While driving on a flat straight stretch of road the car suddenly... yanked itself sideways. Thank god no oncoming traffic was present and I was able to course correct safely. I immediately drove home and paid careful attention to the wheel response. It kept feeling like it wanted to yank me off the road.
Once home i broke open the manual and found 4 different “driver assist” and “driver comfort” functions. After disabling them all the terrifying behavior ceased.
I’ve lived my whole life in Maine, Rochester NY and Colorado. I’ve never felt as unsafe in a car as I did with those software features enabled in about an inch of snow.
Bonus, it also has collision detection warnings on the side of the car. It was convinced every puddle I drove through that splashed slush beside the car was an object I was about to collide with.
That's the problem I have with people who tries to rethink our relationship with cars; it's obvious that they live a Californian lifestyle. "Just share your car" "Electric and solar is the way" "AI safety with cameras is a must"
Yeah, sure.
I have these and absolutely love them. Sometimes, they do need to be turned off in bad weather, though.
Your typical manufacturer makes a very large fraction of their income from exactly those two applications.
If there is a mindset that has to change then it is that sticking something somewhere in a manual is sufficient disclaimer to be able to claim 'user error' in case of trouble.
You cannot build something that looks like an elevator, has buttons with numeric labels, and when people push one button the doors close and they find out they just selected the power setting of a giant microwave oven. I mean, you can build it, if you don't care about people getting microwaved.
It's worse than that. The very best in the software industry has a reliability problem. And carmakers are certainly not among the best in the software industry.
As long as pre-2010 cars are available, I’m gonna continue driving them.
Is there no „code of conduct“ what automotive software must not do in any case?
One car executive that I've known said this: "The very best test drivers are our end users, in the first week after release we learn more about a car than we do in the months of field testing prior.". I am not going to name the individual but it makes good sense and I have seen the same with all software products released to the general public.
First, you cannot delete radio stations. You can overwrite a radio station, or you can unplug your car battery, but you can't just flat up delete a radio station you have plugged in. CRU, I guess.
Second, it sort of recognizes .mp3 files in the USB drive, but not .wav, and it certainly doesn't understand .m3u playlists. Baffling.
It's just so ... clunky and dumb.
I have this old aftermarket $30 brand new at the time crappy little stereo. No optical drive, the thing doesn't even have an AM receiver. But it does take SD cards, USB drives and AUX. Perfect. That's exactly all an aftermarket system should do, maybe Bluetooth, but I don't use Bluetooth so I don't care. I can fit ~60 albums on one 8gb SD card. Goodbye buffering in the boonies, goodbye book of CDs.
There's no way to navigate directories besides just skipping to the next one. Fine. I've seen some that let you open a menu and navigate using the volume knob, but no SD cards. I tried very hard to find one that has an SD slot and more advanced directory navigation. The two are apparently mutually exclusive. So instead of getting to decide what to listen to, my unit mostly functions as a commercial free music only radio station with a wide, diverse selection of exactly things I like. I can deal with that.
It doesn't load the directories or files in any particular order, like it builds an index by randomly loading directories as they're read and then the files inside. At least it doesn't mix up files between directories. I can deal with albums being out of order I guess. But why it doesn't just load them in alphabetical order is beyond me.
Nothing but MP3 support. I even wrote a bash script to turn FLAC files into MP3 files just for the car, and it can even split FLAC by CUE file. Works just fine for me.
The thing has a predetermined EQ animation. It does not actually correspond to the output, its just an animation. Why? Who knows. But it does.
All in all I've been using the same unit for 5 years across 2 different vehicles. I like it I guess. The window smashers seem to know it isn't worth anything, which is great. If I could navigate better, it loaded directories and files alphabetically, and had an AM receiver, it would be the last aftermarket system I buy for the rest of my life.
Otherwise, my Pioneer DEH-X6650BT let's you switch between directories with a button press. Basically you have previous and next track, as well as previous and next directory. The toplevel is simply another directory. It also remembers where it left off after you start it, and it is super snappy with 19GB of MP3s that I have in various directories. Also, the manual is very explicit on what file system is supported, how many files and directories and in which order files are being played. See this page and the next one [1]. The only downside is that I can't seem to turn it off. As in it the radio is always illuminated, even when you are not playing anything.
[0] SanDisk MobileMate USB 3.0 Reader
https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-au/products/accessories/s...
[1] https://www.manualslib.com/manual/730613/Pioneer-Deh-X6650bt...
Just leave the control to the person behind the wheel, but somehow that's too stretched of an idea.
I hope the F150 E truck will not have those 'automatic' features. but then again, I kind of wanted lane keeping and follow so maybe that's just the necessary evil. Maybe 'modes' where it gives all controls to me when I wanted it?
If I don't correct at all, the system is getting mad at me for not keeping the hand on the steering wheel.
Auto follow is again somewhat risky, you can't really rely on it, sometimes it brakes too late.
No serious trial has been performed to test whether the benefits outweigh the risks.
Exactly what I said. No serious trial (or any trial).
What they describe is an observational study where they compare the same make or model with different levels of safety equipment.
The obvious confounding is that they're comparing people who care enough about safety that they are willing to pay for additional safety features, compared with people that are not willing to pay.
There's a reason we have double blind randomized controlled trials in medicine. The alternatives just don't work.
The automotive industry has a long long way to come - assuming it will happen at all - before they can be said to be responsible software vendors.
Case in point: my - former - C class Mercedes that made two pretty good attempts to kill me by slamming on the brakes in a situation where that was totally unexpected and caused a perfectly safe situation to turn into a critical one. If not for playing ping pong for many years I highly doubt I would be writing this. After the first instance I had the whole car checked out to see if there was any fault in the system, the answer was that it was all working perfectly (that time the car had braked whilst on a very narrow bridge sending the car into a skid which I managed to correct before going over the side). Three weeks later it did it again, this time apparently because an advertising sign in a turn generated such a strong radar return that the car thought I was about to have a frontal collision. Again, out of nowhere an emergency stop.
I sold the car and got one where the most complex piece of software is the aftermarket radio, it has ABS and an ignition control computer but nothing in the way of 'advanced safety features'.
My vehicle actively trying to kill me is something I can do without.
So: as far as I'm concerned much less software on board of cars, open source it all if possible and roll it out much slower so we can get the bugs out.