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Comment by abanana | Hacker News Reader

Same sort of problem we have in modern cars? Speed, lane assistance, blind spot, etc, sometimes apparently beeping for the hell of it.

For some it's distracting and frustrating, even increasing aggression and thereby increasing the risk. For others it breeds complacency, a "boy who cried wolf" scenario such that the alarms become meaningless. Either way, it doesn't work as intended.

Interesting to know ships have followed the same pattern, apparently to a worse extent. I wonder how many more walks of life, and industries, are suffering in the same way.

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I rented a car last July, and I specifically picked out a small one because I wouldn't need to carry any cargo or passengers around.

As soon as I drove off the lot, 3 warning indicator lamps lit up, including "Tire Pressure" so I stopped at a service station, thought for a moment, then drove back to the rental lot.

The other indicator had something to do with crash protection, and I think we worked out how to disable the system. After putting air into my tires, I was good to go.

So I'm thankful that those lamps indicated some actual conditions. I always kind of make a point of taking out the Owner's Manual and leafing through it, however briefly, just to see that it covers everything. They're still fairly comprehensive. I really appreciate that.

Any alarm that causes to take the correct action is good. However if it causes you to take the wrong action it is bad. If the engine lost all oil but you choose to fill the tires because that is the alarm you choose to pay attention to that is bad. Normally engines don't lose oil and so going to fill the low tire is the right call. (If the tire is very low stop now is the right answer)

My Volkswagen has assistance features which routinely fail on snowy days and can’t seem to be disabled. The best you can do is disable them for a minute (!) at which point they start blaring again. Its ironic because the time you need the most focus is the time the car lets you focus the least.

It can absolutely be disabled they just wouldn't get the same brownies points in EuroNCAP by allowing _you_ to disable it.

If I spent more than 50k on a car like that, I would absolutely return it and file a complaint.

Car companies care a great deal about after sales stats. This trend will continue because we as users on average tolerate it.

Get yourself a VCDS cable & software and disable that shit for good.

BMW has the same issue but luckily still buttons to disable them. Snow will quickly result in "Forward collision warning failure" and "Blind spot detection failure" and if more snow "Lane assist failure" because the sensors get covered in snow.

Oh and before you even start driving let us "bing!" you with a message that the temperature is below 4C. As if you didn't know that already.

I had the misfortunate of needing to hire a car in the UK last year. Ended up with an entry level 2025 Kia (Ceed Estate). Compared with the 2012 Audi A4 I'm used to driving it was a nightmare.

Similar experience, lots of flashing and beeping which is just distracting whilst also being wrong often enough to be really annoying (this is a known problem with speed limits).

Exceeding the speed limit, needing to change gear and by far the worst, active lane assist which pushes you back into your lane if you cross the white line without indicating (I only found this out afterwards as the hire place didn't mention it or leave a manual) and something which can happen frequently if you're driving down narrow country roads where indicating wouldn't have seemed appropriate and may just confuse others.

I spoke to one of the mechanics at my local garage who said you can't permanently turn these features off as they turn back on when you start the car.

I wonder if anyone has who's had an accident caused by being distracted by all these alarms has successfully sued?

> you can't permanently turn these features off

You most likely can if you have the factory diagnostics tool or a good aftermarket reimplementation.

These features are often mandated on a per-region basis, so the configuration bits are definitely there.

My car will beep every 15 minutes when the washer fluid is low. “Low” being some arbitrary value, and not even remotely close to empty. Last time it happened. I had just started on a long motorway drive on a clear day and it just pinged and pinged and pinged. The beep is actually louder and harsher than the emergency anti collision break alert.

I’ve also never used as much windscreen wash in any other car as I have in this one

Wait until you see an actual failure; you will get individual alerts for every dependent system as if the dependent system failed directly. A single communication glitch with the ABS for example will trigger 5+ alerts for ESP, lane keeping assist, and so on... and even things like the check engine light, despite the engine being totally fine and maybe just operating in a degraded mode.

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