Comment by technothrasher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by technothrasher | Hacker News Reader

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> I had to drive 'erratic' a moment ago not because I am drunk or fell asleep, but because a kid ran into a street and I had to do an evasive maneuver" one.

I kept getting warnings of 'erratic' driving from my VW and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I finally figured it out. The car was seeing asphalt repair patches on the road, which are by their nature wiggly lines. It clearly figures the line is straight and the car is swerving all over the place.

It also wants to hit the brakes any time the car in front is braking and my foot is on the throttle. Ok, but this fails constantly in two situations. First is if the car in front is turning left and I'm moving around it on the right. Second is if I'm far enough back that I'm ok with light throttle even though the car in front is braking.

So, yes, I have less than full confidence that a drunk driving detection system won't fail. The question really becomes whether the net benefit outweighs the potential failures. With the VW applying the brakes, I accepted the annoyances the first time it saved me from plowing into the car in front of me when they unexpectedly hit the brakes on a highway on-ramp and I was watching the traffic on the highway instead of the car in front.

Maybe if you can make your VW think that you're testing its exhaust emissions, it will disable all those annoying safety features. ;)

Have you (are you even able to) reported these issues to VW to improve their models?

That sounds like the wrong direction to go. That normalizes that it's okay to push bad safety programming as long as the onus is on the user to search for and attempt a conveluded way to contact the manufacturer, at which point the manufacturer will most likely ignore it anyway. I doubt VW has a hotline for reporting this kind of thing, and if so, I bet it's not posted on the car anywhere.

So telling them that the thing they did is wrong is the wrong way to tell them that the thing they did is the wrong thing?

How else is a manufacturer supposed to get feedback?

The user has to QA the product?

Move fast break things

Feedback != QA

I'm all for giving feedback, and I've made a niche suggestion to Google once, which they've implemented, so I know it does happen sometimes, but I've made many more suggestions to other companies including to Toyota and Dodge which have just been ignored.

The manufacturer must carry out comprehensive safety testing of their automobiles before putting them into production - that's how other safety-critical tech is deployed.

That is: their test results should be providing them with all the feedback they need. We're not talking about a broken UI on a shopping website. Broken "smarts" in a car is like broken brakes; it's not OK to just wait for users to find out for you.

If they "did the wrong thing" with car safety, then they shoun't be allowed to sell cars until the problem is fixed.

Designing, testing and QA can be seen as forms of internal feedback but I was writing about external feedback in response to a suggestion that external feedback is wrong to give.

And yet here we are. I agree with you that such things shouldn't be allowed out into the wild until they are perfect (or at least meet some reasonable standard), but it appears to that it does happen.

You can either stick your fingers in your ears and keep yelling "this can't happen!", or acknowledge that it does and try to do something about it.

The best way to give a manufacturer feedback is to not purchase their product. If the product is already purchased and non-refundable, the next best way is to advise others not to purchase the product. While this may sound harsh, sales metrics are guaranteed to shape manufacturer behavior, while anecdotal feedback may or may not result in changes.

Writing to or calling the manufacturer may be effective for small companies, or companies with a good track record in ethics. Otherwise, let the sales do the talking.

If you say nothing you're not really giving any feedback, you're just giving statistics.

Your plan doesn't seem really effective, either. The company then has no idea why you aren't buying the product. It could be for one of any thousands of reasons.

This will only work out for you (and others) if there are other manufacturers that don't add features like this at all. And since you haven't provided feedback to anyone about what you don't like, other manufacturers won't hear about this either, and may also add these sorts of features.

I agree that one person providing feedback isn't going to do much. But that's why everyone needs to do so. It's like voting: your individual vote usually won't change anything, but the votes of everyone can. Refusing to provide feedback (or vote) because your individual action won't change anything on its own doesn't solve anything, and just gives those in charge less data to work with to figure out what people actually do want.

> The best way to give a manufacturer feedback is to not purchase their product.

And then the VW software team managers say "Look how great Tesla's are selling. It's because they have more autodrive features. Give me more money to add more features." Note, that was "add features" not "improve features".

"giving feedback probably won't work, so just give up"

"I categorize this software as 'safety' related, so it must be perfect on the first try and never need any improvements"

Existientialism is bad for your mental health, friend.

Please do not put words in my mouth. I never said nor implied either of those things.

Making incorrect generalizations is bad for your health too.

I'm simply pointing out the extremes of the opinions that are contained in your comment. Are they not recognizable?

You're still putting words in my mouth, please stop.

I did not write that, thus they are not "contained in (my) comment."

Yah, it’s the consumers responsibility to chase around a multi billion dollar, multi national corporations QC problems…

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