Having a touchscreen to operate your car with is a safety hazard compared to having buttons and knobs.
My Mazda had a nice combination of touch screen which disabled itself when the vehicle was in motion and you could then use the rotary control instead. Was really nice and intuitive with entirely separate AC, heated seats etc controls.
I had a rental Mazda and I have to say, that rotary control is the worst combination of tactile and touch interface I have seen to date. Maybe that gets better after using it for 6 months, but I can more or less memorize touch interface control positions in that same timeframe and without the distraction of figuring out which element the rotary dial highlight moved to this time.
I would rather have had full touch than that monstrosity.
I have a Mazda like this. I absolutely hate it.
I have a small built-in touchscreen on the top of the dashboard which is visible in my peripheral vision while driving. But it turns off touch controls while the car is moving. And the physical controls are in the center console behind my manual stick, on the passenger’s side. So I have to blindly feel around for my knobs and buttons while driving, or take my eyes completely off the road to look down at my center console.
It would be safer if I could just tap the screen quick while keeping my eyes facing the road, versus trying to search for knobs down next to my passenger’s thigh.
I also hate that this newer model removed the mute button from my steering wheel. I used to be able to immediately mute my radio by pressing that button on my 2010 Mazda. But in my new 2017 Mazda, I need to find the tiny volume knob by my passenger’s thigh and slap that knob. I still have volume buttons on my steering wheel, but I can’t immediately mute by holding the down volume button. So I need to go searching for that knob, which is more time I’m not looking at the road.
My Mazda has the same controls and I’ve never really felt like they’re hard to find. The button layout makes a lot of sense and the large center wheel is easy to find so you can use it as a reference point to find the other buttons easily (I pretty much just use the home and music buttons and that volume knob).
Even just the bright light from it is a hazard.
I turned down my dash panel for the “plus lights” night mode (my car is a 2012 Honda civic, so night mode is literally whenever I turn on the headlights) because it was so blindingly bright I couldn’t stand it.
I was in car with a friend with a Prius… not a super new one, but with the central touch center of shit and it never got very dim… it was always just this distracting light in the middle of the car. I literally would not be able to drive that car, my attention would be drawn to the light because I like dark. But then it also reflects off the windshield and shit and just nope.
Depends how well the voice controls work. I have been so frustrated with AI assistants’ inability to understand simple instructions while I’m driving that it has become a serious distraction at times. I have never found myself yelling at knobs.
What cooks my god damn goose isn’t the stupid screen I’m going to break one day. It’s that they run buses for other systems through the radio so you can’t replace it with what you want.
I take trips to Tallinn. Beautiful city. I use the car share apps there for convenience. Pick up a car and park wherever. I get to try out many different cars, if only for a while. I hate touch screens. One even was set with brightness to zero and I was unable to change it.
Dials and knobs for everything please.
Embrace tradition
Yep. Usually I’m bluffing when I say “I’ll die before I buy [a smart TV/a phone with a selfie cam hole punch/a computer running Windows/a console without a disc tray],” but there are real alternatives to buying these death traps. I could stand to lose weight anyway.
… I’M JUST SAYING.
Yup. You can move the levers to one extreme and blindly gauge where it’s supposed to be. Also: each of these things provide additional feedback (fan direction, speed, etc) so you don’t even need to memorize detents or positions for stuff.
I will say that the temp lever, over time, gets very sticky and hard to move. Other than that: it’s good design.
Can we add ‘cars with spare tires’ to the list?
Having to call a damned tow-truck just to get a flat tire fixed is not a winning move if you’re trying to sell how much your car benefits the environment.
First they switched to the mini-spares. Then they got rid of them altogether.
If you’re lucky, there are little filler canisters and a cigarette lighter-powered air compressor to let you get slowly to a tire shop. Sometimes, not even that. If there’s a nail or a blowout, tow-truck city. Just hope it’s not out in the middle of nowhere in the dark or in bad weather.
And keep in mind that the Fix-a-Flat kind of spray will make your tire unrepairable.
Many new cars have “run-flats,” which can be used even if they get a puncture/go flat.
However, they are more expensive, they don’t function under certain kinds of flats (e.g., sidewall damage), they have limited range, and limited speed.
The tiny “donut” spares on some cars are also not intended for high speeds, but I’d much prefer that to a punctured run-flat. (You should probably place the donut on the rear of your car is front wheel drive, though.)
(You should probably place the donut on the rear of your car is front wheel drive, though.)
I read somewhere that you should always replace a back wheel with a donut spare, even if that means swapping a punctured front wheel with an original back wheel. The donut spares are so flimsy that they can’t be trusted to reliably handle the side loads a front wheel experiences when your car is turning.
Do you know in the US, the car maker can make a car use brake lamp as a turn signal? The standard is weird.
Yeah it turns out no one uses them or keeps em pumped up or applies that rubber stuff to em to keep em in good shape so the manufacturers replaced em with “24 hr roadside assistance”.
Spare tires have come in handy many times in my life! And im only 30. Fuck 24 hour roadside assistance i can put a spare on faster than they can get out to me
