I had a car with push button start and a CVT. After putting the first 50 miles on the car, the brake light switch died. Nissan, in their ultimate wisdom, used the brake light switch to tell the computer if you are pressing the brake when starting the car. Well, no brake light switch, no starting the engine. Had to get it towed back to the dealership to get fixed.
I now have a real key and a manual transmission.
Jokes on you, some manual cars also require the brake to be pressed to start them.
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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.”
“Oh no a slight bump in the road. Better shout about it and slam the brakes lmao”
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!” tug LURCH “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.
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
Wear your seatbelt, you ding dong.
ever needed to put something heavy in the passengers seat ? ever needed to move the car a short distance slowly ?
In both cases, wear your seatbelt, you ding dong.
am i required to also put the seatbelt down for the heavy object ? seems a bit unnecessary in both cases :/
My favorite car ever was my 1986 Toyota Corolla manual. It was my mom’s first and then I inherited it in the late 90s. The tire rod snapped one day and it slammed into a parked car. I was more devastated about losing the car than I was what it would cost me in damages.
I drive an automatic now. A Prius. I don’t regret it because it’s a really good car and was a really good investment in terms of savings on gas, but I do miss that Corolla and I really miss the feeling of control I had when I drove a manual.
i remember reading a study when Prius first came out. Over the life of the car, meaning from construction of the parts, to end of life of the vehicle, a Prius pollutes more than a Hummer.
Why is that? I would expect an SUV to pollute more, both in production and over its life span.
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.
This is Lemmy Shitpost, not Sensible Discussion 😆
As someone studying tech, yes please, give me the dummest most rudimentary car with no computer or servos. I don’t want general motors to gather my biometrics or a script kiddy to disable my steering. Dumb technology is best always. Fuck that android auto bs or whatever abomination the manufacturer adds. Just want a speaker with an aux cord so I can listen to my flacs
I love the idea of a sound system that is just an aux cord to a speaker
If I ever win the lottery, I’m hiring a 50 people like you to build an incredibly basic production car together. Make it barely or technically meet the modern technology standards to be road legal in all 50 states, but use the simplest mechanical solution to everything a car needs to do. I assume a lot of systems would have to be installed as a “backup” to the electrical version, but I’d want to build it to be able to function perfectly with all the computers disconnected. Probably ship it with instructions phrased as warnings of what not to do.
As long as the price reflects that absolutely. I feel like one of the reasons cars are getting so pricy is because we are filling them with so much bloat. Ex. Heated seats, power windows, tablets. Like, what happened to a base model car?
Yes, I would want the price to reflect the simplicity, and lack of extras should help with that. Let the aftermarket companies do heated seats and fancy stereos.
Open source car? Lol. Design it as easy to aftermarket as possible. Let aftermarket companies sell full seats and ECT. Use only standard connections and hardware
Surely there is an open source car by now. Some sort of street legal kit?
I do think open source car is the best label to describe what I’m dreaming of. But factory built to take advantage of bulk order pricing for the parts and because people who are actually willing and able to put their own car together are rare.
Nope, at least afaik. Prototyping and building cars by hand (without a whole factory set up to build it) is hard. Not to mention extremely expensive. And you have to build multiple (identical) copies of the prototype to get it street legal, because of crash testing. And you have to be able to guarantee that what people build with your kit remains identical to your prototype. Or everyone assembling such a kit would have to build multiple copies of the car and go through the certification process individually.
And of course there are very few people that would want to assemble their own car, so you wouldn’t be able to make a business out of it.
No wonder you’re just studying. I’ve met plenty of people like you. Just because YOU can’t do a good job or understand it, doesn’t make it bad.
Sincerely, Engineer with 13 years of experience.
“script kiddy”… Says everything I need to know.
Remember the kia challenge, that was literally kids running scripts they found online to steal cars
ok.
I actually was a real advocate for gears, then I drove my wife’s new car for some time. Modern automatic isn’t only comfortable, it’s actually more (fuel) efficient, especially in the city. Now I’m an automatic guy. And - the circle of life - my daughter, looking for her first car this year: “No, I want gears!” Now she’s got gears. In a car that weighs less than my phone, but hey, what do I old 🥔 potato know.
I’m resigned that manual transmissons are a thing of the past, but man, it’s such a huge part of the enjoyment of driving for me.
Getting that perfect shift, especially if accelerating quicky or going up a steep hill is just so satisfying… Or the “minigame” of balancing the clutch and throttle from a full stop uphill without using the handbrake… And that feeling when you smoothly downshift going down a road and the revs pick up, while you ease up on the brake…
Yeah I really like driving.
Learned automatic then later manual out of necessity and this is just nuts to me. People enjoy that? Driving is already fairly obnoxious just getting around traffic and the extra tedium of having to shift gears at every stop and go was awful. This has to be some kind of Stockholm syndrome or nostalgia or something
I cycle to work from time to time, even tough I own a (manual) car.
It takes longer to go by bike, I get sweaty, it might rain in the afternoon but I still take the bike over the car. Because it’s fun. (Even more then driving a manual.)
Try sitting in traffic for 2 hours with a stick, moving 10 feet at a time, and we can talk about how much you love manual
When people say they prefer driving a manual, the key word there is driving. Sitting in traffic sucks no matter what kind of vehicle you’re in.
