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Good. Touchscreens are the most unsafe feature added to vehicles in decades. It’s honestly mind boggling how it was allowed in the first place.
Easy, because regulations don’t mean anything anymore.
Headlights that blind you in the day and literally block all vision of the road at night, road legal trucks which bumpers that START at the hood of my car, all around limo tints on literally every car, people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
And that doesn’t even begin to mention the drivers themselves, so fucking self absorbed, tailgating, cutting you off for fun to get to the same light.
I’ve literally had a stream of cars going around me on street roads and so many dumbasses just follow the stream that I literally cannot safety accelerate because they’re all cutting me off bumper to bumper.
You should start carrying a gun if not already. The conservatives have successfully rotted western society.
While you have some good points, it seems you may be missing one in that if you are constantly getting passed in that manner, you are causing a problem, regardless of what is posted. Most western law systems have a provision against impeding the flow of traffic.
Problem is when you get passed because other people aren’t driving legally. Even if it’s the flow of traffic, you’re still technically not allowed to break the law.
Even if the people overtaking you on the Autobahn break the speed limit (yes those exist), you still have to keep to the right as much as possible. Hogging the left lane at exactly the speed limit is vigilantism.
I’m confused, did I miss someone mentioning staying in the left lane on the highway?
You mentioned getting passed which should only ever happen, in civilised countries with sane traffic laws, on the left. (modulo countries which drive on the left where it’s the right).
Like, breaking the speed limit gets you a ticket over here. Overtaking on the right can easily mean losing your license and having to undergo a psych exam as they take such things as an opportunity to accuse you of racing on public roads.
They’re in the right lane and getting passed by cars on the left. I’m really confused by what you’re trying to say. What makes you think they’re blocking traffic?
Yes, exactly. So try to realize that not keeping out of the lane to pass is still an infraction on your part and let traffic enforcement do their job. It’s actually easier for them to witness you impeding multiple vehicles and pull you over than to track down everyone passing you, so don’t get yourself into a completely avoidable situation. Nobody passes you and later on reflects on the point you were trying to make.
Did anyone mention driving in the wrong lane?
Can you differentiate staying out of the lane to pass from staying out of the passing lane? Don’t try to bring your petulant road anger to me, silly goose. You have even less power and impression here than on the road. Allow me to demonstrate with my next reply.
What? What are you talking about? I’m confused, are you having an episode?
Had me until the politics, but I agree. These fucking headlights nowadays are incredibly dangerous, especially on these lifted garage queens.
The government has literally prevented cars that prevent you from blinding another car on the road from coming to the US market. Cars come in with active LED arrays and they have to be disabled to sell in the US.
https://www.newsweek.com/nhtsa-roadblocking-headlight-technology-that-could-save-lives-1811354
Headlights that blind you in the day and literally block all vision of the road at night,
Illegal in the EU, Xenon and later LEDs always needed automatic height adjustment (it doesn’t suffice to do it once because cars change angles continuously). Lots has changed in the last 20+ years, though, speaking of VW: How about high beams all the time unless there’s something that could be blinded, then switch them off locally but keep the rest bright.
road legal trucks which bumpers that START at the hood of my car,
all around limo tints on literally every car,
Illegal.
people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
Illegal.
And that doesn’t even begin to mention the drivers themselves, so fucking self absorbed, tailgating, cutting you off for fun to get to the same light.
See the thing is that if you build your infrastructure in a way that requires people to drive cars you can’t just take licenses away from asshats.
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Headlights that blind you in the day and literally block all vision of the road at night, road legal trucks which bumpers that START at the hood of my car, all around limo tints on literally every car, people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
pretty sure all of those are illegal around here, with exception of the giant compensators.
people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
That might be people with daytime running lights not turning on the lights. My car will turn on the headlights as soon as I take the parking break off (MT, an auto would likely do it when put in drive), but the dash and rear lights don’t turn on unless I turn the dial.
It sounds like you too, might live in a heavily populated metropolitan area of Nevada, USA. Lol
They are a lot safer now that we have LKAS and ACC and FCW systems. But that’s moreso in spite of the touchscreens.
Replacing the buttons with a tablet has always been a cost saving measure on Tesla’s part that was marketed as “futuristic”, physical switches and dials made of plastic and metal as well as the underlying components will never be as cheap or as easy to wire as a simple touchscreen control. Other car companies followed suit, because Tesla made a method of reducing their own manufacturing costs hip, so many of them jumped on it.
But, Tesla tablets were designed with the belief that this cost saving is possible because of the delusion that full autonomous self driving is possible with existing hardware through software updates. When self driving didn’t happen after a decade of trying, people realized how inconvenient and dangerous it is that the only way to adjust the AC, stereo volume, and sideview mirrors while driving is through a tablet with no tactile feedback. So now, we are finally seeing that trend reversing.
Especially when the buttons move around in the GUI after an update so you accidentally press the wrong ones, or end up having to search the menus while driving.
Perhaps this could change when we have mainstream tactile displays, but until then buttons will always be better.
I think using a car tablet is equally as dangerous as texting and driving. Voice control would actually be better for adjustments while driving.
Realtime non-cloud voice control is still unreliable. Gonna be a while before that can replace physical buttons.
I don’t want to have to talk to my car. Just have buttons and knobs. This shit was figured out 30 years ago.
This shit was figured out 30 years ago
More like 100 years ago.
Horseshit. My Pentium 133 could do it in 1997.
The send-to-the-cloud thing just exists because tech companies have a pathological fetish for recording, analyzing, and storing every single little thing you say and do and then trying to sell it to advertisers. Or train AI’s with it these days, or whatever the fuck else. The only marginal benefit you might get is that they can update their algorithms server side and not have to update your car or other device. But the technology has been mature for literal decades, so I don’t think that’s terribly important.
That said, I still don’t want my car to have voice control. It’s just as stupid as a concept as making everything touchscreen.
Speech to text is one thing. Actually understanding all the intricate details and variations of language is incredibly difficult. It’s good enough for some stuff, but I’ve yet to see a system a system that’s reliable enough for day to day use, especially in a car.
Scenarios like this happens way too often:
“Set alarm for fifteen minutes”
“Ok, setting alarm fifty minutes from now”
“No! FIFTEEN minutes”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean”
“Remove old alarm and set it to fifteen minutes instead”
“Playing song on Spotify…”
Indeed and it seems attainable now, if it weren’t for the expensive hardware and massive energy required for general pre-trained transformers. Don’t want my car to call home just to run a neural network on Azure, it needs to run locally.
There’s Gemini nano which will run on phones locally, so I think we can have that soon enough
I don’t think autonomous driving had anything to do with the initial choice. It might be a reason now, but I don’t think it was the initial driving factor.
You left off it being marketed as clean and minimalistic. I think that’s different enough from futuristic. Some people love that aspect, some outright hate it. (Edit and I mean this in a looks fashion, not a functionality one)
Also, Tesla’s button replacements actually do work more or less reliably. The other manufacturers decided to save money by adding a potato instead of a potent CPU that powers the screen in the middle of the console.
“Finally a use for all these leftover 1st gen Kindle Fire CPUs!”
In practice though Tesla has buttons for the controls you need while driving.
Cruise control/lane keeping/cancel is a lever
Indicators, flash high beams is a lever
Park is a button
Windscreen wiper single wipe is a button, same button is window wash
Set speed is a scroll wheel, volume is a scroll wheel (and a touch control on the passenger side)
Navigation is on screen keyboard, but you should stop to change navigation, or have a passenger do it
Climate control heats or cools towards your target temperature, heated seats and steering wheel are automatic or touch screen, but you know you need them before you get in the car
What more would you want physical controls for?
I had huge reservations towards Tesla’s control system, but in reality, I got used to it in a week. And I’m loving how clean and sleek the dashboard is otherwise. What I don’t understand is the car makers who include a huge tablet AND a dozen gadgets around the dashboard. That’s worst of both worlds.
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That’s not true though. This happened in their EVs regardless of price range. Even the Porsche Taycan which requires using a screen to adjust HVAC vents. Other than some steering wheel buttons the Taycan is all screens.
The Audi E-Tron GT (same chassis as the Taycan) oddly enough has more buttons. But that’s because VAG makes sure Porsche and Audi interiors are slightly different for different market segments.
It’s more about VAG thinking (like many automakers) copying the Tesla trend was what people wanted. The mistake made was not considering Tesla early adopters often being techy people who might not match broader market opinion.
I, too, am guilty of vag thinking sometimes; but what does that have to do with Tesla or Volkswagen?
VAG is common shorthanded for Volkswagen AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group
It’s also even more common shorthand for something else.
They also didn’t do it as well as Tesla which gave even more reason to dislike it.
Can we complain more about subscription paywalled car functions then?
What?!? Pictures Under Glass turns out not to be the most desired solution for controling your car? Who could have guessed? /s
They’re fine for certain things on an evolving menu etc, but not anything where a tactile sense might be needed to avoid distraction. A lack of volume knob is the thing that pisses me off the most in many vehicles, including my own.
Also, power should be a physical cutoff and NOT a soft button for head units. The one of my car is a software toggle and when the system started glitching, froze and also put out high volume noise with no way to kill it except to shut off the vehicle when I could safely do so
Yep a good rule of thumb is probably “If you aren’t comfortable with having it disabled when the car is moving, don’t make it a picture under glass”. Managing playlists is a thing you can expect people to do when stationary, touchscreen is fine, skipping a song is done while driving, make it a button.
My '16 Prius has a pretty good balance between touchscreen and buttons. The only thing I don’t care for is having to use the touchscreen to change radio presets, but I usually stay on the same station anyway.
This was a wonderful read, thanks
I just hope they stop treating car interiors like living rooms. It’s like they forgot that people are busy driving in the first place.
cars aren’t primarily for driving they are for convincing friends and family of your success
Unless you live in places like cities around Los Angeles
is it the biggest success if it’s a luxury RV?
Nope, that means you tried too hard. What you really need is a van with a bed in it.
While you’re slowly drowning in payments but no one can know and you’re just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire!
Lol you nailed it. I know it goes against some of the ethos of Lemmy but I do wish there was some kind of particular “THIS PERSON RIGHT HERE GETS IT” award to give you haha.
They absolutely did!
Thank god. This is literally the worst thing about my car (apart from the lane assist trying to kill me).
I found that a homicidal lane assist, have a really good effect on my alertness. Before lane assist I could relax and almost doze of, but with lane assist I don’t dare to relax for a second since I know it will try to murder me the first chance it gets. So, I guess that is why people say lane assist prevents accidents.
So they’re targeting gay people now?
I have a feeling the people down voting you didn’t see the typo
He fixed the typo. It’s no longer homocidal.
Corrected my typo, so contextually challenged persons can avoid being confused. You are welcome.
Your spelling is homogeneous now.
Wait, you don’t mean dozing off while driving, right?
Lane assist on the golf tried to murderise me recently even though I was driving on a road without lane markings but I keep it on because it stops me from killing myself on this one bridge I have to drive over
Lane assist on the golf tried to murderise me recently even though I was driving on a road without lane markings
My car lets you turn off lane assist, it’s the collision avoidance that I can’t turn off that is trying to kill me. Randomly I’ll be driving along when an alarm sounds and it tries to swerve off the road. It’s fucking infuriating and dangerous and despite many of us complaining to the manufacturer you can’t turn it off.
Is it on an independent fuse? If so just pull the fuse
Man do they still do that with these “smart features” or is it all just linked to an inexplicable welded shut black box now? Lol
Honestly I have no idea. Often they run different features through different control modules, but every car is different.
Subaru?
The capacitive touch buttons under the screen on my ID4 don’t light up, so they’re literally invisible at night and completely useless.
You sure you don’t have the fader wheel turned all the way down? It’s usually to the left of the steering wheel.
There isn’t a fader wheel on the ID.3 at least, so I’d assume the same in the ID.4
Do you have more unlit buttons than the volume and climate strip that I have in the Multivan? I believe we share that same strip and it’s ironic that the power button on there is actually lit! However as it only does two things and there’s feedback on the screen when you touch it, I haven’t had any of the issues people have complained about. Plus those functions can be accessed elsewhere.
For the driver, you can access it elsewhere. But to deal with the climate, you then have to go into the touchscreen menu and mess around rather than just turning a dial. The volume is less of an issue as the driver, the volume is on the steering wheel. But the passenger can’t turn down the volume, etc. I love the id4, planning on driving it into the ground, but buttons for functions like that would be better.
I don’t want a touchscreen in my fucking car. That is all.
I don’t mind a touchscreen. Apple CarPlay/Android Auto are really nice.
I just also want physical controls for everything the car needs to do to be a car, like climate control or wipers or shifting. And also physical controls for play/pause, skip, volume, and tuning.
Touchscreens can do a lot to enhance the car experience, but they cannot replace physical buttons.
The car experience
The car experience is driving.
We don’t need 6 different fuel efficiency visualizations and we sure as fuck don’t need games or videos in the car.
Sure. I don’t want games or videos (though I can see how that would be useful while waiting for an EV to charge).
I just want Apple CarPlay/Android Auto. Or, failing that, whatever controls are necessary to facilitate an infotainment system.
How much entertainment do you need while driving? Can’t you just plug your phone in for some music?
Do you really need a maps app built into your car when you already have one on your phone?
I just can’t see a reasonable use for an infotainment system that isn’t already taken care of perfectly by the device I already have.
In my older car, I have a mount for my phone because it does not have GPS. But it does work just fine for Bluetooth.
CarPlay is a lot easier to use. As was Android Auto when I had an Android phone.
These also give me greater flexibility with regard to mapping. I can, for example, simply tell my phone to navigate to my wife’s location. (Obviously not a dealbreaker to not have, but convenient!)
It can also be really nice to have a side-by-side view of the media player and the maps.
I dunno, it’s not like I wouldn’t buy a car that doesn’t have CarPlay, but that car would lose some points in my mind. It’s the kind of thing I didn’t think I’d appreciate as much until I had it.
If it’s the kind of thing that it’s not reasonable to expect that people will stop by the side of the road to do, it should be buttons. The rest can be touch.
So for example setting a destination on your navigation interface is fine to do via touch screen, but starting/stopping swipers or changing audio volume is not.
Very well put.
I’d go as far as mounting a full size qwerty keyboard on the steering wheel. Although we’d somehow have to deal with the shrapnel grenade situation as soon as the airbag hits it.
But if I’m gonna go out, having WASD forever embedded in my forehead is kinda metal.
Seems the novelty VW engineers had to be reminded of the first item in the Unix philosophy:
Make each program do one thing, and do it well.
Buttons already had this. Each single button did one and only one thing: Turn a feature on or off, or in the case of the radio, switch stations.
We didn’t need complicated menus to navigate. Press the appropriate button, and voilá. It was simple. It worked.
Who the fuck came up with the idea of having to use touch menus? I have no idea, but I really hope they got fired.
the more important thing here is that you can find and press a button without looking at it
I get what you’re saying, up to a point. But you really don’t want the dashboard to look like the average TV remote either.
would take TV remote over touch display any day, those things are horrible in so many ways, lack of tactile feedback and having to confirm it registered the input is literally a lethal hazard because it’s another reason people aren’t looking on the road while driving
Have you ever seen an airplane cockpit? Those things are crowded and confusing. A car, on the other hand, is simple enough that the average person gets used to all of the button, knobs, switches and dials in a few days.
Why? It’s not an art peice hanging above your desk. You’re putting from over function.
I mean, I get a bit jealous when I see the cockpit of an F1 car. So many knobs, buttons, and switches and they don’t even have climate control or entertainment systems.
That level isn’t necessary with daily drivers, but I’d rather have physical buttons for any action I’ll want to do while moving and zero latency for any action that physically positions something like my seat or mirrors.
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I would be down with that, 100%.
My car doesn’t have nearly that many functions, though. Nor do I want it to. Owners of modern cars would shit a brick if they saw the dash on my '99 Silverado and how simple it is. It has a grand total of about 12 buttons on it, and three dials. That’s it.
Somehow it manages to drive down the road just fine, heat or cool the interior, twiddle all the lights, change all the radio stations, play or rewind the tape. (Yes, tape.) Just with those few controls, all of which only do one thing. Except the turn signal stalk, and technically I guess the shifter lever because it has the tow/haul button on the end of it.
The amount of bullshit that’s built into modern cars is astounding. The majority of that crap doesn’t need to be in a car. Which is, you know, a transportation machine. If the passenger wants four touch screens, that’s fine. I don’t need one. I don’t want one.
Not that airliners don’t have a lot of things to press (and two people to press them), but the majority of the controls in that image are the navigation, radio, and autopilot controls.
I really just need the “fix” button
Edit: “legs” could also work of adequately sexy
I like how you can get a ticket for using your phone while driving, so automakers decided to replace your tactile radio, where you don’t need to look at it to operate, with what is basically a giant touchscreen phone in your car where you need to look at it to see what you’re doing instead of feeling what you’re doing.
And it’s legal!
Yep it should just be illegal plain and simple. Maybe some screens that are mainly intended for passive display that you can still use with touch, but all main functions one would need to use while operating the vehicle should be buttons and dials.
Many states have laws prohibiting the use of anything that isn’t hands free, including integrated media controls. Won’t stop anyone, but just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean people won’t do it. Same as speeding, or eating/drinking while driving in many states.
The fact that they needed to receive a lot of complaints to reconsider makes me wonder - do they even do any kind of usability testing for their products? Anyone who even sat in a car with only touchscreen can tell you the experience is not comfortable.
And I don’t think it’s just about the price of physical buttons. Buttons are a selling point right now, they could charge a small premium (not in the thousands but ~$200 certainly.
It’s probably a cost issue. Running one wire harness to a touch screen is a lot cheaper than running a wire to every button in a car.
I hate the fact that you’re probably right about that reason.
Besides cost, we should probably at least entertain the idea that we are a vocal minority. I’d be completely unsurprised to find out that the majority of people hardly ever touch the controls that got moved to touchscreens and, if they do, they don’t really care - they can set them before they set off, or do it while driving and wobble all over the road, but hey everyone does it so what does it matter?
Oh they KNEW what they were doing and just didn’t give a fuck.
We need a People of Walmart equivalent for this bullshit. Start finding the designer/engineer/manager responsible for this garbage and shame them publicly.
How does this stuff pass any kind of Accessibility regs?
This is actually very good news for car manufacturers.
Touch crap was cheaper but sold a new tech so => price increase
Buttons are old tech so no new investments or tech development but they are more complicated => price increase
Thank you! I’ve been making this argument a LOT with recent discussions on kids not understanding keyboards and controllers because their lives are full of touchscreens.
Touch isn’t “the future”. It just absolutely flooded the market.
You think they don’t just charge more because they can, like every other industry lately?
They 100% do! But the marketing departments always likes to have “solid” arguments at hand.
How else can they organise fairs and conferences where they can lament about how poor the automakers are and how pressure from are pulling prices down so automakers cannot compete… how they have to fire people and move production in poorer countries where people can be treated more like slaves… how profits are so low that they have to use the same jets with the same bitches twice!
You want buttons back because they’re easier to use
I want them back because I think car interiors look bland without them
We are not the same…alright I also want them back for the first reason aswell.
Safer to use.
Carmakers did this to copy Tesla, not realising that Tesla did it to save themselves a few bucks and to hell with the person who suffer a degraded or unsafe driving experience as a result. Witness how Tesla even removed indicator stalks, making it all but impossible for people to safely and legally navigate a roundabout. Who cares if someone crashes, because it’s all about the bottom line.
not realising that Tesla did it to save themselves a few bucks
I guarantee you they realized that and likely did it for the same reason.
I’m reading this as “VW is putting buttons back in cars because they reckon the EU is going to slap them for making dangerous cars”
That would be funny, but it’s more likely because they are about to go under if they don’t change something up. Doing one of the most requested this seems like a good start in that direction.
Where with “going under” you presumably mean “doesn’t overtake Toyota and stays the 2nd biggest car company world-wide”. That’s by number of cars, by revenue VW is in first place.
I’d say it’s more a case of “yeah we should’ve guessed that how Tesla does things is just hype”.
