Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by emidln 1683 days ago
My current driver monitoring system (Subaru Outback 2020 with whatever bells/whistles were available) was distracting and wrong so often that I had to disable it. With it on it would try distracting me with flashing messages and beeps while I was navigating 6 way intersections where I live. It was constantly unhappy that I wasn't looking exactly straight forward out the main window. The worst was probably highways where there was nothing in front of my vehicle for a quarter mile or more but I needed to look over my shoulder extensively to be able to safely change lanes out of the right-hand lane into the busier left hand lane.
1 comments

Your 2020 Subaru Outback will be at least 6 years old in 2026 when this proposed system comes out.
That's barely broken in: I expect cars to be perfectly usable for many decades, if properly maintained. I do NOT want techo-obsolescence in a few years!

My personal goal is to never again own a car with a screen (especially a touchscreen), or with any kind of radio transmitter/transceiver to track and report anything back to the mfr. (And I'm an IoT guy!)

I've been wondering what the newest and safest car I could own that doesn't report back or at least could have its reporting removed without bricking the vehicle. Do you have any specific vehicles in mind?
My point isn't his car is obsolete, its that the technology he's complaining about is not the same that will be installed 5 or 6 years from now.
Sure, but my car doesn't offer any way of feedback so I can tell them it's broken now. Are they testing the weird intersection layouts found in my suburb of Chicago? Further, why doesn't the alert threshold vary based on whether there is an obstacle or vehicle in front of me (they already detect this for other functions)? It's possible that these problems are going to be solved, but the software that will be released on MY2026 will be largely finalized by 2023 (2024 at the latest) which is coming up fast. While I'd love to believe that all of the safety systems are built on the same modular software architecture and I'm going to get upgrades on my MY2026 (which basically only happen in govt-forced scenarios right now), I don't have a lot of faith in this. It would be really nice to see safety systems evolve over time to get better, but this hasn't been common in any ECU to date and I don't see it becoming common unless the government also mandates it along with their fancy surveillance.