[peterlk]

Over Christmas, I spent several minutes trying to debug my beeping dashboard - it only seemed to happen sometimes while driving, so stopping didn’t let me figure it out. Eventually I discovered that it was beeping at me because my eyes weren’t on the road enough. Of course, figuring that out required me to take my eyes off the road to figure out which blinking signal was associated with this particular alarm.

Also, being constantly warned that I was speeding in rural areas where the car missed a speed limit sign caused me to start ignoring the speeding alarm within a few hours of driving the car.

I feel like there’s some lesson here in building to the lowest common denominator, and giving people products rather than tools (tools are more dangerous, but more useful), but maybe I’m just grumpy.

[frereubu]

> Also, being constantly warned that I was speeding in rural areas where the car missed a speed limit sign caused me to start ignoring the speeding alarm within a few hours of driving the car.

A lot of these features seem to assume that you're driving on a multi-lane motorway with well-marked lanes. I'm constantly being nudged by my ID.3 one way or another on rural roads. You can turn it off, but it turns itself back on the next time you unlock the car.

[vincnetas]

You can use OBD2 dongle to change default setting of lane assist to be off by default (after car starts) And many more setting that are decided for you as if you were using a rental car not your own. Like always reseting air conditioner to 22C after starting a car. God dammit i want 20C. Let it stay like that when i start a car.

[casperc]

For VW cars, that has been severely limited as well from 2024 with SFD2, which requires a token from VW. Quite sad really.

[psd1]

> You can use OBD2 dongle to change default setting of lane assist

Colour me skeptical. ODBII is just a protocol; it knows nothing of the modules on your buses. I think you will find you need the dealer software. Tools exist that implement big chunks of that functionality, but since they are built on reverse-engineering, the price approaches the dealer software anyway.

The only place i found the Mercedes software was a paid forum that obscures the links. Getting the cracks working was a magic incantation. It's similar for VAG. They won't sell you the software if you're not a dealer.

You will not get there with a £40 ebay special. If you can, please share what works, it will be of much interest to many.

[glitchcrab]

You're correct that the dongle only facilitates the connection, but you don't need dealer software. I have an ODB dongle and a £20 (I think) app on my phone which lets me change a _ton_ of settings on my BMW which aren't available in any in-car menus.

[psd1]

What app?

[glitchcrab]

Bimmercode lets you do coding (it's very powerful and you can easily mess up your car so you have to be very careful with it), and Bimmerlink lets you read fault codes etc.

[vincnetas]

not affiliated. have used ODB eleven on my vw eup (2021). They have curious payment strategy. Basically you buy tokens and then use them for each enable/disable operation.

https://obdeleven.com

[weinzierl]

"caused me to start ignoring the speeding alarm within"

Not sure if this has ever been implemented but I know from my time in automotive that there was the idea to exchange driving data with the insurer. If this becomes reality ignoring speed limits could increase your insurance premiums.

[frereubu]

The issue is that currently it often gets those speed limits wrong - as one of the parent comments said, when using adaptive cruise control I would often find the car slowing down from 70 to 50 in the middle of the motorway which is really dangerous. Thankfully you're able to turn off that part of ACC and it stays off, but it's on by default.

[netfortius]

This reminds me of the time I was (still working) in the US, for one of the big insurers, and we were researching ways to detect on which side of the car our client gets in, to assume (if from the right, in the US) that our app shall not trigger the "driver" mode, thus all the consequences if being assumed responsible. Fun times.

[torginus]

What's the legal status of 'your' car spying on you if its a company or private lease? After all its legally not yours, and they can put a lot of things in the contract.

[petre]

Maybe that's part of why VW had to fire 100k employees? They've been lately doing a subpar job designing cars.

[Cthulhu_]

That may be one reason, the other being they lost the Chinese market almost overnight a few years ago.

[sehansen]

No they didn't. They had a hiccup in 2020 when the transition to electric cars really started accelerating but after they got their own electric cars into mass production they've reclaimed the top spot at 13.9% of the Chinese market. That's just ahead of Geely at 13.8%, Toyota at 7.8% and BYD at 7.1%.

It was hard to find reputable numbers for all of Q1, so my source is only for january and february: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

[nehal3m]

I think it’s a legal requirement, because it’s the same for Tesla.

[jk3000]

Correct. I have reasonable insight into that particular world. Most none-sense is regulatory. There is less room for variation than one would assume too. Ironically, this is, in no small amount, reason for issues in competitiveness: ain't no cheap car with all these additional assistants. Especially for low-margin models it is devastating.

[johanvts]

The speeding chime is legally required to be reset to on after every trip. But I find the speed signs are very rarely missed (model 3 highland), also its a single press on the main screen to disable. My warnings are +99% genuine cases where i need to slow down and I bet that’s true for +99% of people who have these system.

[abustamam]

That's strange. I was reading through this thread nodding my head like "Ha, my Tesla doesn't have these annoyances!" until I saw your comment.

I'm guessing though that you're in the EU (I'm in the US where it is almost considered criminal to go speed limit on the highway)

[amanaplanacanal]

Lots of bad road design in the US, where the speed the road is designed for and the speed limit assigned have almost nothing to do with each other.

[johanvts]

Yes, in the EU. On the plus side speed limits generally are higher than in the US.

[petre]

One can still make a good design within the legal requirement. It doesn't say how many dB the beeper has to have or adjust the level of assistance. Maybe pressure from Chinese manufacturers will force them to get their stuff together, cut back on the user hostile design.

[dzhiurgis]

At least with Tesla you have massive ecosystem of third party add-ons, including defeat devices.

I do wish it was even quieter tho. It's kinda of a shame you got a quiet EV but then add annoying bingbongs.

[freetonik]

In older VW Polos (at least) it was easy to disable that feature with two clicks on a physical button located on the steering wheel. Not so on the ID.3, and other newer Volkswagens, unfortunately.

[gbil]

Annoying for sure but on VWs you should be able to add lane assist and speed limit assist as shortcuts on the screen and click on them to turn them off. Again, annoying but I would like drivers that have been caught speeding to have them turned on permanently as punishment for X months.

[skhr0680]

> I feel like there’s some lesson here in building to the lowest common denominator, and giving people products rather than tools (tools are more dangerous, but more useful), but maybe I’m just grumpy.

It's from a culture that says more alarms = safer. Perhaps the people who design these things need an alarm to warn them of "alarm fatigue".

[kybernetyk]

Those alarms are pretty much mandated by law. So it's politicians/law makers who "design" those alarms. This smells like inexperienced engineers designing something and then being surprised by side effects. Sadly there's a severe (temporal) disconnect between making the law and seeing its results in person.

[torginus]

I distinctly remember that there was an article years ago about this. Automotive bodies have been mandating features for decades, and were doing followup studies.

The introduction of seatbelts, ABS, ESP all came with noticeable drops in accident rates.

However it was noticed, that these new driver assist features didn't reduce the number of accidents accordingly. These systems are not new. We know they don't really help.

Why do this?

[bzzzt]

It's a moat. If you're afraid of losing market share you want your competitors to be busy finding out ways of passing these kind of rules you already figured out how to implement. That's why quality doesn't matter, only compliance does.

[happymellon]

Unless it is malicious compliance?

Why would they want to spend money on all these alarms unless it is to drive people to complain to their representatives about the amount of them.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

I suspect there are plenty of politicians who subscribe to the ‘cars are evil’ mindset and are content with making the driving experience increasingly miserable.

[mschuster91]

The thing is, the "walking experience" can be pretty miserable as well. Road fatalities still are unacceptably high in Europe, even if we're better than the US.

[mcv]

Cycling then? The cycling experience is pretty good around here.

[letitbeirie]

The irony there being the "cars are evil" politicians are typically the strongest advocates for EVs, but EVs (being new) are the cars most likely to be affected by these annoyances.

I would love to replace my 2007 GTI with something cleaner and quieter but I genuinely don't see anything new as that big of an upgrade - my car has physical buttons for every feature, it doesn't (intentionally) make any stupid noises, and it's a stick shift in the US so it's essentially theft-proof.

[duskdozer]

Surely they would be interested in making more infrastructure compatible with not driving then?

[lazide]

In the EU? done!

[mcv]

It would be nice if they first proved that it actually improves safety. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has some doubts about that.

[mrandish]

> It's from a culture that says more alarms = safer.

It's the same culture in which product teams default install a background task that runs at every logon and checks for updates multiple times a day (for a program I used twice in the last year) or teams that default enable every possible notification (and in every update re-enable the ones users have explicitly turned off). Then they wonder why people don't try new apps and won't update the apps they have.

If you're in that meeting... speak up. I do and sometimes it even gets people to re-consider annoying defaults that don't even benefit the company very much.

[lazide]

Let’s not talk about cookie consent popups…

[laughing_man]

I used to work on a military base in the US. They have a similar culture, but with warning signs. Where I worked there were glass doors that were so festooned with signage that you couldn't see the other side. Floors are slippery when wet. Smoke free facility. Phone calls are monitored. Etc, etc.

Every few years they do a study and realize you quickly get to the point that people simply ignore all the signage when you do that, and they take all but the most important signs down. Then the sign creep starts again. It's a cycle.

I know when I drive I ignore all the beeps and dinging noises my car makes. I haven't even bothered to find out what they mean.

[benj111]

Yeah I don't like alarms and random beeps. I now have a Peugeot 106. The only thing that beeps is the cd player to remind me to remove the front plate. I need to sort that. Grrr.

[ffsm8]

I disagree, It's about treating people as sheeple that the politicians need to supervise and teach.

Basically these brainrotten politicians consider themselves the only responsible ones that need to remove choices for the simpletons they administer because they (the politicians) know better.

That's the core of our current woke culture that has become the zeitgeist since the 2010, especially in Germany - and it's especially strong on the left side of the spectrum ... But can be observed across all current parties to varying degrees.

That causes the politicians to think more about what "should" society be like (from their "I know better" perspective), instead of looking at reality - consequently ignoring that what they're trying to create isn't even within the bounds of our technical capabilities right now. Yes you can get close, but close is not enough for such features

[moffkalast]

Driving4answers had a similar rant recently about the 2024 Prius, where there's an always-on warning beep every time you enter an intersection, which intrusively pulls away your attention in the exact moment when you need to be focusing on the road the most. I'll be surprised if it doesn't cause someone to die in the coming years. Laws for drivers written by people with chauffeurs.

[cucumber3732842]

> Laws for drivers written by people with chauffeurs.

Not even that. They know the laws are stupid. They don't care. It's just another day at work for them. They're trying to surgically write laws to garner support/votes from shorsighted hand wringing Karens (plenty of examples in HN comments) while also not actually hurting industry/donors.

So stupid rules and stupid beeps are what you get.

[whatsupdog]

Women's suffrage was the stupidest thing humanity ever did. And the general populace is still not ready to admit the mistake, as proven by the expected incoming downvotes.

[galangalalgol]

I'm not going to upvote you, because I don't agree. I do hope they don't bury this though. A lot of people (some women included) think as you do. But I have never felt comfortable asking why in person. As long as you are exposing yourself to ridicule would you mind explaining? The obvious answer was always the notion that women make decisions on emotions more often, but is that really well supported? My experience is that they simply make decisions based on different emotions.

Edit: I think most destructive decisions are made in fear, and everyone does that sometimes. But we fear different things.

[mcv]

I think it's entirely baseless. It's pretty clear men can be very emotional about the decisions they make. Look at all the stupid wars throughout the centuries based on pride, anger, greed or vengeance. Look at all the counterproductive economic policies, or counterproductive police systems. And if you question it, all the arguments are based on feelings.

There have been rational leaders and politicians, but there have also been many irrational and emotional ones, and I see no evidence men are less affected than women. If anything, it seems to be the other way around, although there's not that much data yet on female decision making in politics.

But I'm pretty sure that the claim that women would be more emotional, is itself driven by emotion rather than data.

[phoronixrly]

Anyone who's working on making driving a car unbearable has my vote! My bicycle has a single chime and it's manually operated.

[forgetfreeman]

If your primary mode of transportation is a bicycle and you're cheering shit that annoys and (critically) distracts motorists you might have a death wish.

[moffkalast]

Yeah, the occupants of the car won't be dying, I'm pretty sure every collision is survivable with seatbelts on with modern cars that have a meter of crumple zone in every direction and look like bloated whales. But pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists are gonna die on impact with them.

[strken]

I feel compelled to mention that the vast majority of cyclists are part of a household which owns a car, as well.

[kybernetyk]

Let me guess: You get your groceries delivered by some underpaid sucker? While I enjoy biking it's impractical many times (if you don't live a sheltered life with people doing all the annoying stuff for you).

We have those inner city bike extremists here, too. There's proposals like banning all motorized traffic from the city because you "can walk to your bakery duh". But they never ask themselves how the baker gets all his materials to the bakery.

[BoxOfRain]

To be fair it depends so much on the city. Oxford is a great example, driving there is a hellish experience because it's a historic place with notable buildings which too important to knock down, especially in order to replace them with roads and car parks. They try to cram cars in anyway and it's just miserable. In reality the whole city centre should be pedestrianised because that's what the city is actually supposed to be designed around. Remove the private cars and buses, taxis, and yes of course delivery drivers will have plenty of room.

This perfectly legitimate argument for Oxford would be silly to make about say Milton Keynes.

[mcv]

Exactly. Amsterdam has been trying to get as many cars as possible out of the city center, and the city is that much better for it. Use your car to leave the city, but not to get to the center. There's bikes and trams for that.

[ornornor]

I own a car and a bike. I wouldn’t mind if cars were banned or very heavily restricted in the city.

I have a trailer for the bike, we can haul 100 lbs. it’s more than enough.

Businesses can be allowed to get deliveries, just personal cars are restricted.

In my city, many businesses have switched to operating from a cargo bike: plumbers, electricians, even mechanics.

[quantified]

Not very hilly? Or are they all e-bikes?

[nehal3m]

Depends on where they live. Groceries don’t have to be a weekly run to a far flung place to get a truck bed full of stuff. It can be a daily visit to a neighborhood supermarket on your way home. If zoning laws allow those can exist.

[kergonath]

That’s nice in principle, but it really is not the same budget around here, even though the shops are here. Small neighbourhood supermarkets and corner shops are significantly more expensive than the big supermarket that’s a 10-minute drive away.

We’re doing both: buying what we need in large quantities or with a long shelf life once a week from a supermarket and things like some meat, fruits and vegetables from the corner shop but that takes a bit of work and planning. Still, there’s money to be saved taking advantage of economies of scale.

[codedokode]

> But they never ask themselves how the baker gets all his materials to the bakery.

You can allow transport for business (speed-limited to 30 km/h or ~20 mph) and ban individual's cars. There are busses, trams and subway and there is no need to have a car.

[amanaplanacanal]

On the plus side professional drivers are probably better drivers than the average person, since their livelihood depends on it.

[watwut]

I have car and rarely use it for grocerries. I walk to shop and buy stuff. I take car only rarely, when I need to go far.

The condescending assumptions people make when they dont have arguments are getting absurd.

[phoronixrly]

No, I walk 200 meters to Billa or Lidl, or less to one of the plethora of small grocery stores.

[beej71]

It won't work for everyone, but I have a bicycle trailer for food shopping. 20 minutes ride each way. I go about once a week.

[mcv]

> inner city bike extremists

WTF? In inner cities, bikes are the sensible option for 90% of traffic. Not for emergency services and larger freight of course, but it's possible to aim for a sensible mix.

[cavoirom]

giving up your freedom to limit others in the name of safety seems unwise.

too much control creates a generation behave like the kids.

[phoronixrly]

Oh, the good old cars are freedom cliché? Thank you, I feel perfectly free when I don't have to worry about parking, gas, maintenance, taxes, inadvertently killing anyone, polluting...

[cavoirom]

you choose to limit your freedom on the public transportation, others don't. The freedom lies in the alternatives, people could choose different lifestyles, that's freedom.

[lan321]

Mobility is freedom, yes. During communism movement within countries required a written permission slip, movement outside even more so.

The longer it'll take you to leave or organize against your leaders, the less freedom you have. See DPRK for an extreme example.

[compass_copium]

Solidarity. Cars belong in the rubbish bin of history. The Soviet Union had the right idea, as usual--make cars unbearable to drive to encourage public transportation.

[elzbardico]

The Soviet Union never had such a goal. Passenger cars universalization was actually a long term goal of the system, but the soviet system prioritized heavy industry, infrastructure and defense over consumer goods.

That was the reason while Ukraine, before the war, was a huge net exporter of electricity. They never got too many or really good cars, but they do sure had plenty of electric generation plants.

The Chinese apparently learned with this, and used and export oriented economy to have the necessary scale to invest both in heavy industry as well as consumer goods.

[ornornor]

I don’t think you’ve ever lived under SU rules.

[actionfromafar]

Yeah, people don't seem to understand that in SU a very small well connected elite gained control over the means of production and abused it for their own purposes.

[kybernetyk]

While not in the SU directly, I got to enjoy public transport in communist Poland for a few years and yeah, you don't want that.

[badpun]

Public transport in communist Poland was horrible because it was severely underfunded. Remember that Poland bankrupted in the 1981 (when the West put sanctions on the country after the Jaruzelski's "coup", and sanctions kiled the economy) the whole decade was kind of surreal in terms of state's lack of funds and decrease of living standards.

[smackeyacky]

Communist Sydney trains are awful too

[K0balt]

That works for people in cities, if cities were made to by usable by cyclists and pedestrians. Not so much for people that live in rural areas.

[zelphirkalt]

Wait until they mandate a panel of warning LEDs on your bike or a cam on your bike recording your face.

[newsclues]

Wait until manual bikes are banned and only gps tracked e-bikes exist for citizen safety!

[hparadiz]

I legit can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

[imp0cat]

That's what so great about it, isn't it?

[bmacho]

Why would you care what the guy was thinking writing that comment? Do you know him? He might as well just be a stochastic parrot.

Just like with other media (movie, book, etc), the product is the end product, in this case a joke or a thought-provoking view. You shouldn't care about the creator's actual views or consider them while engaging with his comment.

[prepend]

I had a prius and every time I started it up, it would display a big warning prompt that blocked out the rear view camera. So you had to tap ok before backing up. Every time.

My current car shows this once per driver. I always thought toyota engineers were stupid for designing such a system.

[mcv]

Toyota is terrible at this. Various Toyota's we've had required you to either agree to obey traffic rules, warned about data costs when connecting your phone, or a variety of other things. Super annoying and distracting. As soon as the car starts moving, all the parts should be doing their job. That's no time to nag the driver.

[ghastmaster]

Do you know if the law prevents you from modifying the car to disable these devices? Caveat to anyone considering this: Modifying could be used against you in a liability case. Additionally if your insurance contract has some stipulation about not removing these safety "features" and they find out, I would think you could be dropped.

[petre]

Does soaking the beeper with water trigger a modification clause?

Annoying alarms trigger driver distresss which has equally negative effect on attention while driving.

We had a replacement Yaris that had the speed alarms but one could lower the volume to the point where it didn't matter much. Much better design than the older Toyotas which would beep incessantly and louder if you didn't put belts on, back seats included.

[johen8]

> if you didn't put belts on, back seats included.

I don't drive/don't have a car, but it drives me mad when I take an Uber, I go into the back seat and put my backpack beside me and the car keeps beeping because of it (I obviously put my seatbelt on). For some time I didn't understand what was that beeping until a driver told me, now when I hear it I know to put the seatbelt in my backpack seat, and remove it when I get off the car.

[letitbeirie]

> back seats included

I ended up buying loose seat belt buckles for my wife's car from a pull and pay to stop this. Evidently nobody at Toyota has a dog.

[petre]

We carry the dog in a crate fastened with straps. This is the safest way to transport a dog in a car. The seatbelt was not practical to fasten the crate. The crate sits in the trunk of our hatchback crossover with the seat in front of it collapsed, so I can visually keep it in check and the dog gets AC. There are also dog "seatbelts" if you carry it on the back seat. It's like a leash with a seatbelt buckle at the end.

[kazinator]

The mods to disable the thing have to be cleanly reversible.

What if you disconnect the speakers? Do they have a sensor for that? If so, replace them by an 8 ohm impedance.

An alternative amplifier can be connected to the speakers then. Or just use portable bluetooth speakers.

If driving alone, for music, I would then listen on headphones. That's illegal in many places but at that point, having had to disconnect the speakers, I'd be acting out of spite.

[martin8412]

All cars in the EU has to pass periodic inspections. All safety equipment must be in working order to pass.

[ghastmaster]

Therefore, to skirt the law, one would have to be able to reverse the modifications.

[dylan604]

That sounds like one of those situations where you just keep turning up the radio until the beeping goes away

[Foivos]

They have thought of that. The radio volume is reduced during the Beep.

[fhn]

I'm deaf so they better shine lasers into my eyeballs

[NonHyloMorph]

Hehe

[lstodd]

I'm also blind so they can stuff those lasers where it doesn't shine.

[Paradigma11]

I wasnt blind till they shone those lasers in my eyes.

[allenrb]

Do you drive often, then? :-)

[kazinator]

Bring another radio, or bluetooth speakers.

[ajsnigrutin]

> Also, being constantly warned that I was speeding in rural areas where the car missed a speed limit sign caused me to start ignoring the speeding alarm within a few hours of driving the car.

Where do you live?

In slovenia for example, we have "default speed limits", where there are zero traffic signs unless the speed limit deviates from the default for that type of road (50 within settlements, 90 outside, 110 on motorways and 130 on highways).

This also makes me want to buy a shirt with 150km/h or 20km/h sign on my back.

[mschild]

In Germany, we love our signs (not really). We have so many of them though and specific rules and lots of exceptions on where to put them.

For example, typical city road speed is 50kmh, but residential side streets are 30kmh. If you cross an intersection there usually should be a sign telling you the speed limit because people turning onto other roads need to know how fast they're going. Except there sometimes isn't. So you're coming from a 30kmh road and turn onto a 50kmh without a sign. Your car now thinks you're still in a 30kmh road. What about GPS positioning? Sure, that works, until cities have started deciding that actually their main city roads should be 30 instead of 50. (Something I agree with btw) Except no signs and if you don't pay for your cars subscription service to get the newest updates, good luck getting that info.

Beyond that, construction zones with shittily placed signs or signs that are placed not in optimal locations. Driving on the highway but there's an offramp for an interchange with a 60kmh speed limit for the offramp? Guess your highway speed is set to 60 now. Enjoy the car beeping at you.

[silon42]

Here (Slovenia), there is an intersection rule, speed limit is cancelled at next intersection (unless in a "30" zone, or a "town wide speed limit").

Good look recognizing this situation without GPS maps.

[Nursie]

> Also, being constantly warned that I was speeding in rural areas where the car missed a speed limit sign caused me to start ignoring the speeding alarm within a few hours of driving the car.

I rented a car in the UK about six weeks ago, and this was infuriating!

No, car, this is not a 30 zone. It's a 60 zone and I'm driving to the conditions (country road, decent visibility, slightly poor surface) at around 45. Whatever GPS data or image recognition techniques you're using, you're broken, shut up and leave me alone.

I did eventually find the button to turn it off but (as the article mentions) I had to do that every single journey.

I believe that in this case an imperfect system is worse than no system at all, because it adds to the distractions.

[kybernetyk]

Can't you just snip/disconnect the speaker/bell wire? I did this back when I had a truck and often had to maneuver with open doors (at very slow speeds) - the "door open warning bell" was so annoying that I just pulled its wires.

AFAIK the warning tones don't come from the car's stereo speakers but have its own speaker.

[queenkjuul]

No modern ones almost all go through the stereo

[torginus]

What happens if you bypass these systems? Does it have a separate speaker or does it use the infotainment?

If the former, you can bypass it electronically. If the latter, I'm sure you can mess with the software of the multimedia head unit to silence the chimes.

Will your car fail inspection if you do this?

[sixtyj]

Imagine driving thru night with kids sleeping and suddenly car starts beeping.

Is there a way how to switch sensors off for similar situations?

[ShellfishMeme]

You can switch them off but only until the engine is turned off again. Most manufacturers have a shortcut on the dashboard or steering wheel though. Eventually you just get used to doing that every time you start driving.

[freetonik]

>...until the engine is turned off again

Modern electric Volkswagens (and some other brands) have this amazingly awful feature where lifting your ass off the driver's seat turns off the "ignition". The car just shuts off immediately, AC turns off, CarPlay disconnects, those driver settings reset. Even if I sit back one second later.

[Cthulhu_]

...even while driving?

[gf000]

Fairly sure that it won't turn off while the wheels are spinning at any speed -- with the engine off, you also lose power steering in most cases and can trivially cause an accident. Car manufacturers are not this dumb.

[toast0]

Depends on the car (and the regulatory regime, I'd imagine). My fancy pants 2025 car is happy to leave driver alertness detection disabled, which is handy because it's not good. Of course my ultra base model 1981 van doesn't have any features... it's a lot more fun to drive, other than the engine noise is pretty oppressive on a drive any significant length oh and the floor is missing where the accelerator pedal should mount :P

[londons_explore]

There'll be firmware hacks to force that mode soon enough.

[Scoundreller]

You wouldn’t download a bookmarklet on your car

[bigiain]

"Download NoBeepPro for Android Auto now! It silences all unwanted warning sound, and totally doesn't surreptitiously enroll your car into a residential proxy service or mine crypto currency using your main power or hybrid battery!"

[ssl-3]

That hasn't broadly happened yet, and it's even less likely to happen in the future with encrypted comms and locked-down firmware increasingly becoming the rule instead of the exception.

[frollogaston]

That works. I already got so used to disabling ESC on start that I do it unconsciously at this point, can't even recall afterwards that I did it. (My car is old and has a glitchy ESC)

[Ccecil]

I saw a mod where there was an arduino/lcd setup on the dash of an Audi to turn off the ESC and other annoyances on startup.

I turn mine off quite often. On dirt roads and snow.

[frollogaston]

Yeah, there are ways if you figure out the manufacturer specifics. Thought it'd be fun to try capturing and replaying CAN messages, gave up cause whatever cheapo CAN to USB adapter I got wasn't working with my Linux laptop. Probably could've figured it out but decided it wasn't worth risking my 2005 Quattroporte with something that was feeling increasingly jank. Autel scanner already gave me all the read-only access I needed, including clutch wear.

[Ccecil]

I recommend "the car hackers handbook".

Gives you all the info you need including software.

Great start to knowing what the CAN is doing.

[fhub]

In my experience, rental cars are the worst. They are configured to make so much noise. My kids sleep in rentals more than daily driving too (longer commutes when traveling). My 2022 Volvo treats me like a adult and makes very little noise. Heads up display shows things that might be important.

[pontussw]

If it makes someone put their phone down, or pull over when they are too tired to drive, perhaps the bigger question is if it prevents you all ending up in an accident - a lot worse of a situation than the beeping, in my opinion

[Cthulhu_]

If it beeps when you're NOT using your phone then people won't care about using their phone to begin with.

[goodpoint]

Maybe you should ask yourself why you are not looking at the road in the first place.

[smackeyacky]

I think it was clear that the poster was distracted by all the useless bongs and beeps and that was what caused the extra distracted driving bong or beep

[goodpoint]

That does not justify not looking at the road.

[petre]

The kids will wake up a few times, then just get used and grow up to ignore all the annoying beeps.

My boss sometimes drives without a belt while the car keeps beeping and he succesfully ignores it.

[lopis]

We did an 8 hour ride on a rental recently in Central Europe, mostly through major motorways. The car dashboard disagreed with (apple) maps which disagreed with the road signage so often. The beeping was infuriating.

[verzali]

Apple maps so often disagree with reality.

[ornornor]

Apple so often disagree with reality.

[lopis]

So do I but fair point

[prepend]

I wonder if these things are designed by people who do not drive. So they just implement to spec without thinking through whether the change produces the desired impact.

[LtWorf]

I gave up and just ignore all the blips. It also sometimes invents speed limit signs.

[throawayonthe]

ngl i think people should just read their car's manual

[Brian_K_White]

ngl I think you should and then try to say that again

[throawayonthe]

i don't own a car but i have read through most of a car manual at some point, it had many useful detail on maintenance and configuration

if the parent commenter read the manual, they would know what the beeping means

[dumbmrblah]

So to play devil's advocate... were you taking your eyes off the road for too long?

There are many many poor drivers and many many distracted drivers out there. I'm not accusing you of one, but maybe a little bit of self-introspection may be necessary.

[lawik]

My in-laws Kia did this for me. It got really shitty when it got darker and presumably had to use an IR camera. And I am tall so the angle might have been bad. It flagged me every minute. Even when I intentionally focused right ahead.

Tracking gaze is not immune to assorted failure modes.

[pontussw]

There we maybe need some regulation that the system should be working, and the manufacturers of the cars should be forced to recall and fix the system if it doesn’t work!

The solution to bad implementation can’t be to just throw our hands in the air and say that Kia produces bad cars so therefore we cannot introduce safety regulation

[lazide]

Or, hear me out, just have a person drive and not try to micromanage them constantly with a shitty AI system?

[pontussw]

You mean the status quo?

> Each year road crashes generate about 120,000 fatalities and 2.4 million injuries in the European region of the World Health Organization. Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults.

Whatever it is we are doing today, it is not working.

[lazide]

And from having used these system and having them almost cause crashes? And with the increase in traffic fatalities roughly corresponding with their increased adoption?

They clearly are not helping.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

So, the fix to one bad regulation is another one?

[pontussw]

We can also do nothing, continue to have hundreds of thousands killed every year and millions receive life changing injuries. I think that’s a terrible idea, though, since we have been able to (in the EU at least) cut road deaths massively over the last 25 years. So I think continuing a successful strategy is what we should do.

[gotski]

I had a similar situation with a rental car, driving on winding roads.

The beeping happened periodically as I was driving around hairpin bends, and the eye detection was triggered by me turning my head to look towards the oncoming sharp corner.

Not the best situation to have a "safety" alert start chastising you!

[afandian]

I wonder if it’s malicious compliance on the part of the manufacturers.

They can trivially determine if their tech is effective. Making it mandatory, despite the problems they must surely know about, might produce some democratic pressure for more nuanced legislation.

[b112]

They can trivially determine if their tech is effective.

Can they? How many people real world test, and are they of all different heights and weights and face shapes too?

Besides that, when I was a kid, I used to watch a lot of old movies on late night TV. Often these movies had car chases, and cars would go careening off of cliffs for no reason. I was always flummoxed, for we had no cliffs anywhere I'd ever been, and wondered where they were, and why people were always driving on them.

When I visited California I suddenly realised "oh, they're everywhere here, just driving home".

Another poster pointed out the alarm went off, if he looked to the corner he was driving towards. People dogfooding won't notice issues with that, if the local environment doesn't have such features.

Could you test for all these things? Maybe, after realising what to test for. You'd then need a sort of regression test, too. All with people.

[WalterBright]

> and cars would go careening off of cliffs for no reason

Obviously, you're not familiar with Toonces, the Driving Cat.

[b112]

That takes me back, thanks.

[giantg2]

"might produce some democratic pressure for more nuanced legislation."

Nah, you just get knee-jerk, feel-good laws because the masses never dig deeper and the elected only care about being reelected.

[cucumber3732842]

These laws are not driven by masses. The masses do not want this crap. These laws are driven by busybodies who think they know what's best for the masses. The politicians and their advisors think they can get "free" (statistically nobody ever voted for the other guy over something so little) turnout from these busybodies in their favor by promising/doing this stuff. It's a sick numbers game and we all lose. Just like everything else these days.

[pontussw]

I don’t think that this is true at all. These regulations are driven to reduce deaths and severe injuries that we have absolute and definitive statistics on - and do target the things we also know are the biggest drivers of accidents and outcomes such as high speed and lack of attention from drivers.

I can see there being lots of valid complaints about implementation, but acting as if traffic injuries is not a major problem to be addressed and is just in the interest of busybodies is a completely unreasonable take.

[giantg2]

If the masses were against this'll, the reps would be voted out or recalled.

[mothballed]

Why would the manufacturers care though? You will still buy a car and now the barrier to foreign competition is higher, increasing profit, and the price goes up to pay for the dooo dads which increases financing kickbacks even if margin is same.

[pontussw]

They aren’t for some weird reason being pressured to make systems that work. Even in this thread I see wild shit like people telling how the system completely doesn’t work for them, but no indication that they are pushing the manufacturer to fix it?? How can we have the kind of attitude that we let the manufacturers just get away with it if it’s a safety system? If the radio didn’t work, we’d be at the dealership bothering the service staff every day - but important safety tech? Blame the EU…?

[duskdozer]

I don't think any complaint I've filed with a company has ever led to the situation being fixed. I still do it because I like futile exercises, but I know it won't change anything.

[pontussw]

I don’t disagree with you there, and I do wish that legislators were also interested in that. How well the safety systems actually work in the real world should also be enforced by the law, not just their existence. With all the horror stories in this thread, it seems clear that manufacturers feel like they are able to get away with building the worst possible implementation of the system and then pointing the finger at the EU..

[frollogaston]

It'd be a bold strategy, cause in the meantime everyone says "never buy a Kia!" (or whatever brand, but Kia is the usual suspect)

[Tagbert]

more likely that this is a harder problem than regulators assume.

[chung8123]

I rented a car with driver monitoring and it made me take my eyes off the road instead. Every beep and warning is a distraction and it these systems don't work. Even if you are looking at the road and driving correctly it is flashing a warning up.

[monknomo]

yeah, my car doesn't like it when I look more than 2 cars ahead, or if I am looking uphill (because I am driving uphill)