To hate that the car decides how to drive?

[Pouffeycat]

I got a new car last month. I have been driving to work and back and not much more. But I have noticed that the steering has been pulling at certain points. I thought maybe it wasn't aligned properly...
It pings at me if I am not in the centre of a marked lane.
Last night it slammed the brakes on when something ran over the road in the dark.
I live rurally.
I don't like not being in charge of the car.
I have been driving for 30 years and have never had any accidents.
I feel unsafe in this thing.
If someone had been behind me last night in a non smug car,there would have been an accident. I wasn't being safe, because the car took over!
Looking online it seems they make it hard to turn the systems off.
Am I just a dinosaur that needs to get with the technology?

Just to back up other posters

• My LKA has an indicator on the speedo. If it’s green it’s on and in operation. White it’s on but not in operation e.g. when indicating. Not displaying at all - it’s turned off.
• my LKA kicks in at 38mph. So overtaking cyclists at 20mph, 30mph, or moving across roundabout lanes is absolutely not a problem (and you should be indicating in most of these situations anyway, see below)
• it turns off when you indicate
• it turns off when you force yourself into a new lane without indicating. The resistance is not strong, you do not have to push hard to overcome it. It will let you move across motorway lanes without indicating. My one beeps at a couple times to tell me off. If LKA is turned off it doesn’t beep.
• Mine works from a camera in top part of the windscreen identifying road markings. Most rural roads don’t have lane markings so it doesn’t turn on at all. It will also not work on roads that clearly need some work done to refresh their lines/markings
• It turns off at the push of a single button. You are likely to have to do this every time you start the car (note: start stop does not affect it so it’s only from the initial set off of your journey)

It’s really not a big deal. And anyone saying they have to wrestle with their car is over exaggerating the strength of the force. I can overcome it with one finger holding the bottom of the wheel and moving between lanes without indicating (not that I’d do that as I don’t drive a BMW or Audi)

If a car hits the car in front then they did not leave sufficient gap. Fail to see how it could be the car in front's fault?!

I’ve been turning off the auto braking feature since my car decided to do an emergency stop for no reason - possible because I was going uphill on a slight bend so the sensors caught a stationary cyclist at a junction. I realised that I needed to turn it off at the start of every journey so it became part of my routine.

Then after a few weeks/months, I noticed that it was switched off automatically so maybe the car “learnt” to not activate it. I check every now and again and it still seems to be deactivated.

I have a Ford Puma.

I had to get some new specs though to be able to drive the car as I am borderline needing distance glasses so tend to wear them when driving for perfect clarity and also need reading glasses. So I needed a reading lens for the sat nav/radio/phone screen and the useful icons on the dashboard as well as a long distance lens. So I plumped for varifocals which were rather expensive!