Comment by liquidise | Hacker News Reader

Comment by liquidise | Hacker News Reader

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I’ll pile on with my own anecdote. Last winter I flew home to Maine to visit family. Rented a ‘21 Nissan Altima. It drove well until there was typical New England snow/slush mix.

While driving on a flat straight stretch of road the car suddenly... yanked itself sideways. Thank god no oncoming traffic was present and I was able to course correct safely. I immediately drove home and paid careful attention to the wheel response. It kept feeling like it wanted to yank me off the road.

Once home i broke open the manual and found 4 different “driver assist” and “driver comfort” functions. After disabling them all the terrifying behavior ceased.

I’ve lived my whole life in Maine, Rochester NY and Colorado. I’ve never felt as unsafe in a car as I did with those software features enabled in about an inch of snow.

Bonus, it also has collision detection warnings on the side of the car. It was convinced every puddle I drove through that splashed slush beside the car was an object I was about to collide with.

> Bonus, it also has collision detection warnings on the side of the car. It was convinced every puddle I drove through that splashed slush beside the car was an object I was about to collide with.

That's the problem I have with people who tries to rethink our relationship with cars; it's obvious that they live a Californian lifestyle. "Just share your car" "Electric and solar is the way" "AI safety with cameras is a must"

Yeah, sure.

> Once home i broke open the manual and found 4 different “driver assist” and “driver comfort” functions. After disabling them all the terrifying behavior ceased.

I have these and absolutely love them. Sometimes, they do need to be turned off in bad weather, though.

The problem is that you don't know ahead of time when 'sometimes' is which is worse than nothing.

Not that I'm defending the technology in this case, but I notice that some people still believe it's unnecessary to read the user's manual of a modern car. Maybe this mindset has to change.

Strongly disagree. If you mimic the established user interface of the car people have been using for generations, then it should behave like people expect it too. If special qualifications are required to drive it, then you should sell it only to those who can prove them.

You cannot build something that looks like an elevator, has buttons with numeric labels, and when people push one button the doors close and they find out they just selected the power setting of a giant microwave oven. I mean, you can build it, if you don't care about people getting microwaved.

Maybe the problem is, at best, alpha level software is being field tested by million’s of people with life and death consequences. Cars computer systems should always fail safely. If that can’t be designed right now then test it with professional drivers.

The user interface of a car was standardized 100 years ago. If you need to read the manual of a car to decide which crap feature to disable seven menu layers deep in a configuration menu - assuming that the function to disable it even exists - then that vehicle should come with a mandatory examination before you can drive it and should not be allowed to be used for rental / short lease fleets.

Your typical manufacturer makes a very large fraction of their income from exactly those two applications.

If there is a mindset that has to change then it is that sticking something somewhere in a manual is sufficient disclaimer to be able to claim 'user error' in case of trouble.

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