how many cars you drove that did not have any screens. Having grown up during a time when the most sophisticated display was the LCD for the radio station, I can assure you car interfaces are getting worse.
Japanese cars used to be my favorite because they had consistent manual interfaces across models. Perhaps Renault and Peugeot have always had bad design but the digitization of the interfaces and the software that's now controlling some aspects of the actual driving makes them more dangerous.
In some ways the current state of car interior design reminds the 1990s and 2000s of computers and mobile phones. Everything was so ugly and unusable that when proper industrial design finally came into the industry, the guy responsible for it got knighthood and worldwide recognition of a genius.
(To be fair a few companies did try to make their devices look well-designed and luxury, such as Sony, but then Sony never understood software. Industrial design without software is nothing.)
Whereas all it takes for any electronics or car manufacturer is to have someone C-level with a good taste to approve or disapprove designs. Which got me thinking, maybe at this point the humanity needs to come up with some measure of good taste similar to IQ...
For a fairly intuitive UI, check out the Tesla, particularly in its latest incarnations. In my estimation it is at least as usable as most tablets, and very discoverable.
However, look online and you will discover a litany of people who decry the lack of physical buttons to control everything.
Car UI is hard, not just because it is hard, but because there are many different groups of "us", and we have all grown used to different forms of car UI, BMW vs Ford for example.
The best way to improve a complex human interaction task like a vehicle is with experimentation and incremental improvements—and the touch screen allows the pace of that feedback loop to be an order of magnitude faster than a physical interface.
All they need is a few more buttons for the most common tasks on the steering wheel and the Model 3 design would be greatly improved.
I'm not sure this is a good thing. Poorly designed physical things will stick for a long time and might damage the reputation of your company. Tesla's reputation is not great precisely for that reason. I remember people were saying that Tesla would be "the Apple for cars" before their first cars left the factory. Nobody says that anymore.
You have to be careful to differentiate between improvements vs. change. You need to know when to stop (or at least slow down the rate of change) otherwise it's just a random walk.
So how about you as a car manufacturer make these people happy but with an even better design than they expected?
Car usability is not subjective, it can easily be measured. For example, how often do drivers adjust the audio volume while driving? If they are doing it less often it means the volume function is less usable (the driver feels it would be unsafe to try and use the function). And so on.
It saved Apple (iMac)
Note that most cars have a little arrow on the dashboard next to the fuel gauge showing which side the fuel tank is on.
They didn't. So I got out to move my hatchback car closer and angled so they would reach. I unhooked the pump and put it in my car.
But first it asked me to pay my bill of £0.
I was driving for ten years unaware of this, before somebody told me. It’s easy to miss that the icon telling you “this is fuel gauge” also shows you which side to fill the tank from.
Do you have an example? Every rental car I have tried in the past decade had this. At least 10–15 different models from a variety of different manufacturers.
We've been building cars for 100 years or more - you don't get to make a car that operates in a fundamentally different manner.
If anyone was curious, the best infotainment system was FCA's uConnect, with the Ford and GM systems tying for second, the worst by far was the one on the Volvo I rented, it took me 10 min to figure out the radio, even longer to turn the AC on.
At least, according to the rental company that was the case. On the last day as we were driving it back to drop off, I discovered that you could press the temperature dial inwards to turn on AC.
There was a significant number of choice words from the folks in the back seat. But aside from that the rest of the drive was pleasantly cool.
Found one page in the back of the owners manual that showed 'one' of the switches in addition to up and down moved right and left.
Sorry for this ranty attitude right now but how do so many things that we technically figured out perfectly get shittier and shittier? We fortunately slowly come to realize how important automated testing, integration tests etc. are to make software development better and faster in the long run, but do we in turn just stop thinking about if what we're currently doing actually makes sense? Take a step back for a second?
I don't want to be the crazy guy shouting more regulation every time something goes wrong, but I really wonder if we're in need for some up to date rules about what makes a car safe for traffic and what doesn't that specifically has UX in mind. Entirely ban touch screens or buttons with no tactile feedback from cars for example. Today you have dash gauges that lag behind by a second. If the trend continues, by tomorrow we have software driven AI cloud based brakes that are delayed by a second or two.
I'm not a fan of regulation either, but I have a feeling that if the operation of the steering wheel or pedals weren't standardised, we'd have even crazier car UIs with their own self-consistent-but-globally-inconsistent designs. ("Turn the steering wheel clockwise to make a left turn --- because you're changing the view in the windscreen, not the content behind it!")
The regulation that required the shift quadrant to be in the PRNDL order many decades ago seems almost quaint in comparison:
https://jalopnik.com/why-prndl-5870701
(...and as the mentions about the horrible Jeep shifter in the other comments here allude to, maybe that regulation has laxed over the years.)
I have to learn how to use three operating systems to be able to use very nearly all computers in the world. Car UIs can be wildly inconsistent even for the same brand.
Aren't these 2 things mutually exclusive? If you want to drive, turn off the cruise control? Or is this an always on 'feature'?
The driver is still absolutely in control of the vehicle with cruise control enabled.
I don't think cruise control has to include active braking, if the feature is included, and from what the GP is suggesting, is activated with the cruise control, isnt it part of cruise control.
Yes, that isn't part of regular cruise control. It's called "cruising", not "driving in traffic". These systems have been around since the 60s, far longer than automotive sensors have existed.
The part where the car actually responds to the movement of cars around them is a new thing (only available for ten years or so), and is called adaptive cruise control.
As I said cruise control doesn't have to have active braking because as you point out cruise control predates active braking. To me its analogous to a graphics card in a computer, a computer doesn't have to contain a graphics card, after all the computer predates the graphics card. Nevertheless you wouldn't argue that a graphics card in a computer isnt part of the computer.
For some reason rental companies always seem to try to give you underpowered cars no matter where, I'm not sure why since they do have better ones which are also more expensive so they're not losing money renting them.
I'm also hearing nothing but good things about Ford's 1.0L EcoBoost engines. So it's certainly not a question of volume/size alone.
Admittedly I should have said that "85 HP" was for city driving rather than "1.2L".
Neither the 1.0 EA211 or the 1.2 EA111 are twin-charged. The 2005 1.4 EA111 was however twin-charged and was replaced in 2012 with the newer 1.4 EA211 turbocharged engine. This has now become the 1.5 EA211.
My regular driver is a Tesla. Say what you will about it, but the CAS in it is freaking reliable, to the point that when I hear the warning I reflexively brake, before assessing the situation - which is the point, saving milliseconds. It has false positives too, but rarely and in situations where I can immediately see why (like going zig-zag between parallel parked cars on both sides of a narrow road).
These assists will become mandatory in EU, in a complete legislative disconnect from the reality of state of the art of European manufacturers.
They are probably cheap and are all driven by seniors who wouldn't notice the difference with a proper car anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TnGjq9mWSI > very accurate.
I do not mean to sound pedantic, but a lot of shitty products "resonate with buyers". Squeaky laptops with stamp-sized trackpads come to mind. I think the resonating is mainly related to price. Like those laptops, Peugeots are probably good value for many. That does not however negate, that they are also shitty cars...
(For reference, my own car is a 2010 Honda Jazz (Honda Fitt in the US), so I'm not comparing a Peugeot to a luxury Mercedes sedan or something...it's just that the Honda seems to be a car people actually though about before they started building it)
The 3008 is not cheap, I think people buy it for the expressive style and the great comfort. So "resonate" is not meant as "resonate because of low price". Also, the new 508 and the upcoming 208 seem to be amazing cars. Give them a chance in a year :)
Talking about the play in the steering wheel, I have none but once scared myself driving the Ford of a friend because of this issue.
The steering assist was one of the first things I turned off on it, otherwise it might activate literally every time I drive home. There's also construction all over the place, so... yeah.
I pity someone stepping into one of these cars for the first time with this feature enabled.
1. It would only drive at speeds where a head on would not hurt passengers.
2. In case of any certainty loss it would pull over.
Unfortunately, it got the axe (in favour of partnerships). Fully self driving sports car, without a bazillion miles of proper learning data (where the ai was continuously in charge at speeds similar to the discussed ones) sounds way outside my comfort limits.
I feel the same.
If Tesla gets their way, they could be on the roads posing a risk to us more cautious types regardless.
Talk of corruption aside, if Boeing can't get it right with a gazillion dollars and no bad roads or unpredictable traffic, I don't trust Tesla to be able to do it safely.
This Peugeot 308 was trying to kill me with its "lane assist" in a construction zone, forcefully steering the car towards the concrete barrier because the painted lines on the road were tapering towards the concrete barrier (due to the construction). I finally found out how to turn that off _after_ nearly being killed.
Make my car less like a desktop computer, please.
My favorite is _waiting for the car to boot up_ so I can turn on the air conditioning in the sweltering heat :)
There's also the joy of fumbling through terribly-designed touch screen menus so you can turn off the radio that for some reason auto-tuned to some nearby station. Since my FM transmitter wasn't broadcasting audio I guess the car just decides it needs to get something pumping through the speakers ASAP.
The other hilarious thing is the cruise control pretty much slamming on the brakes because someone merged into my lane 300m+ ahead (not even slightly at risk of driving into them because they are about the same speed as me). I guess the system that detects an obstruction ahead cannot tell that it's moving at the same speed as me. Not surprising, but regardless, can I please be the driver of the vehicle?
Oh yeah and how about those software-driven dash gauges that feel like they have a full second of latency? The ability to customize the UI skin is something I want for WinAmp, not my car's tachometer and speedometer.