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Comment by charleyma | Hacker News Reader

Would also potentially add "voice control" to this list. It's amazing to me that by trying to be "innovative/modern", most car user interface designs have become increasingly user unfriendly.

Case in point, the other day I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to connect my phone to a car via bluetooth (I'm still used to there just being a button for pairing).

Ended up having to search online for the instruction manual to figure it out, turns out pairing is only available via voice command when the car is in park ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme

Douglas Adams (1979) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

My 2016 Jeep Wrangler has Chrysler's garbage voice control. When I say "settings," half the time it hears "español" and changes everything to Spanish, and also switches the digital speedometer from mph to km/h. The confirmation prompt doesn't understand "NO" even when I scream at it.

Once that happens, the only way I've been able to switch it back to English is via the steering wheel controls, but you can only get to that menu when the vehicle is in park.

I rely on google to tell me how to use my "intuitive" iphone.

Voice control isn't friendly either. It often fails to understand what you say, requires significant focus from you to say the exact magic words, and works less well when it's loud outside.

On my Android Auto, the voice-activated voice control also tends to trigger inadvertently when playing podcasts.

> pairing is only available via voice command when the car is in park

I guess their policy is "fuck the mute and the non-English speakers"?

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