I am also in agreement. I want the car to be as mechanical as possible. The ideal phone-car integration for me is a 3.5mm aux jack that lives in the glove box somewhere. I am the kind of driver that will not look at their phone in the car, even at a stop light. Everyone who knows me knows that if I am driving, they should not expect any sort of response from me until I have parked safely. It's sad this has become an exceptional and even controversial stance.

Even the electronic safety nannies that are exclusively part of the car get in my way sometimes. I will intentionally disable stabilitrak and traction control on my car every time I start it up, unless the weather is bad. I also feel safer and more in control if I can feel the road through the steering wheel and don't have things like fly-by-wire keeping me isolated from the physical reality unfolding around me.

I've heard lots of complaints regarding things like lane keep assist being too aggressive and making steering non-intuitive or annoying. Good luck disabling that on a 2019 model year vehicle. Everyone wants to be so goddamn comfortable and disengaged while they are driving their 4000lb death machines around. I really don't get it anymore. What are our priorities?

I would argue turning off traction control feels safer up until the moment it doesn't and then it causes a crash. Traction control is really impressive tech even on older cars and I wouldn't want to turn it off. By "fly-by-wire" do you mean power steering? Driving without that just sucks. I like low-tech interiors but I don't mind newer tech on cars like blind spot detectors and auto-dip headlights. If only you could pick and choose.

My brother turned off traction control on his RX-8, then crashed it into the side of the onramp. Friends don't let friends turn off traction control, unless they're professional drivers.

i used to agree, but i've found a 3.5mm aux cord can fall out quite easily over bumps as the phone gets old. otherwise completely agree.

I sort of agree, but also can't. A car should be good at driving, that's its job. It does something very different from a phone. However, we rarely use cars just to drive. We use them to get places. Especially in cities, that process can be boring.

Phones are very good at offering music, news, and other things that we generally use to fill boredom. I want that option available when I've been in mostly stopped traffic for the last 15+ minutes.

Can it be done without AA/CarPlay? Sure. But it's much more convenient to have the full integration.

Fair enough, I was just giving my driving experience. I don't like to use the car for anything but driving. The most interactive it gets is me putting on a CD.