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Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by phpisthebest on Thursday April 27, 2023 @07:09AM (#35726276)
Sounds like the driver was attempting to adjust non-critical features of wipers not turning them off and on

We should be very careful not to include the kitchen sink in with "essential" items.

Turning the wipers off and on, is critical, adjusting delay timings is not

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by randallsquared on Thursday April 27, 2023 @07:41AM (#35726581)
Shortening a delay timing has the same effect as turning the wiper on in some rain conditions.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by naravara on Thursday April 27, 2023 @09:16AM (#35727608)
I can't help but feel like we've made a mistake by concentrating so many of the people who design our standard software UX patterns in California. From Tesla designing car interfaces that don't understand how wipers need to work to Apple designing weather apps that don't clearly communicate wind chill to smartphones that require use of the touchscreen to answer a phone call rendering it impossible to answer while wearing gloves. It's like they only understand the concept of weather from TV shows set in New York.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by martyvis on Thursday April 27, 2023 @10:18AM (#35728456)
This is comedy gold!
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by firstlink on Thursday April 27, 2023 @12:37PM (#35730708)
Careful, this is only one step removed from fascistly suggesting that regulations which work in downtown SF don't work in rural areas.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by htrp on Thursday April 27, 2023 @01:12PM (#35731304)
Self driving cars don't work in snow.....
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by kurisufag on Thursday April 27, 2023 @07:31AM (#35726471)
my 2003 Honda Accord allows you to change wiper interval the same way you enable/disable it -- moving the right-hand stick a notch.

setting it to a high speed will fuck up the wipers when there is little rain, a /low/ speed will be useless when there is appreciable rain, and when driving you often move from one to another.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by Aeolun on Thursday April 27, 2023 @07:12AM (#35726302)
Depends on how hard the rain is pouring down.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by nicky0 on Thursday April 27, 2023 @07:44AM (#35726610)
If you're in a rainstorm and the wipers are set to "minimum speed" then turning the speed up would be critical.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by londons_explore on Thursday April 27, 2023 @07:55AM (#35726692)
The safe thing to do would be to pull over first, as you see the rain getting heavier, then adjust.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by smaudet on Thursday April 27, 2023 @08:23AM (#35726976)
I can immediately think of several situations where that is not at all possible to do.

Construction, cliff roads, country roads, etc.

Tesla are unsafe death traps by design.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by concordDance on Thursday April 27, 2023 @09:23AM (#35727712)
> Tesla are unsafe death traps by design.

This is completely untrue by third party metrics (both governmental and not).

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by BanazirGalbasi on Thursday April 27, 2023 @10:52AM (#35729027)
They meet crash standards, yes. But the interior design of them encourages unsafe driving. Between putting almost everything inside a touch screen and pushing autopilot (which encourages drivers to pay attention less), they are creating more distractions from controlling their 2-ton metal boxes.

Drivers are licensed operators of heavy machinery that travels at high speed. Let's not encourage systems that turn us into more dangerous operators.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by concordDance on Thursday April 27, 2023 @01:01PM (#35731146)
If they were "death traps" the stats would have them as the most dangerous cars on the road rather than one of the safest (in terms of deaths per mile). The grandparent was speaking absolute nonsense.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by ClumsyPilot on Thursday April 27, 2023 @01:53PM (#35732014)
A tank would be safes car, statistically - its just deadly to wveryone else.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by electrondood on Thursday April 27, 2023 @11:44AM (#35729793)
What you've just said is a description of the exact opposite of reality.

Teslas are the safest cars on the road, and not even by a little bit.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by nsxwolf on Thursday April 27, 2023 @12:56PM (#35731051)
Pulling over to adjust the wiper speed? Come on now.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by electrondood on Sunday May 07, 2023 @01:07PM (#35853430)
Or use the "Turn on windshield wipers/increase wiper speed" voice command.

https://www.tesla.com/en_eu/support/voice-commands

If that's your safety criticism, that's more evidence for my point. Teslas are statistically safer than any other car by any measure.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by Chris2048 on Thursday April 27, 2023 @08:26AM (#35727000)
So, what to do on a motorway?
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by nsxwolf on Thursday April 27, 2023 @08:59AM (#35727359)
I get the impression you’ve never driven in the rain.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by Gordonjcp on Thursday April 27, 2023 @09:05AM (#35727471)
Why wouldn't the safe thing be to reach out from the steering wheel with one of the fingers of your right hand, and move the little slider thing on the wiper switch to increase the wipe speed?

You know, like on my appallingly primitive 1998 Range Rover, or pretty much anything from the same era?

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by scarface74 on Thursday April 27, 2023 @09:38AM (#35727926)
Yes because pulling over on a multi lane highway in the rain when you have poor visibility and then trying to merge into traffic is much safer.

Besides, what if you are on the road with no shoulders.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by brokenmachine on Friday April 28, 2023 @12:43AM (#35737544)
Shut up Elon. Your cars suck.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by Gordonjcp on Thursday April 27, 2023 @09:04AM (#35727450)
> Turning the wipers off and on, is critical, adjusting delay timings is not

You've never driven in rain, have you?

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by Rediscover on Thursday April 27, 2023 @09:58AM (#35728193)
Fun story:

My ex (one of my best friends), born and raised in Seattle, used to give me serious grief anytime I mention rain in Boston or NYC. She had no belief in what I would describe.

Work finally ships her out to (NYC). She calls me up to say she just ran ~2meters from the hotel to the taxi and is soaking wet.

She has never commented on Seattle "rain" since.

REAL rain.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by GenerocUsername on Thursday April 27, 2023 @11:34AM (#35729662)
Seattelite here.

We get that rain too periodically.

Sesttelites complain about rain because we regularly experience 100+ days of rain.

Seattle rain is not not a storm, it's a marathon.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by madcaptenor on Thursday April 27, 2023 @02:42PM (#35732743)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/this-simp...

There's a map here that shows that most of the eastern US gets more rain than Seattle, but Seattle is very high on the number of days of measurable precipitation.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by Gordonjcp on Thursday April 27, 2023 @03:47PM (#35733588)
I'm from north-west Scotland.

Many years ago we had a guy working for us who was sent over from our company's parent company in Southern Cali. He was not keen on going out in the rain at all, and was absolutely terrified that we still drove at 60mph when it was raining. "But what if you skid? It's raining!" he'd wail.

He'd never driven in rain. He just did not take well to a Scottish January, especially the bit where you get 140mph winds for a couple of weeks.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by scotteric on Thursday April 27, 2023 @08:08PM (#35736042)
When it rains after being dry for some time an oil layer forms on top of the water. This is why he is afraid of skidding. In Southern California, where it is very dry there can be very substantial oil buildup.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by Gordonjcp on Friday April 28, 2023 @01:58AM (#35737939)
You get that a little bit here, but not enough to make a real difference.

I guess we also have laws about keeping cars in good condition with decent tyres and stuff.

Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by martyvis on Thursday April 27, 2023 @10:16AM (#35728426)
Maybe your rain is different from the rain where I live. Being able to adjust speeds is critical so I get maximum vision with minimum distraction
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by Spooky23 on Thursday April 27, 2023 @12:51PM (#35730956)
Huh? Every car from 1960-2010 managed to provide intermittent wiper controls that were straightforward to use.
Re:The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature by LorenPechtel on Thursday April 27, 2023 @01:12PM (#35731311)
It's a critical function--high speed in light rain will cause problems from the rubber moving across basically dry glass, low/intermittent speed in heavy rain won't clear your view properly.