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Driver unfriendly car features


doubleyeller

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With you on the XM parking brake though.

A random "like" on this oldish post makes me scratch my head... Why was I so anti that XM parking brake?

 

My W203 has the same arrangement and it's fine.

 

I think it's simply because the Mercedes arrangement is better put together: I remember the XM one going on and off with some awful noises. The pedal doesn't travel so far in the Merc, so it doesn't pop off with such a terrifying bang (and a pedal movement that could launch something into orbit).

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If not already mentioned, I’d like to add Day Running Lights to this one. Designed to make cars clearer to see in the daytime in poor weather because people are too lazy to turn auto lights off or switch headlights on manually. Then, at night, when they jump in switch the key and head out the dash is already lit, there is light emitting from the front and they’re away.....clueless to the fact they haven’t actually got their lights on. I’ve seen more cars without headlights on at night than I did before.

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If not already mentioned, I’d like to add Day Running Lights to this one. Designed to make cars clearer to see in the daytime in poor weather because people are too lazy to turn auto lights off or switch headlights on manually. Then, at night, when they jump in switch the key and head out the dash is already lit, there is light emitting from the front and they’re away.....clueless to the fact they haven’t actually got their lights on. I’ve seen more cars without headlights on at night than I did before.

Nothing wrong with the cars then, just the drivers :)
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If not already mentioned, I’d like to add Day Running Lights to this one. Designed to make cars clearer to see in the daytime in poor weather because people are too lazy to turn auto lights off or switch headlights on manually. Then, at night, when they jump in switch the key and head out the dash is already lit, there is light emitting from the front and they’re away.....clueless to the fact they haven’t actually got their lights on. I’ve seen more cars without headlights on at night than I did before.

 

...or a least not since it was fashionable for drivers to go about with just marker lights and front fogs on.

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I normally drive the Saab very sedately as there's generally a greyhound in the boot, but I found myself in the rare position of driving it solo yesterday so gave it a few more beans than usual.

 

I've discovered that there's an audible warning when the traction control cuts in. Because half-way around a challenging corner is *exactly* when you want to be distracted by a warning bong.

Another random like on an old post! I think I decided this was the low screenwash warning but I could never be sure.

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What's the crack with the oil pressure gauge on a mk2 mx-5? It's just a switch so just sits at half way or zero. Nothing in between. Totally pointless.

The one in the mk1 seems to fluctuate a little. Not much.

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If not already mentioned, I’d like to add Day Running Lights to this one. Designed to make cars clearer to see in the daytime in poor weather because people are too lazy to turn auto lights off or switch headlights on manually. Then, at night, when they jump in switch the key and head out the dash is already lit, there is light emitting from the front and they’re away.....clueless to the fact they haven’t actually got their lights on. I’ve seen more cars without headlights on at night than I did before.

I notice that Volvo kept on with rear lights as well as fronts on their DRLs  as they always had done (they know a thing or two!).

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If not already mentioned, I’d like to add Day Running Lights to this one. Designed to make cars clearer to see in the daytime in poor weather because people are too lazy to turn auto lights off or switch headlights on manually. Then, at night, when they jump in switch the key and head out the dash is already lit, there is light emitting from the front and they’re away.....clueless to the fact they haven’t actually got their lights on. I’ve seen more cars without headlights on at night than I did before.

Y'know I don't think it's lazyness. If our other, facelift Transit (with auto headlights) decided to just stick with DRL I doubt I could would notice. DRLs are bloody bright at night, the dash doesn't tell you which lights are on specifically and the light switch/dial is utterly perplexing with about 17 options.

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Earlier this Month I happened to be on a business trip to Luxembourg. As it is company policy, I had to get a hire car there. It was something grey and so utterly indistinguishable, that I regularly had to use some remote control thingy that makes the car blink its indicators to identify it in a row of parked cars. That remote control does all kinds of other things, too, that I neither wanted it to do, nor understood. After my answer to some colleagues's question which car I got was 'I haven't got the foggiest' for two days, I decided to check what car it is, but then forgot about it for another day. I then checked in all earnest and knew it for a morning, but had forgotten it the same afternoon.

 

Oh, the point I'm actually trying to make is, that the entire heap was a driver unfriendly feature.

 

No automotive engineer could have possibly come up with something like it, so I assume none were involved and it was designed by a SEM in Bangalore on a computer, like all the other driver unfriendly features that the so called marketing departments try to qualify off as cars since 1986. Thankfully it'll soon be over though, going by the rate they close their factories.

 

When I had to return that thing with a full tank, I was hard pressed to decide whether it needs petrol or diesel. It's impossible to tell from how it was driving and sounding. Thankfully there was a sticker in the filler flap, but I meanwhile forgot what it said.

 

It's pathetic. Seriously.

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Honda CRX Del Sol has 2

 

One is the inner foglight switch being located behind the rear seats, bad enough on it's own, but even worse with the fact that you're constantly turning the things on and off with your elbow every time you change gear.

 

The second being the transtop roof. A phenomenal piece of engineering and a crowd puller in car parks, not so fun if you want to use the boot and need to go round the back, put your key in and wait 30 seconds whilst the rear deck raised for access.....

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Pedant mode on

 

Issignosis was born in Izmir in Turkey. His father was Greek, his mother German. Through politics/capitalism they were both British Subjects and hence so was little Alec. Issignosis very much played on his 'Englishness'. So his style over function came from further east (or west) than Italy.

 

Pedant mode off.

That's interesting I never knew his parents and he were foreign
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Earlier this Month I happened to be on a business trip to Luxembourg. As it is company policy, I had to get a hire car there. It was something grey and so utterly indistinguishable, that I regularly had to use some remote control thingy that makes the car blink its indicators to identify it in a row of parked cars...

 

So what was it?

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That's interesting I never knew his parents and he were foreign

 

It's actually even more complicated - Alec was Greek, Izmir is now in Turkey, but when he was born there it was in Greece. He was a British Subject because his grandfather (and father) worked for a British company who built railways in Greece/Turkey and as a perk senior managers were offered British citizenship.

 

Alec ended up in the UK via Malta. His father was working on the Smyrna-Aydin railway during the Greco-Turkey war of the early 1920's, as the war approached Smyrna the Issignosis family, being British Subjects, were evacuated by the Royal Marines to Malta.

 

As mentioned his mother was a German and is a first cousin, once removed, of Bernd Pischetsrieder, a well known director of BMW.

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So what was it?

Probably an Opel Airbag (this comes from a mate who's wife was given a loan car by the garage, they were talking on the phone and he asked her what it was, she didn't know, he suggested that she looked at the badge, as she was inside the car at the time, she looked at the steering wheel and told him it was a Vauxhall airbag, it turned out to be an Astra, but he now always calls them an Airbag)

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I think it was an Opel Obese, or some such. But don't nail me on that. It could just as well have been a Citroen Chlamydia, a Suzuki Syphilis, a Hyundai Hepatitis, a VW Vipoma, a Gulag Gonorrhea, or any other of those EU mandated UN Agenda 2030 miseries on wheels.
It doesn't matter. All modernz are the same driver unfriendly features anyway and should be avoided at all cost.

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I'll second this, also the blue LEDs used on Police/Ambulance/Fire Engine etc strobes are so overpowering and bright you need sunglasses at night.

 

This is becoming an actual regular thing for me. I'm starting to get migraines driving at night, especially in the Civic.

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The A/C controls on my KIA do my tits in too.

 

I think it's supposed to remember whether air con and recirc is on or off for each position (feet/screen/face etc) but it seems to forget and you'll be driving along to find it's turned the A/C off or on of its own accord, or worse these days, recirculation so you get gassed by filthy stinking diseasel exhaust closing your throat at the next set of traffic lights.

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The A/C controls on my KIA do my tits in too.

 

I think it's supposed to remember whether air con and recirc is on or off for each position (feet/screen/face etc) but it seems to forget and you'll be driving along to find it's turned the A/C off or on of its own accord, or worse these days, recirculation so you get gassed by filthy stinking diseasel exhaust closing your throat at the next set of traffic lights.

Yee air-co for northern euro cars. should be installing heater controls for every seat.

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What’s the game with cars using the front fog lamps as indicators?

They aren't, it's a convenience* feature that turns one foglight on when you're turning, though what good it does I've no idea. Seems to be mainly VAGs with it. Just made me think they had a habit of blowing foglight bulbs.

 

What really annoys me is cars that have excessively bright DRLs (esp BMWs) then they turn off when the indicator goes off. Then they cancel , DRL clicks back on instantly and you get blinded.

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