[spzb]

We recently got a new car with various assistance features : adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, lane keeping asisist, reverse camera etc etc. The bloody thing beeps warnings at you for so many different things I'm starting to wonder if I'd be better turning them off. About nine out of ten are alerting me to things I already know ("yes, I know there's a car alongside me. No, I'm not going to drive straight into that wall") and the one out of ten is probably just alerting me to something I'd have seen myself a fraction of a second later. They're some cool gadgets to have available but they really don't have the mind-machine interface that'd make them really indispensable.

[ipsi]

Adaptive Cruise Control is wonderful - I recently did a long-distance drive across Europe (~1000KM), and I swear I went through 100KM of roadworks. Adaptive Cruise Control would have been amazing for that (plus the other traffic jams caused by accidents/etc).

I have seen a good implementation of blind spot monitoring, in a VW, where it was just a simple light on the appropriate side mirror. Unobtrusive, but obvious enough that you're unlikely to miss it.

The most recent car I drove (a Ford Mondeo, I think? It was a rental) had a number of those but I never really noticed them. The only time it beeped at me was when it thought I wasn't braking hard enough to avoid ramming the car in front (oh, and the proximity alert).

The reverse camera and related sensors were really useful because (a) I don't drive an awful lot, renting a car maybe once a year, and (b) because I only rent cars, I don't know them well enough to know if I'm gonna get through a gap or turn a tight corner, so having something that beeps at me to say I'm close to a wall is handy.

If I was driving the same car every day, some of these features would probably be a lot less relevant.