“Distracted driving” reminded me of another feature of my Kia. It will remember the seat and exterior mirror settings for two drivers. (I think this is common on newer vehicles, but for anyone unfamiliar with feature, after adjusting the seat and exterior mirrors, Driver1 or Driver2 can push two buttons and have the vehicle remember the positions, and then automatically reposition to the already set positions by pushing one button.) So far, so good. I can also adjust the seat while driving. But I cannot save the current position of the seat while driving, and I cannot choose Driver1 or Driver2 while driving. I think this is nuts. The vehicle will let me adjust the seat while in motion but not select the saved setting? In other words, I’m supposed to fiddle with seat height, seat recline, leg length, and mirror position while in motion if I forget to push a button before starting out. And if I do find that the seat or mirror is not quite right, I cannot save the better settings until I’ve stopped (when I will likely forget to do so).
There are a lot of “safety” features like that.
You also can’t pair the radio with a new Bluetooth device while the car is in motion. Makes sense for the driver. Not so much when I’m asking my passenger to do it.
But with all of these “features”, they’re removing all physical controls, so you need to look at the radio (and therefore away from the road) to adjust the air conditioner, or change the radio station or do all kinds of other things that you used to be able to do by feel and muscle memory alone.
The automakers’ commitment to safety seems like a whole lot of theater. Make usage annoying and claim it’s for safety while simultaneously making changes that are definitely not safe.
This reminds me of when I first got my current car (2020 BMW X3). For certain functions, it would say something about “Not permitted while driving,” but there were two confirmation buttons: “Cancel” and “Passenger”. If you pushed the latter, then you could go ahead and do whatever it was you wanted to do! Talk about theater.
P.S. I haven’t seen this type of message lately, so maybe it was removed in a subsequent update.
Yes! Last year I bought a small Nissan van to turn into a camper and it has a touch screen that lets me use it while driving. I was shocked at how much easier it made using CarPlay.
My Mazda forbids using the touchscreen while driving, forcing me to use the awkward spin dial and scroll through all the interface items meaning I have to look at the screen for several seconds to make sure I select the right item, which isn’t nearly as safe as just touching the item I want.
I had always assumed Mazda was mandated by the government to do it that way and all cars worked like that, so I was surprised when the Nissan didn’t work that way.
(I later did a software upgrade to the Mazda and was able to enable touch screen access through a secret menu setting. Now it’s much better!)
A post was split to a new topic: Can’t talk to CarPlay anymore?