CARS are not just about driving, they’re about mastering the ART of machinery!
Want to feel alive on a steep hill? Forget simplicity, EMBRACE the handbrake juggle and the dance of the clutch pedal!
“I could simply shift to D, but where’s the thrill in that?” - A call to arms by the Connoisseurs of Complexity.
DEFEND your right to a gearbox that requires three limbs and a keen sense of timing to operate!
CELEBRATE MANUAL TRANSMISSIONS (These are the cryptic contraptions deciphered only by the Worthy)
ZIGZAG MAZE? - Challenge accepted! VOLUME KNOB? - Twist and shout your way through the gears! ??? - Only the true driver knows!
“Please engage the starter motor.” - “Certainly, after I adjust the choke and check the distributor!” “I fear no hill start, for I have the power of the clutch and the arcane knowledge of the gearbox!”
Join the ranks of those who drive not for convenience, but for the pure, unadulterated challenge.”
Or the car will be like “You’re creeping forward with your driver’s door open? I’m going to slam in to park without even asking first then all my dash lights will be going full xmas mode while I beep incessantly. Because fuck you, that’s why.”
If I’m at a t-intersection with a car parked on the side of the road in front, I’ll start turning, car thinks I’m about to t-bone someone, red lights and alarms everywhere. Scares the fucking shit out of me. The first time it happened I slammed the brakes on and fortunately didn’t get rear-ended.
That system has never done anything but cause me to almost have an accident and to turn it off is buried away in the settings each time I start the car. And the lane keeping assist is so dumb at understanding how people take an apex on corners, or dealing with the faded lines. “Give me the fucking wheel back!” tugLURCH “Fuck!”
It’s like learning to drive with my hyper-anxious mother in the passenger seat all over again, flipping out and unexpectedly trying to intervine over nothing she thought was something.
I’m so glad to see I’m not the only one with issues with those “driver nanny” systems, as I call them. The one in our Mazda regularly false alarms in left turn lanes, and occasionally triggers on signposts and shit while turning right. I had to turn off the lane assist; the damn thing kept steering me back toward obstacles I was actively trying to avoid (I guess I’m “supposed” to swerve to avoid them, but that was not how I learned to drive - swerving is something that should be done only in an emergency, and an obstacle I can see well ahead isn’t an emergency). The emergency braking alarm is occasionally triggered by cars parked along the road on a curve.
It doesn’t help that the alarm in that car is like nails on a chalkboard to me - it just instantly pisses me off. Why can’t it just be a nice little chime or something? Unfortunately, we didn’t hear the alarm until we were getting the overview from the salesman during delivery - during the test drive, the salesman had started it without us there and drove it to the door, and we just hopped in, then we didn’t trigger it during the test drive. The first time I heard it was when I started the car during delivery - “WHAT IS THAT NOISE?” Salesman: “Oh it’s just the driver seat belt alarm.” “Oh.” Then a few days later, on our way to work, it gave us its first false alarm, and I almost hit the brakes because I thought there was something seriously wrong with the car and I should stop driving it. Nope, it was just misinterpreting the situation.
It’s to the point where I will only drive the car on local trips - if we’re going out of town, I will take the pickup. It’s more expensive to drive, but so much more comfortable, and it doesn’t have blaring alarms screeching at me.
Unfortunately I think practically all cars these days have that shit, so I won’t have any options when my wife finally lets me get rid of the Mazda. In my ideal world, we’d buy a 2016 Honda Accord V6 (the last year they made them with V6 engines) and just keep that running forever. However, I doubt my wife would agree to that plan.
I would REALLY like to see the crash statistics for those cars. Theoretically the frequency and/or severity of crashes should be reduced, right? But road fatalities are up the last few years…which may indicate those safety features aren’t helping, or maybe they’re making people too confident, or maybe they are helping and the situation would be even worse without them. But no one seems to have that info.
A close friend of mine also hates her new Mazda for all the “helping” it tries to do! It sounds like they really botched that. I’d be demanding a refund for an undrivable car.
It’s extremely irritating. I didn’t get into the frustration with the adaptive cruise (at least they fixed the nauseating issues it had originally) and other irritations I have with that car.
But, I will say: When I turn things off in the Mazda, like the thing that steers the car back toward the center of the lane, it fucking stays off. I’ve heard a lot of other vehicles turn that shit back on every time you start the car. Christ.
This really is a bad trend of half-baked half-measures between human drivers and fully autonomous vehicles. There isn’t a lot of room for “semi-autonomous” operation - humans generally expect to either be fully in control of the situation, or to relinquish all control to another (ignoring backseat drivers). Anything else can be annoying and unexpected unless done very subtly, carefully, and correctly.
My new VW has all of these sensors and safety features, but manages to not freak out until something is truly imminent, obviously properly accounting for speed and trajectory, and with only gentle nudges when the situation is less dire (e.g., lane drift), but more aggressively in the face of real danger (backing up into incoming traffic).
Yeah. I’m reminded of a story out of Reagan National Airport 10-15 years ago, when the single controller in the tower fell asleep overnight. Sounds bad, right? Except that they cannot take a book or music or anything else. They’re alone at night because traffic is so light. Basically, they’re supposed to sit there all night, alone, on alert, doing nothing other than waiting for an occasional plane to arrive. It’s insane to think anyone could be able to do that without falling asleep sooner or later.
For cars, yeah - when I’m driving, my attention is fully on the car and my environment. If the car is driving, my attention is going to wander, and if it needs me to pop back into driving mode, that switch is going to take a moment or two. This is just human nature.
Oh and you know what’s even better? Because we’re all relying on our cars to do the driving most of the time, we’ll all get worse at actually driving, so when we are called upon in that emergency…it might not go very well, even if we do mode switch successfully instantly.
Driving a modern car has opened my eyes to how far off truly autonomous cars really are.
Autonomous cars are probably closer than you think. It’s a hard problem, and half-assery won’t cut it, but others’ failures aren’t necessarily indicative of an inability to succeed.
Maybe. But I just think about the myriad of driving situations I regularly encounter, and the sheer amount of logic required to deal with it. Construction. Debris in the road. Cyclists. Deer. Snow. Rain. Road closures.
Malfunctioning traffic lights - just yesterday we got caught by a traffic light that wasn’t giving the left-turn arrow, backing up traffic quite a bit. We were able to change course and work around it and still make our appointment on time, but how long would an autonomous vehicle sit and wait that situation out? Will an autonomous vehicle be able to safely make a left turn against traffic with only a standard green signal (no arrow)? Or would it be stuck waiting for an arrow that never comes? In theory, it could do it, but the reality seems a very long way off.
I can see it possibly working on highways, and certainly that is the primary focus now, but even then there are weird things that happen, like crashes, construction, and debris on the road.
If the roads were rebuilt with some sort of “track” (an electronic track, I mean, not a railroad track) that the cars could use, then the problem becomes much easier for the car (though you still have random variables). Of course, the problem with that is rebuilding the roads to have that track. That alone would take decades of work.
I suspect human driving is going to be around for a very long time, even if, say, highways can be handled autonomously.
I could be wrong, and if it does happen, then I’ll be wrong. But I also recall being told when I was 8 or 10 that by the time I turned 16, I’d just tell the car where to go and it would do it. Now I’m closing in on 50 and it’s STILL a long way off.
Well, the good news is that there are a lot of clever people already thinking about the same things you are, the necessary prerequisite technology actually now exists, and there are several companies actively working on it and seeing success.
Some of it must be regulatory… car chimes when you open the door and stuff I know is NA-only, even brand new cars in Europe know to STFU unless they have something actually meaningful to say. In my experience even the seat belt alarm doesn’t turn on under a certain speed (somewhere around 10-15 km/h on my car I think, at least it shuts the fuck up when maneuvering in a parking lot).
False alarms on the nannies is highly brand dependent. On my 2018 VW I’ve had it freak out maybe 10 times over 60k km, it’s rare and almost every time it was understandable why it would freak out (and never did it actually hit the brakes for me for a false alarm). So I’ve never felt the need to disable the nannies.
I don’t mind the alarms for things that are actually issues - open the door and the keys are in the ignition, or I left the lights on, or even the seat belt reminder when I start the car. But when I’m rolling along and everything is fine, a loud screeching alarm out of nowhere is extremely disturbing…and doubly so when I realize that there was actually nothing I was doing wrong. It really is like having a backseat driver screaming at me, and it pisses me off. I have screamed at the car to shut the fuck up on a few occasions. God I hate it.
And, I promise, I’m not driving aggressively or anything like that to trigger this shit. I’m really not. I’m a pretty careful driver; our other car is from 1999 - I bought it new and still own it and drive it, so I must be doing something correctly. I’m not saying I never make mistakes, either. I just try to keep them small enough to not have huge consequences.
Yes, one time I did get a little close to the vehicle in front of me that was turning and triggered the BRAKE alarm (not the actual brakes, just the alarm)…okay, I don’t do that any more. But I think that might be the ONLY time it has actually alerted me somewhat correctly…and even then things were well under control and I wasn’t going to hit them; it was just closer than it liked. The rest of the time…it’s like “I know more than you.”
I understand some people are busy doing other things instead of driving and need that stuff. Fine, they can have it. But why do I have to pay to have it in my car? And any minor crash is going to cost that much more to repair, too.
Yeah I have screamed at the car a few times as well for backseat driving (and I’m also someone who disables the satnav voice because I hate being interrupted by someone yelling at me), but at least with VW it’s extremely infrequent despite having driven quite aggressively for a couple years before I stopped commuting by car.
It just take one time of it slamming the brakes for one pedestrian to make up for it 100 times over, so I’m fine with it.
(Also specifically the minor crashes will not break the emergency braking systems thankfully, AFAIK it’s made up of a battery of sensors on top of the windshield, a computer, and hooks into the braking system alongside the ABS/ESP)
You might be right about the sensors. All I know was that we were in an extremely heavy rainstorm - a time when it would have been nice to have the lane assist - and the system was like, “Ha. I’m useless here and shutting down. You’re on your own!” I was assuming some sensors in the bumper or whatever were overwhelmed, but a camera-based system might explain that, too.
One of the main reasons I still like older cars. I consider it harassment when I get ding donged to death for not wearing the seatbelt for a two minute drive down the road, if this shit ever happened to me the car is getting fuckin sold ASAP
I don’t know how many studies have been done on this, but I have a conspiracy theory that it’s a tradeoff for becoming more analytical and STEM minded basically. The number of STEM jobs have exploded in the millennial and gen-z generations, especially in the West where most of this stereotype seems to be concentrated in, which deal more with abstract thinking and memorisation as opposed to working with your hands and very high motor coordination, as is required in things like manufacturing or agriculture. We just don’t train our muscle memory as much anymore due to a higher likelihood of not really having to anymore. (Which I guess also implies the inverse of the stereotype of boomers “being stupid” and prone to not thinking of the long term consequences of things being due to a much higher proportion of them working more labour focused jobs where analytical thinking is less important so they could just forget all the things they learned in school. I mean it’s surprisingly common too see boomers thinking stuff like “windmills cause cancer” or “vaccines cause autism.”)
I also firmly believe that you can get better at both analytical thinking and working with your hands if you make an effort to practice (don’t practice by driving distracted though). The brain is highly adaptable regardless of your age or upbringing.
These are valid criticisms but you approached this conversation in the worst way possible. If you are trying to get people on your side, this ain’t it bro.
That’s a good question, I actually have no idea where it comes from originally. We only have two examples on this thread, though I’m sure I’ve seen a third one on Lemmy a while ago.
Most of not-North-America drive around in manual vehicles. Have to wonder what the allure is of something which is kind of mundane and boring. When I’m driving a manual I’m not thinking I’m Steve McQueen, instead I’m just constantly shifting gears between sets of traffic lights. If people really want to connect with a car, then buy an EV. Instant torque and responsiveness without screwing around with extra sticks and pedals or suffering the rubber banding in some automatics.
I don’t see the appeal of manuals. I just want to get from point A to point B, I don’t want to have to think about it anymore than necessary. Driving to me is a chore and a hazard.
It depends on what sort of experience you want, what roads you drive, whether it’s mostly country or city, do track running etc.
I like manual more for various reasons. I don’t do much city driving nor do I get stock in heavy traffic ques. I drive country roads and highways and do a few track days. With a manual I get a much more satisfying experience, as it requires more skill to make fast and/or smooth shifts. The tactile feel of the manual gear shifter makes me feel more connected to my car. Flappy pads shifting automatic doesn’t require the same skill nor has the same tactile feel. It’s awesome for city and ques though.
I don’t think we have the same idea of what it means to be connected with the car. Most EVs aren’t seeking to have you drive them, they are seeking to drive you, imho (except maybe the Hyundai N range thats coming, but only because it tries to manic cars).
Nope. I pay a bit extra for electricity from renewables. You could argue that the stuff that comes out of the socket still is the energy-mix that is produced at the time, but my invoice says something along the lines of “x kWh of electricity generated from renewable sources” and x kWh of electricity from renewable sources will have been fed into the grid over the time frame covered by my invoice. Good enough for me.
You don’t need high capacity assault style sporting features on a car. Manual transmissions are sporting features. Any car with two or more sporting features is a sports car and no civilian needs to own something like that for transportation.
Well, where I live automatic transmission is an extra feature that you pay extra for. And I thought that automatic transmission allows you generally to accelerate faster, because you can have much more gears and gear switching is faster as well. So to me that seems like a sport feature.
Someone bring this sniveling fool to me! I grew up on a farm and when I learned to drive, I started with a 5x3 manual double stick and then “graduated” to a 15 speed. I will have this fool crying in his pablum within a mile.
I’m all for automatics. What transmission you drive does not lessen the driving experience.
Add comment