My new car is too bossy

[PolkaDotMankini]

I got a new car a couple of weeks ago. It's pretty (if already muddy) but the bossiness is never-ending.

If I change lane on the motorway and there's a car next to the lane I'm going into, it flashes up hazard lights on the dashboard and wing mirror, beeps loudly and nudges the steering wheel away.

When I stop the car, it flashes up a reminder to check the back seats for people and belongings.

And the final straw: it sent me a text reminding me to lock it. I was sitting in it at the time, minding my own business in the car park

AIBU to find this annoying? I particularly dislike it screeching and wrenching the wheel round when I'm changing lanes. It's dangerous!

Something else my current car does is insists on constantly telling me on the screen what speed I'm doing in kilometers per hour. It's a UK-spec car, with an actual speedometer in miles, a trip-clock in miles and a mileometer in, erm, miles - so why would it think I wanted that? Kilometers mean nothing to me, so it might as well be programmed to repeat a piece of random info, but in Turkish.

Granted, it doesn't beep or anything, but it's just extra useless clutter whose only purpose is to potentially distract the driver. If I drove to France, it's too small to be a practical way to safely monitor my speed in kilometers there; so what is it for? Why can I not switch it off in the settings?

Ours has got lane keep and beeps if it goes too near to a hedge 😆

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll I’d forgotten about the gear change bossiness!

I've caught it doing something useful! A low tyre pressure warning that tells me which tyre is low. Get in.

That doesn't excuse it nearly making me fail at the car wash earlier by requiring me to confirm that I wanted to be in neutral by finding and pressing a tiny button (one of many) on the steering wheel to confirm that I wanted to be in neutral. It put me in Park with the hand brake on until I found it. The car wash attendant thought I was a right muppet. He kept telling me to put it in neutral and not to brake. I was trying but the bastarding thing obviously thinks I'm too dim-witted to choose my own gear.

Cringe! I've just realised that I typed 'kilometer' several times when I obviously meant 'kilometres'! Foreign (European) measurement and foreign (American) spelling, d'oh!!

My mum has a new car and when looking round it I found a button marked SOS. Thinking it was a new fangled way of putting the hazards on I pressed it only to be connected to the emergency services!! When I explained that we didn't need the police, fire service or an ambulance but I had pressed a button in the car I was met with a resigned recognition that made me think she has had many calls like this. I did wonder why it was behind a glass screen 😅

I wish ours told us which tyre was soft, rather than it always being the third, or last one I put the blessed air hose in. And that it was simple to reset, when the tyre has been reinflated.

Good lord. I have a 2004 Corolla, only my second car, and it’s quite bossy enough with lights about the handbrake, airbag and driver seatbelt, and screaming if the headlight isn’t turned off (for which I’m grateful). I couldn’t deal with a car like yours, too distracting! Is it possible to disable these features, especially it taking over the steering wheel?

Mine would never shut up with all the garden spiders that set up shop in its wing mirrors! 😄

OMG that was priceless! 🤣🤣🤣

Mine has acute reversing anxiety and it drives me insane. I reverse onto our driveway and we have a bike shed there too. The car beeps and panics every time I do it. I find myself explaining that I've been reversing past the bike shed for ten years and never hit it yet!

So did I! 😼

Believe me sensors and built in speed reduction are far faster than the human eye. They don't just stop in the middle of the road - they slow to a stop and yes it may be fierce as the idea is to stop an impact.

Believe me sensors and built in speed reduction are far faster than the human eye. They don't just stop in the middle of the road - they slow to a stop and yes it may be fierce as the idea is to stop an impact.

Great in an actual emergency, where the human needs help; but why do you actually need them to panic and stop you fiercely or even slow you to a stop at the side of the road at all, rather than just letting you get on with overtaking a vehicle or obstacle in the course of normal driving?

It's the motoring equivalent of a fire brigade rushing in with high-pressure hoses, flooding your house and 'saving your life' when you're just putting on the gas hob to heat up a saucepan of soup.

I can actually well see fully driverless cars eventually being forced in, under protest - with humans banned outright from driving - rather than being welcomed in as a progressive benefit that the general population genuinely choose to adopt.

You don't really get it, do you?

You don't really get it, do you?

What don't I get? People are talking on here about their experiences where new automated features - supposedly for safety - are sometimes actually distracting them, trying to steer them into danger and overruling their good driving decisions, that are based on having eyes and a human brain and not artificial intelligence based on algorithms.

Are you seriously telling me that, with an older car that didn't have these features, you would deliberately steer into a huge pothole that could buckle your wheel, rather than safely edging around it, just to ensure that you were in the exact middle of the lane at all times?

I do accept that these features can sometimes be very helpful indeed, but that they can sometimes just hinder, and other times can actually reduce safety.

Please do tell me; I'm genuinely not understanding what you're getting at, that I'm missing.

It’s interesting because it seems to have happened so rapidly. I bought a Rav 4 made in 2019 and it had a great camera, good cruise control and everything had to be switched ON rather than opted out of. But no “driver assist” at all.
Then I now have a 2022 Cupra and it’s full of features that have made the driving experience worse and have to be opted out of rather than into, and yet the reversing camera is worse.
Im due to get another new car next year (as this one is a lease) and I’m dreading the day that the “assist” features can’t be turned off.

That settles it - I'm keeping my 11 year old car going for ever.

I thought DP's current car was bad enough with its propensity to set all 4 (different) proximity alarms beeping at once if you have to pull over into a hedge in the lanes to let another car past.

It's been coming for a while though. I was driving DP's new company car in the early 90s when this disembodied voice told me the boot wasn't properly closed. I had no idea ( nor did DP) that it could do that and I almost drove into a tree.

Im due to get another new car next year (as this one is a lease) and I’m dreading the day that the “assist” features can’t be turned off.

Before long, the only one 'annoying feature' that the cars will be turning off will be.... the likes of you and !!