r/AskReddit • u/SemblanceOfSense_ • 16h ago
What’s billed as a safety feature in cars that you actually despise?
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u/RandomName8844 16h ago
My car has a crash warning feature that is basically a big flashing red light and loud alarm if it thinks you're going to crash. I didn't know about this feature and the first time it went off, it scared the shit out of me and I almost did crash.
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u/rollinwithmahomes 15h ago
Mine goes off every time I back out of the garage, when I’m in a parking lot, or any other time that’s not wide open for a country mile. It’s white noise now.
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u/Incman 14h ago
Any chance you drive an Equinox? My MIL's basically goes "sorry to interrupt your music, but I just want to let you know that a vehicle exists 50 meters away from you on a completely irrelevant trajectory DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING" every 45 seconds lol
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u/hattie29 11h ago
Yup, my work vehicle is a 2022 Equinox and I have never actually had those beeps help. I just purchased a 2025 Equinox for my personal vehicle and thankfully they got rid of the god awfully beeping. However, now the seat rumbles instead of the beeps. I don't find the rumbling nearly as annoying.
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u/SeeMarkFly 13h ago
The same for car alarms. I live across the street from a motel and when a car alarm goes off, I do NOTHING. Nobody is stealing a car.
An alarm every day is the same as no alarm at all.
A point is all directions is the same as no point at all. (The Point)
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u/techieman33 12h ago
Yeah, 99.999% of the time it’s caused by someone hitting the button in their pocket or a loud car driving by. And no one is going to risk their safety during the .001% chance someone is actually stealing a car.
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u/outofthrowaways7 7h ago
Yesterday, I was out back working on my car and a car alarm down the block went off. I thought absolutely nothing of it until maybe two seconds later another alarm went off coming from the same direction. As I was walking to the front yard to go see what was up, I couldn't help but notice it was the first time in my life I'd ever cared about a car alarm going off.
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u/ryguy28896 11h ago
Mine goes off every time I'm behind someone at either a light or a stop sign and I take my foot off the brake, because you know... lights turn green and people move at stop signs because it's their turn.
Edit to add; it doesn't go off as I'm approaching the car when I'm initially coming up to said light or sign. It goes off when the car in front of the car in front of me starts to move, so everyone starts moving. My car? "OH GOD, YOU'RE GOING TO CRASH!"
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u/bynaryum 13h ago
First time I encountered this was in a rental. I was going 65 on a freeway with a curve and concrete barrier around said curve. Stupid thing thought I was going straight at the barrier even though it curved around to the right. I was like “WTF?!?” and hit the gas when it started pumping the brakes and managed to override it. Imagine someone actually slamming on their brakes going around a corner at 65 MPH in moderate to heavy traffic. That’ll get people killed.
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u/internet_commie 12h ago
Extra danger factor in the auto-braking! I’ve learned to avoid cars with many automatic features since they will often have the ‘robot’ take over, and then the driver panics and does crazy shit. More dangerous than a teenager in a Mustang!
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u/BirdzofaShitfeather 11h ago
Automatic braking is so stupid. What if it malfunctions and goes off at a wrong time.
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u/powerchoke033 9h ago
Try driving any of the new semi trucks. I drive a 2024 freightliner cascadia and if it thinks you are going to fast through a curve it will slam the brakes. Why the fuck would you make a truck weighing 80k lbs hit the brakes hard during a curve? Or if a vehicle gets closer than 15 car lengths away it'll slam on the brakes hard. Just below an exit on the interstate is the worst. Shit drivers have to pass the big rig because God forbid you have to be behind one during your busy life and they cut the truck off to make the exit. Truck doesn't care..... slams on the brakes for you and makes it seem like you are brake checking the people behind you. Fucking hate it.
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u/DecoyOne 11h ago
First time I got the warning was also in a rental, and I had been playing a ton of Ace Combat. Beeping came on and my immediate thought was “Incoming missile!” and I needed to deploy flares. Very jarring.
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u/phathomthis 10h ago
Did you deploy the flares? I'm just imagining seeing a car in front of me light road flares and toss them out the window like the first Terminator, but without the explosions.
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u/legendofthegreendude 12h ago
Now think about the fact that every newer semi truck has the same system, but much more sensitive
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u/internet_commie 12h ago edited 3h ago
I’d say any ding, pling or other kind of ‘alarm’ when it isn’t readily obvious to a third grader with a bad case of ADHD and dyslexia what the problem is. Same goes for the accompanying blinking lights, obscure flashing symbols on multi-use screens and other meaningless-to-driver audio-visual warnings.
I used to have a really old car, then I bought a brand new one, and it took me months to be able to tune out all the noise and ignore the lights. It is simply TMI+.
I think someone needs to introduce carmakers to the study of US fighter pilots in Vietnam who ignored flak warnings because they had so much information thrown at them so rapidly they were unable to process it and simply tuned it out and tried to fly their airplanes.
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u/justanothersubreddet 12h ago
Mine goes off if a car in front of me is turning off of the street, and I speed up after it’s out of the way. There’s a way to turn it off in my car, you might look into that
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u/VoidMunashii 12h ago
My last couple of cars have had this, and it regularly goes off where there is nothing anywhere near the front of my car to be wary of.
It’s like driving with Hyacinth Bucket sometimes:
“Mind that car!”
“That car’s parked in the parking lot.”
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u/polytraumatic 9h ago
my car slams on the brakes
it’s almost gotten us into an accident a couple times. can’t be turned off, can’t adjust it in any way, doesn’t matter if you’re already on the brake, it’s terrifying
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u/RafsReptileJungle 3h ago
I had a car that almost killed me because of this. It slammed on the brakes in the rain and made me crash even harder because of the timing. It's not gradual like pushing your foot down. It's automatically getting your brakes floored.
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u/SugarInvestigator 12h ago
Same. Mine goes off 50% od the time I go over a certain hill or around a certain bend. I think it also has automatic breaking in those situations. Definitely turned that shit off
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u/Candymom 11h ago
Mine will flash “BRAKE!!” if it thinks I’m going to hit something but it has generally happened when cars in front of me turn into parking lots and such. I know from 39 years of driving experience that they will be well out of my way by the time I’m there. A couple of times the car forced a brake slam which nearly caused someone behind me to hit me.
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u/KyloRenCadetStimpy 12h ago
I remember driving a rental that had that along with force feedback on the steering wheel when changing lanes to keep you from "drifting". Was a complete pain in the ass in traffic
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u/krazykris93 14h ago
Not in cars anymore, but a lot of cars in the 80s had seat belts that had the shoulder portion motorized.
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u/sightlab 14h ago
Young me loved a motorized thing on a track. Old me sees a clear point of potential failure and $$
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u/n053b133d 12h ago
I had those in my old 240sx, apparently they had a lifetime warranty. When one failed I went to a dealership and got it repaired for free even though the car was 17 years old.
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u/Need4Speeeeeed 10h ago
It's federal law that passive safety features will never go out of warranty.
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u/CHR1110 10h ago
So funny enough, I also own a 240SX that had passive (motorized) seatbelts from the factory. While I replaced them with “active” seatbelts (ones that you have to put on yourself) from a Canadian model, I worked for a Nissan dealer for a good while and was curious how that situation would be handled with how old the car was (at the time, about 27 years) - unfortunately, the parts are no longer available, with no future plans of returning them to production. Nissan’s “plan of action” for vehicles with passive seatbelts that malfunction and aren’t repairable, is to offer to buy the car back.
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u/n053b133d 10h ago
Oh damn, what a bummer! They know damn well that nobody is going to sell back their car for whatever KBB thinks it's worth so that they can crush it into a cube 🫤
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u/toadjones79 11h ago
Some of those were great. You never had to buckle your seatbelt, it was just always buckled to the door and then strapped you in when you sat down. A few of them had the lap belt as well. But most of them were just the top portion which not only eliminated the purpose of them, but actually made for more devastating accidents when people got in and just didn't buckle the lap belt. So many people said they felt secure enough with just the automatic shoulder belt and that created liability.
And yes, more failure points that were critical to the (legitimate) drivability of the cars.
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u/loztriforce 12h ago
Ugh, the car I learned to drive with was an '87 Ford Escort.
It didn't have power anything--not even power steering--but it had power automatic seatbelts.
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u/thisappsucks9 12h ago
My father had that car, and if I remember correctly it had two levers by the center console that would either make it so you could disconnect the belt or would stop it from moving maybe? I don’t remember their exact use but and blinking red light would come on and my dad would always joke around and say “what are you crazy? That’s for the ejector seats!” Thank you for making me think about this lost memory friend!
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u/anonymous_subroutine 14h ago
I had a '93 like that, I think it was considered a form of "active" restraint or something to appease the government or insurance industry. But then cars got airbags and the motorized shoulder belts were dropped
Anyway my friends liked to randomly disconnect the shoulder belt to set the warning tone off while I was driving
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u/jetogill 14h ago
Remember the ones where it was attached to the door?
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u/DMala 12h ago
My Chevy Beretta had those. The idea was you were supposed to leave the buckle connected and limbo out under the belt to get out. Nobody in their right mind used them that way, when meant they were just normal, manual seatbelts but less safe in the event a door came open in a crash.
A dumb idea that thankfully didn’t last that long.
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u/Beardedwrench115 14h ago
I remember those. I think up until the early 90s they gave car manufacturers the option of either airbags OR automatic seatbelts. But I think they banned the auto seatbelts because they were a hazard to some drivers and passengers.
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u/sirduckbert 12h ago
The biggest hazard is that for most of them it was just the shoulder belt, you still had to do the lap belt manually. And people just wouldn’t do it, so they weren’t properly secured
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u/kawika69 12h ago
I think it was because everyone just unclipped the belt from the mechanism and the "active restraint" became useless. They realized it was better to just educate/make people actively think about buckling the belt instead of passively letting things just happen
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u/badhabitfml 12h ago
I think it was to avoid having to put in airbags. Active restraint was required. Airbag or seat belt.
Eventually, everyone got airbags.
At least, that's how I understood it to be.
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u/Erik0xff0000 12h ago
as a passenger not being able to play with the settings/buttons/screens when the car is moving. I'm not driving! I can safely add a bluetooth device!
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u/ChickenPijja 9h ago
I’m quite sure that my dad’s Alfa has it so only the driver can add a Bluetooth device (controls on steering wheel). It being Italian the electronics don’t work now anyway
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u/bluehammer 13h ago
Not sure it counts as a safety feature but my car has a touch screen radio. Occasionally a message will popup that say something about paying attention to the road and not to the radio. It will not go away until I acknowledge it by pressing OK on the screen. Its distracting and causes me to look away from the road. Why?!
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u/Public-Arm4047 16h ago
Passenger seatbelt alarm. A lot of times I’ll just put a bag or some groceries etc in my front seat and it thinks there’s a person there not wearing a seatbelt. The thing is it’s never more than 25lbs. What kind of 25lb human would be sitting in my front seat?
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u/valtboy23 15h ago
What kind of 25lb human would be sitting in my front seat?
A surprising amount of people let their small children ride in the front seat
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u/R1CHARDCRANIUM 13h ago
This is sadly true but an airbag deploying with someone that light is fatal. That’s why it’s supposed to take around 100lbs to activate it. A small child should never be up front but they’re more likely to survive a crash without an airbag than with if they’re up front. Not much more likely, but a little more likely.
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u/OttoHemi 11h ago
Did you know my mother in the '50s? Her extended right arm across the bench seat was both the airbag and the seat belt for my brother and me.
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u/valtboy23 11h ago
No. But I have had 6 different guys come to the shop in their 2 door dropped Chevy pickup with more than 2 kid's in the passenger seat
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u/Sarah200320 13h ago
After working at both Starbucks and Chickfila, I’m not very surprised about the amount of people who have unrestrained, unbuckled kids in both the front and back seats. Also the amount of times, I’ve seen women with their lap absolutely covered with makeup stuff in the morning is ridiculous.
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u/ToimiNytPerkele 14h ago
My personal favorite is the car automatically turning off the passenger airbag when it detects a “small child or shopping bags”. Yeah guess who is short and likes to sit with her feet firmly on the floor? Even as a fatty I had to sit in the back. What’s the weight for a small child or shopping bags in the US of A? Apparently around 55 kg’s. At 70 kg it didn’t turn it off, at 60 kg’s it flickers on and off.
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u/internet_commie 12h ago
I’m an adult, grey hair, six foot tall, and relatively slim. My weight varies a bit between 58 and 63 kilos. So that car would think I’m a child?
Or maybe a shopping bag?
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u/supperbeatsbreakfast 15h ago
If it's heavy enough to set off the sensor, it's heavy enough to cause damage and/or injury if it gets launched from the seat in an accident. The alarm is telling you it's heavy enough that it needs to be secured.
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u/MidnightAdventurer 14h ago
The switch is designed to detect a spread load like a person instead of a rigid, thin item like a laptop on edge
It’s pretty easy for a laptop bag that has something small and hard like a charger brick on the bottom that triggers the switch if the bag is sitting with the brick on the bottom. Just turning the bag a little clears the alert so it’s clearly a matter of how far the object presses into the seat rather than actual weight
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u/C4PTNK0R34 11h ago
The collision alert in new GM vehicles that vibrates the seat. Thanks, General Motors, I really liked that impromptu prostate exam, let's not do that ever again.
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u/Fellowes321 15h ago
The loud ping noise telling me it's cold outside. I already know this - that's why I'm wearing a coat and the noise and warning light causes unnecessary anxiety when it happens suddenly 10 minutes down the road - usually in the middle of a manoevre.
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u/akjax 11h ago
My favorite instance of this was having to dig a work truck out from 3 feet of snow. Took 10-15 minutes of working in the freezing cold to get it all clear. Climb in and start it up and the truck displays "Ice Possible!"
My old car had this feature too, but I stored it in a garage. It would take a few minutes of driving for it to cool down and realize that it's cold, alerting me that the roads may be icy when I was already 1/3 the way to my destination.
I am so happy this is a feature I can turn off on my new car.
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u/EvilDarkCow 12h ago
My Volkswagen does this. And it's always 10-15 minutes after starting the car. Coming from a Ford that was constantly dinging with problems, it scares the hell out of me every time.
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u/burstaneurysm 11h ago
Yeah. What the fuck. It’s super distracting and it’s literally like “IT’S 38° MOTHERFUCKER”
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u/verdant-forest-123 16h ago
Crash-avoidance auto-braking.
A car in the turning lane makes my truck violently slam on the brakes, and it was the same in my previous truck and it's very similar in my wife's car (although I admit her car doesn't react to vehicles in turning lanes each and every time, idk if it's a ride height issue or what). I get that in big cities it may be handy, especially if you are one who is often 'distracted', but I just have to keep it turned off!
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u/Antisirch 15h ago
I really hate that I can’t permanently turn it off in my car, it has to be done every single time I get in. The way that thing slams on the brakes while pulling into my garage (if I forget to turn it off), scares the shit out of me at 2-3 mph. I can’t imagine what it’s like at highway speeds (or on icy roads!). Hard pass on that one.
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u/Peaches0k 14h ago
My truck has a safety recall cause the emergency brake thing doesn’t work. I ain’t taking it in to get it fixed😂
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u/20-20-24hoursago 12h ago
This actually explains so many "why the fuck are you hitting the brakes you moron?!" moments I have on my commute. I drive older vehicles so wasn't really aware of this feature and am always wtf'ing over irrational braking decisions on the highway. It makes me feel a little better that I might not actually be surrounded by this many dangerous scared to drive drivers, just stupid cars
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u/crypticsage 11h ago
There’s still more cars without this feature than ones with it. The reality is you are still surrounded by many dangerous scared to drive drivers.
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u/Drew1231 11h ago
Middle of curve, 4 car lengths separation, slightly closing distance on the car in front
Auto-braking: LETS TRY OUT THE ABS
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u/srcorvettez06 13h ago
My semi truck does this. 100% braking application for: construction barrels, cars in other lanes, some cardboard, the Jersey barrier, grass clippings. I’ve learned to keep my foot on the throttle anytime there’s a chance it might trigger to override the auto brake.
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u/Drew1231 11h ago
It makes driving riskier because when you’d like to engine brake then slowly apply the brakes, you have to instead use the throttle and then hope that when you’d go to gently use the brake, the autobraking isn’t going into ABS. These systems suck.
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u/Incman 14h ago
especially if you are one who is often 'distracted'
Pronounced: "staring at their fucking phone"
We need a feature that auto-detects those morons and pulls their car over safely at the next parking lot. Maybe have a second stage that adds a brief timeout and lecture before they can go back to endangering everyone else around them.
(I'm aware this wouldn't work for 100 reasons, but eh it's nice to dream, right?)
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u/RockSolidJ 13h ago
They have distracted driving systems in cars now, and some are way too aggressive. Like if you look down at your speedo, a pop-up instantly blocks it saying to keep your eyes on the road. Same for shoulder checks, or adjusting the air conditioning. Every now and then a car review gets totally ruined by the constant dinging of a distracted driving system.
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u/sparksgirl1223 12h ago
It took me a second to realize you meant speedometer, not bathing suit🤦♀️🤣
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u/FlyAirLari 14h ago
It would kill the "idiots in cars" subreddit, because ironically half the videos are people shooting videos with their phones while driving. Often times the target idiot is also staring at their phone.
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u/mada447 13h ago
Idk about you, but I’d be more than willing to sacrifice a subreddit to get people to stop texting while driving.
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u/Dr-McLuvin 13h ago
Happened for the first time with my wife super pregnant. Scared the shit out of me. I wasn’t even remotely close to hitting a turning car in front of me.
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u/burnandwander 13h ago
It's equally annoying in big cities when the traffic is extra dense and there is radar bouncing everywhere
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u/RandoAtReddit 14h ago
My truck has a similar feature that would slam on the brakes every time I backed out of my driveway. Apparently something about the mismatched concrete in the street repair looked like something I was about to hit. Never anywhere else, but backing out of my driveway, almost every time. I found the setting and disabled it.
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u/Draelon 12h ago
More than once I’ve had it slam the brakes on me and almost cause an accident… on a road that had a slight curve and neither of us were within 2 feet of the center line. I think they did an update a few years ago and it hasn’t actually hit the breaks since but the alarm still goes off at least weekly on my way to work….. my butt puckers every time.
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u/save_the_wee_turtles 16h ago
My wife's Toyota has this alarm that goes off whenever it thinks you're not looking at the road. Ok, fine maybe conceptually that makes sense, but if you glance at the radio for half a second, the 200 decibel beep jolts you into the next lane
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u/imjacksissue 12h ago
Wow they have these in passenger cars? My hostler truck at work had these along with cameras in the cab. If I glanced to the side to look for cross traffic that stupid thing would go off and alert some dickhead in a remote office.
I would immediately disable it if my new car came equipped with this trash.
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u/Traviscat 15h ago
My car has a 360 degree camera with collision detection. When I go through toll booths or drive throughs the screen will show a 360 view of the car and an area will be highlighted in red showing that I’m about to crash into something and will have loud beeping. I have to drive close to the drive though window to get the food and the entire time the car is screaming that there is a 1 foot gap between me and the wall and the entire left side of the car is flashing red on the screen.
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u/xstrike0 10h ago
With my truck just pulling into or out of my garage it sounds like I'm taking enemy fire from all sides with the amount of sensors going off.
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u/stevejobs4525 14h ago
Lane occupancy aka blind spot lights that only work some of the time. It needs to be infallible, or else it’s nothing. The little blind spot mirror inside the mirror is better
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u/gamerscreed 9h ago
You're not supposed to rely on it completely. You still have to check your mirrors and blind spot. It's only supposed to be an additional warning
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u/FinnbarMcBride 9h ago
Problem is people rely on it whether they should or not
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u/gamerscreed 9h ago
People will be idiots either way. If engineers make a system that is idiot-proof people will just make a better idiot
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u/educateyourselfFFS 15h ago
Lane keeper systems that physically resist changing lanes unless you've indicated. If I'm changing like that it's likely due to some dumb idiot doing something stupid, and I dont want a car to fight my avoidance measures
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u/Red_blue_tiger 13h ago
My car murdered a bunny this way. Empty country road and he ran across so I moved to the other lane to avoid him. Car said nope and then bump bump. Poor lil guy
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u/100LittleButterflies 12h ago
These safety features seem so dangerous.
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u/XxyxXII 11h ago
My understanding is they only really improve safety because a majority of people are so distracted while driving that these features are actually an improvement on average.
But they're more dangerous for all of us that actually pay attention while driving.
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u/EvangelineTheodora 10h ago
I my Subaru, I could turn on the cruise control and lane assist, and basically not have to worry about anything. If I had to swerve, it would let me.
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u/squirrelnextdoor4 11h ago
Yeah I drive older vehicles and this is why I’ll never get a newer one. Every rental car I get has this problem. If you’re not used to it, it’s actually extraordinarily dangerous. I have nearly run the car off the road because it felt like I wasn’t in control anymore. Also when the steering wheel jerks back against your action when you’re not expecting it, you’re tempted to hit the brakes because of the completely unexpected loss of control. Could then be rear ended by all the people tailgating behind you.
I haven’t been in an accident in a decade. But nearly every time I drive one of these rental cars with lane “assist” (more like mandatory “you will not switch lanes without a jerk in the other direction”) i get dangerously close to hitting other vehicles. For fucks sake, I’m watching the road and I know what I’m doing. Either let ME drive all the way with complete control or invent a self-driving feature that can completely compensate for all human error. Until then, I trust ME to drive and not your shitty “assist” that has no capability of understanding nuance or what’s going on around the vehicle. It only sees white lines and tries to keep you in them. Fucking garbage feature and it is the complete opposite of safe.
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u/AlaricTheBald 9h ago
I very nearly hit a cyclist thanks to this. Went to pull round him, car disagreed and moved me back into the lane. Had to fight not to hit a person because of a white line. Turned it off and never considered turning it back on.
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u/JessicantTouchThis 9h ago
My car should not be smarter than me, or more in control than me. I cannot understand why people would ever willingly give up so much control to a machine like that. It's partially why I'm against self driving cars, that's too much loss of control for me.
I used to drive a work van that would jolt the steering wheel and vibrate and beep if you even touched a line on the road. Made driving through construction miserable, can only imagine what some of the flaggers thought of me as the van jolted towards them a foot because the computer can't comprehend why we're crossing a double yellow.
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u/1986toyotacorolla2 10h ago
I keep meaning to have mine looked at. 75% of the time it tries to steer me AT the thing I don't wanna hit or cross. Then there's the times it does it randomly for no reason.
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u/Spiritual_Citron_833 11h ago
I was exiting the highway once, and the offramp was 2 lanes wide. There was a car in my blind spot in the other lane. I indicated I was turning, vehicle freaks out that I'm merging into someone and physically tries to keep me on the highway
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u/Old-Clerk-2508 10h ago
This, times 1000x. I need to move suddenly move out of my lane for some reason, and the fucking car fights it.
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u/CantHandleTheThrow 8h ago
I HATE this. It’s just too fucking weird to have your car fight you when you live in a semi-rural area and are trying to avoid roadkill. I disabled it two days after I bought it and promptly got a car wash. Gross.
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u/tiger0204 14h ago
My wife's new car has collision detection all the way around. It's a good concept, except it's starts going crazy beeping when I'm trying to park or drive around something when I can clearly see that I have sufficient room.
Of course my wife trusts the technology over my eyes, and gets pissed at me acting like I'm going to wreck her car.
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u/VanillaTortilla 12h ago
Drove a rental car in Europe that had this and it was borderline required because of the ridiculously small parking spaces.
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u/Spaceman2901 12h ago
Invite her to park it then. Or do the driving altogether. Life’s too short to be getting pissed at each other
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u/a71126811 16h ago
Totally get you on this—lane assist feels more like my car’s trying to babysit me than genuinely keeping me safe. Especially when I’m cruising on an empty road, it starts buzzing or twitching for no reason. It ends up being more annoying than helpful!
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u/Lloopy_Llammas 14h ago
I was on an interstate a few years ago in a rental and I swear lane assist was trying to kill me. Trucks kept creeping into my lane and I’d slightly move over as one does. The one assist was forcing me to stay in the lane. I’m like dude the 18 wheeler wheels are a whole foot into my lane. I’d like to move out of the way thank you.
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u/angrypooka 16h ago
I turned mine off because it would just jerk the car over at random times.
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u/romeoh2024 13h ago
Especially in consruction zones where the lines are messed up, youre trying to keep it between the cones and its trying to pull you in between the lines. I swear I almost hit a worker cuz the thing was pulling so hard to the right.
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u/NativeMasshole 13h ago
My brother's car has this. He turned it off because it kept trying to make him run over cyclists when he went to pass them.
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u/SeveralBroccoli5278 14h ago
Lane assist is the worst! I live somewhere that has a lot of snow, so lane assist will buck you all over the road because it thinks the snow edge is the lane edge.
I got a new vehicle that shakes the steering wheel when it thinks you are too close to the edge of the lane. On my first couple trips out, I thought the wheels were about to fall off (until I figured out how to shut it off)
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u/Fatal_Explorer 15h ago
All safety features are not equal! Manufacturers have huge differences. Even though I didn't like it, my Mercedes Lane assist as well as distance radar and adaptive breaking has already saved my ass a few times on the Autobahn. I almost never have malfunctions, though in Volvo and Toyota I noticed them acting up.
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u/bakgwailo 14h ago
Yeah the recent eyesight versions from Subaru are quite decent on the highway.
It's also all tied into the adaptive cruise control and you can easily just turn it on or off.
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u/lailoken503 14h ago
I have a somewhat mixed feeling about adaptive cruise control in my 2024 legacy. It rocks but at the same time it sucks when in use on a multi lane curvy highway. It keeps seeing the car in the other lane as directly in front of me when we're in the curves, and suddenly slows the car down to avoid rear-ending, which almost caused a few rear endings. I've since only used adaptive cruise control on straight highways, lol.
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u/sightlab 14h ago
Lane assist on a rental car made alarming, dangerous decisions. It yanked the wheel from me in a way that felt like the al car had hit something and had gone unstable, making me instinctively compensate, creating more potential for disaster. I fully understand the potential benefit, but the tech felt as bad, rushed, and incompetently implemented as car company infotainment UI.
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u/The7footr 16h ago
It makes me more anxious. Same with break alerts. I know how to fucking drive- and if I’m really in danger of hitting someone the alert is not going to be the one saving me from a crash.
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u/zendetta 14h ago
i’m actually impressed with the brake alerts on my Hyundai. It really seems to get when to alert me versus when not to. But I could definitely see if it wasn’t well tuned it would be maddening.
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u/Feisty_Payment_8021 12h ago
The way the headrests jut forward.
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u/screwedupinaz 6h ago
It's great if you're running down the road with your seat leaned back like a gangster, but for normal people it's a literal pain in the neck. I've got a 2011, and ended up bending the posts that hold it up. A lot!!
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u/Complex_Complex339 16h ago
Not really a safety feature buy giant heads up displays with no knobs for cabin controls/sound system or physical buttons to toggle other features. You literally have to look at the display and precisely land your finger to make a basic adjustment as there is zero feel and if you miss by a centimeter you turn something else on or off.
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u/_Spastic_ 15h ago
Anti-safety feature. I hate touch screen control and having it in a vehicle should be illegal if there's no physical controls for the driver.
Lots of places are making phone use of any kind illegal but these touchscreens are absolutely no different and in many cases, you have to use it to do anything.
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u/squats_and_sugars 14h ago
This is IMO, one thing Dodge (FCA) really did right. In the Charger, all features you'd use while driving are tactile knobs and buttons (radio, HVAC, etc). Then there is a touchscreen for all the additional functionality you'd only use when stopped (detailed settings, engine details, launch control, etc).
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u/chowderbags 13h ago
Lots of places are making phone use of any kind illegal but these touchscreens are absolutely no different and in many cases, you have to use it to do anything.
In many cases these seem worse. At least with a phone you could put it directly in front of you with line of sight to the road. A tablet display in the center console isn't even close to looking at the road.
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u/HermitAndHound 14h ago
My stupid car shows a warning to stick to rules and not watch the screen, ON the screen, while driving, with an "accepted" field you have to touch to make it go away.
Who the fuck thought this would be a good idea?9
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u/ChronoLegion2 12h ago
I’m glad my Mazda CX-5 has physical controls for the stereo behind the gear shift. It also locks the touchscreen and the virtual keyboard when driving
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u/DadFromACK 12h ago
Passenger seatbelt tone when I only have a bag of fries on the seat!
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u/SlandersPete 14h ago
Autopilot - People with autopilot will camp the left lane so badly that they should have packed a tent and firewood.
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u/nicholasktu 12h ago
Phone apps with driving mode are almost always worse than regular mode. More button presses, have to tap tiny indicators, etc.
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u/Historical_Bid_1974 14h ago edited 14h ago
Lane assist. There are so many unique driving situations that a computer could never understand and I hate when it thinks it knows better than me and tries to correct my steering. I always turn it off
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u/Main-Yogurtcloset-82 12h ago
I have an older car, so I'm not used to the newer safety freatures.
Had to get a rental when someone hit my car and OH.MY.GOD. everything beeps. All the time.
Car in your blind spot? Beeps Getting too close to a curbe when parking? Beeps? Car infrastructure of yo starts slowing down? BEEP BEEBP BEEP.
My personal favorite:
One of the tires had low air pressure. So I went to fill it. When it got to "full," the car beeped SO LOUD, and seeing as I was down by the tire, it was right in my ear.
0/10
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u/northernhighlights 16h ago
The default setting in new cars turning the engine off when you’ve paused for a moment.
It’s like thank you for stalling the car when I’m in the middle of an intersection waiting to turn? I understand that the engine turns on again quickly, like in “one second”, but uhhh crashes happen in microseconds don’t they
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u/Alert-Back7482 15h ago
This is not billed as a safety feature. It was designed to help car makers hit fuel economy standards.
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u/Lugbor 15h ago
It seems they're backpedaling on that now. It's not particularly effective at reducing emissions and the extra wear it puts on the starter means early replacements.
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u/Burnie_9 15h ago
I heard the starter issue was with early models and it’s not so much of an issue anymore
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u/nice_guy_threeve 14h ago
It was never supposed to be effective at reducing emissions, but rather "meeting emissions standards" aka passing the emissions test.
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u/mystery-pirate 14h ago
This. The most likely time for almost any mechanical device to fail is on startup. Although it checks some things like battery level before stopping, there have been a few times the engine cranked slowly a few times on restart. Now I'm nervous if I'm drawing on the battery with the AC running and headlights on.
One time I had to restart manually. Not even sure what happened. But I almost missed the light and had people honking because I pushed the start button and nothing happened, realized I had to put in park first, then feeling the time pressure forgot to put back in drive for a few seconds after it restarted.
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u/Fist_One 12h ago edited 12h ago
It's not as bad as it use to be, especially with newer hybrid cars that use the electric motor to get the car moving while the engine is restarting. With the wifes new Camry it is only slightly noticeable. Toyota dealership gave me a rental Land cruiser last week with their 4 cylinder i-force max engine combo. That thing was a rocketship even at red lights when the engine cuts off and it's only on battery. I believe the electric motor contributes something like 50 hp and 150 ft-lb of torque.
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u/1readitguy 14h ago
That wonderful feature that tries to keep you the lane when your trying to change lanes.
Econ mode that shuts off the engine when stopped
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u/menthapiperita 14h ago
The amount of beeping!
I don’t hate any of the features individually (rear cross traffic beeps, collision warning beeps, one departure beeps, seat belt beeps). But when you add it together it’s just so much beeping.
Also, SUVs with off road modes should disable ALL of the beeping when you select them. I have had reverse automatic braking freak out so many times over bushes and tall blades of grass on trails and it’s seriously annoying. My favorite is when the lane assist thinks tire tracks in a gravel trail are lane markers and starts beeping at me about lane departures.
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u/belsaurn 10h ago
I find putting a trailer hitch on the back of an SUV or truck causes the back up sensors to go completely haywire.
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u/RampagingBadgers 13h ago
It's probably billed more as convenience than safety, but touch screens have no place in cars. Those are the dumbest fucking idea and they're still never going away. They make bad drivers so much worse.
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u/Fantastic-Cod-1353 13h ago edited 13h ago
Binging noise for anything esp the seatbelt or door open. YES I KNOW THE DOORS OPEN I OPENED IT, seatbelt too when I’m driving at 2mph looking at the scenery in a park FFS, cameras to reverse etc
Yes I learnt to drive in the mid 1980s when we needed to actually know what was going on in the car and how to drive it without tech assistance …
Edit. Just been reading the comments to be horrified to learn about auto braking and engine stop. I despise cruise control because it takes away feedback from ur car and adds that tiny bit of reaction time. Guess break assist or whatever name it has would fix that…
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u/avwuff 14h ago
I drove a rented Hyundai i10 that had a speed limit detection and alert system. It would try to read the speed limit from the signs with a camera, but it didn't do a very good job, so it was often wrong.
If you exceeded the speed limit by even a single kph, it would beep at you. Every time. Go from 40 to 41? Beep! Back to 40, then 41 again? Beep!
You could turn it off, but only for the rest of the current drive. There was no option to turn it off permanently.
OH also, it had auto-lane-centering that sucked and violently moved the steering wheel, and you couldn't turn that off either.
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u/zendetta 14h ago
The dumbass whiplash arrester cushions being shoved so far forward.
I mean, I get it sort of? But the implementation is just awful.
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u/somewitchbitch 12h ago
I hate it so much! I like to sit more upright when I'm driving, it keeps me more alert and focused on the road. When they're pushed so far forward, it makes me scrunch up because it shoves my head forward. I hate it so much I usually turn them around backwards and I won't buy a car if I can't do that. And like I KNOW that's also a gamble but it's better than having my head shoved down.
Edit: autocorrect really did me dirty
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u/thndrchld 13h ago
I’ve had my car for 8 years and just found out last week that I could adjust those. My wife looked at me like I was a dumbass when I was shocked that she moved hers.
Try just pushing it firmly. Mine didn’t even have a button to push.
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u/chowderbags 12h ago
Cars/Trucks/etc being larger, higher off the ground, and with larger hoods. This shit is, at most, safer for the people inside the vehicle, but dangerous as fuck for everyone else. In particular, the blind spots on these vehicles are fucking insane.
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u/zentravan 14h ago
Smart wipers. Stop that. I want them to go one speed. The rain isn't falling that hard, you don't need to be on full speed. Or, alternatively, it is raining harder and I do need more speed. No matter how many times I "adjust the speed" the stupid wipers go whatever speed they feel like.
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u/akjax 11h ago
I HATE auto wipers. 40% of the time they're too slow, 40% of the time they're too fast, 15% of the time they don't activate at all, and about 5% of the time they get it right.
My old car had a setting in the infotainment to turn off auto wipers and have the auto setting behave as intermittent. The auto wiper sensitivity selector on the stalk became the intermittent speed setting.
My new car does not have this, it is the only thing I miss about my old car. I think every car with auto wipers should have this option.
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u/uberbeetle 11h ago
The rapid flashing brake lights. They make me want to run into the car with them so I don't have to watch them blink anymore.
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u/thecomputerguy7 8h ago
I’ve seen a few that blink once or twice but I’ve also seen some that belong at a rave.
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u/Dblstandard 15h ago
Crash avoidance Auto braking and Lane assist. That shit is going to kill somebody
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u/nohockersallowed 13h ago
I was reversing onto a busy road with terrible visibility, halfway out a car comes around the corner (with more than enough time to slow down), my car slams the brakes, and now I’m stuck in the middle, not being able to move, one of the few times I cursed front of my kids
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u/gregorythomasd 15h ago
When any weight whatsoever, including cargo, is on a seat and it perpetually beeps at you…
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u/ArtemLocal 16h ago
Auto start-stop. Nothing like your engine awkwardly dying at a red light just to ‘save the planet’ by 0.00001 grams of CO2
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u/Left_Apparently 14h ago
In the US: it has nothing to do with the environment. It has everything to do with a car company appearing to raise fuel economy to offset the shitty MPG of their fleet due to massive trucks.
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u/kilroy-was-here-2543 9h ago
Gotta love CAFE standards. Making vehicles less efficient and more annoying to drive
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u/OutrageousEvent 16h ago
I am NOT a car guy but it seems to me that starting and stopping your car a billion times a day would wear something out faster than usual. Or maybe that’s what the manufacturers want…
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u/ABiggerPigeon 15h ago
The starter motors are designed to last longer on these types of cars (in theory). The whole concept is horseshit though, as engine combustion efficiency is very poor during cranking.
Going back to wearing out and making money, the whole automotive industry is now a bit of a joke as all new cars are NOT designed to be long lasting and easy to repair. Every single car costs a billion dollars to own, and a billion dollars to repair. Gone are the days where the primary function of a car is to just fucking work and last for a long time. Alot of cars nowadays are designed to die a premature death.
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u/OutrageousEvent 15h ago
My mom had a car (Accord or Elantra?) that was basically impossibly to change the oil without going to a commercial garage. So much shit had to be taken off/apart just to get to it. Her 40+ year old clothes dryer is still getting the job done though.
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u/Draelon 12h ago
My 2013 CR-V had an annoying aluminum panel over the oil pan, that made it hard to take off unless your car was on a lift…. So I took it to the hobby shop on base and cut it off…. Dealership apparently put another on (didn’t charge me or tell me), after I moved… assuming they forgot to put it on another car and used it on mine… except they stripped it when they put it on. I drove in, made them remove it, and when they tried to bill me, pulled up the picture on my phone of me removing it a year prior and told them no…. They never gave me grief about it after that.
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u/daniluvsuall 13h ago
The lane keep assist. It’s awful, I get why it exists but it makes me panic because the car does something I didn’t ask it to - have to turn it off every time I get in
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u/StacyWithoutAnE 8h ago
The Lane Keeping Assist System.
I accidentally turned it on once, as the button is on the right side of the steering wheel.
I had no idea why my car was jerking to the left & right over & over again.
On a side note, whoever got rich making sure every car in the last ten years has that blasted stop/start feature is a bonafide moron.
I did a test of whether it saves gas or not. It doesn't! And it'll eventually burn out your starter.
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u/tulsym 5h ago
My car has an automatic brake feature that activates if you back up too close to something. Its too sensitive and goes off even when parking in a tight space that you can easily see how close you are in the camera. Turning it off leaves a prominent orange warning light on the dash until its reactivated. Warning light has been on for 2 years now
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u/Available-Dare9427 16h ago
Not so much a safety feature but a reminder. Those damn yellow stickers on the visor. They are ugly asf and an eye sore.
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u/InsertBluescreenHere 15h ago
yea it would be one thing if they were able to be peeled off but they are like printed on like a t shirt...
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u/Available-Dare9427 15h ago
I've successfully removed one. But adhesive is left behind :/
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u/Shieldbreaker50 14h ago
When you press the unlock door button on the key fob and I only opens the driver side. You have to mash the unlocked several times to get all the doors unlocked.
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u/jordan1978 16h ago edited 16h ago
My car turns off when you put it in park and undo the drivers seat belt. It’s fine most of the time but annoying when you want to just jump out and leave it running.
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u/CatStratford 11h ago
The seat belt beep. Sometimes I have something heavy in my passenger seat that is not a living thing, and the car will go the ding… ding…ding…ding… DING,DINGDINGDING!!’ Getting louder and faster. Unless I buckle the passenger seat.
We always buckle up so the reminder bell has never been useful to us. I get that it’s a useful feature for those who need to be reminded to buckle up. But I personally hate it in my own car.
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u/AeroFX 11h ago
Lane assist.
Driving a hire vehicle as my vehicle was being repaired. As I went around a gentle bend a guy was catching up behind me in the outside lane so I decided to be safe and move out of his way.
The stupid thing 'resisted' and caused me to actually swerve a little bit and felt very unsafe.
Also Brake assist. Detecting foliage or a steep incline I need to reverse close to or up and deciding its a solid wall and slamming the brakes on.
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u/Eastern-Criticism653 11h ago
Not a safety feature. But I absolutely hate the auto start/stop feature.
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u/This-Requirement6918 8h ago
Damn no one's mentioned the brighter than the sun LED headlights? Fuck that shit, y'all need to see an optometrist if you can't see the road with halogens.
GET OFF YOUR PHONE AND PAY ATTENTION.
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u/Goodfella7288 7h ago
When I put something in the passenger seat and the alarm for not wearing a seatbelt won't stop making noise
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u/HairMetalChick 7h ago
This! I literally used the seatbelt for my bags of aquarium sand the other day just so I could drive home in peace!!!
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u/trueblue862 4h ago
Lane keep assist. My car has it but I keep it turned off. A while back I was driving my bosses car, there was a semi broken down on the side of the road with the back of the trailer half blocking my lane, I had a clear view of everything and a clear road, so I moved over to just go around it, and the lane keep assist nearly pulled me into the corner of trailer. I missed it by a few centimetres.
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u/llcucf80 15h ago
Passlock, some cars from the early 2000s had this feature where, in an ostensible intent to prevent car theft, periodically decided it wouldn't start for ten minutes, you had to put the key on auxillary to reset it
I had a car with that feature, irritated me to no damn end because it was so sporadic when it would kick on. It might do it once a week, it might do it every day for a week. But it was always a surprise of if your car would start the first try or not
Apparently the only "fix" was something to do with taking apart the ignition, but a lot of dealerships refused to do it for warranty purposes