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Comment by valleyer | Hacker News Reader

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I've literally had my vehicle alarm and tell me to keep both hands on the steering wheel when I had both hands on for a long time. My biggest concern is where do false alarms take us in the not-too-distant future? Inept sensing -> you can't drive.

It's very hard to do that when every few seconds some new alarm goes off and some big red flashing warning on the TV screen that's blocking your view of the road comes on.

Perhaps not everyone should be driving? This is not a criticism towards you, I don't have the patience to be behind a wheel, and I know of many drivers that are a danger to themselves and others. If the side effect of this system is that there are fewer people driving because they can't manage the alarms, then that's good enough for me.

I don't want any kind of alarms, indicators, beepers, flashers, or other distract-o-trons in cars, for any reason.

It's pretty simple.

You should be driving a car, not a pinball table.

That's fair, but what you want is not the only thing that matters. Your driving affects me as well, and I want you to be beeped at when you're not doing a good job.

Okay, but it's safe to assume I'm doing a better job than you if you think that "driver assistance" systems are useful or desirable.

I would assume so since I've never driven a car.

That's still beside the point, unlike playing pinball, driving is an activity that involves risk to people besides you. If you have evidence these systems actually reduce pedestrian safety rather than just annoy drivers, I'll be happy to have a look. Otherwise, bring them on.

Well, I know from my own experience of driving some really quite nice modern EVs they are a far bigger risk to pedestrians than my own car, a 30-year-old Range Rover.

It's really simple.

The Range Rover has you quite high up in the air, and has really big windows with nothing that gets in the way.

The Kia Niro EV that I drive most often has you sitting with your shoulders about level with the bottom of the window, a big long bonnet in front of a steeply-raked windscreen, huge A pillars so you can't see for about 15° either side of the car, and most of your view of pedestrian crossings blocked by a giant "blob" in the upper centre of the windscreen for all the cameras and sensors for things like lane assist.

The only vehicle I regularly use with better visibility of other road users - including pedestrians - than the Range Rover is my bicycle.

The Kia with all its sensors and beepers and flashers and things is like driving a Daimler Ferret through its little periscope.

I don't know how people can drive EVs. They're so stressful.

I agree that bigger cars are worse, but this seems like a different issue to me than the beeping.

The Kia is smaller, but worse.

If you drive that then you are far more likely to run over a pedestrian because you will not see them. The blind spots are ridiculous.

This hyperbole is barely worth responding to. If someone really triggers alerts on such a regular basis, then I have to question whether they have a road legal driving style based on the quality and accuracy those assistants actually have now achieved.

Oh, and the dashboard in my newest car is smaller than any dashboard with analog needles could ever have been. Dashboards probably have gotten smaller, not bigger with the switch to LCD screens.

The "assistants" are consistently useless.

I neither want nor need anything beeping away because it thinks that someone might be driving in the lane beside me, which is what seems to freak the Kias out the most.

I don't want it to suddenly panic brake from 70mph to 30mph because it saw the shadow of the car I'm overtaking on the road.

None of this is good.

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