this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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If we lived in any sort of reasonable or responsible world then these cars would be banned from public roads all over the globe.
And Tesla would be fined and sued into oblivion.
And the people who knowingly put profits before lives would be individually serve time for manslaughter.
Not to mention obstructing criminal investigations.
Call me a Luddite but I won't ride in a "self driving" car. I don't even trust lane assist although I've never had a car with that feature.
I think my sweet spot is 2014 for vehicles. It's about 50/50 with the tracking garbage and the "advanced features" on those models but anything past 2015 seems to be fully fly-by-wire and that doesn't sit right with me.
I'm old though and honestly if I bought a 2014 right now and babied it as my non commuter car I could probably keep it until I should give up my keys. You younger people are going to have to work around all this crap.
I've never had any issue with the lane assist in my Mitsubishi. It's absolutely built as an "assist" and not something that will actually try to take control from you. It's trivial to "overpower" it manually and turn out of your lane without signaling if that's what you want to do, but does a perfectly reasonable job of steering on its own when left to its own devices.
That said, I wouldn't be driving a vehicle new enough to have the feature yet either if I hadn't been rear ended a couple of years ago and had my 2012 Lancer written off. :(
I quite like lane assist in the 2019 Honda I drive, even though it gets it wrong occasionally. It will not function unless it detects that you're providing some steering input of your own, and it's easy to override just by steering the way you want to go. That and cruise control are handy on the highway and have worked well for 6 years with no problems. But it's very far from either functioning or being advertised as "full self driving."
So it does move the wheel under your hands? That's just gross to me. I guess maybe I should rent a car with it and give it a shot but I don't think I'll like it.
I rented a Hyundai Elantra. Yes, the wheel will move under your hand. Yes, it has hand detection, which is probably trivial to spoof. When I used it, winter had just ended and lines on the road weren't always clear, so it would occasionally disable itself. Trying to change lanes without signals isn't terrible, but certainly won't happen by accident.
I would by no means rely on this, or recommend relying on it, just like I wouldn't recommend relying on blind spot detection, but they can be handy aids to improve your overall driving, and can help catch your mistakes.
Does it pull the wheel when you're trying to change lanes?
I see the blind spot detection on other people's mirrors when I pass them and that looks cool as fuck but what happens the instant it fails? If I'm reliant on it and it breaks one day am I going to mistakenly merge into another driver's right of way?
It didn't so much as pull as get stiffer to turn out of the lane. Again, that doesn't happen if your signals are on, so it's a good reminder to use your signals, too.
Like I said, relying on these assists as replacements for proper driving isn't something I would recommend. You should still be shoulder checking and using your mirrors. My wife's vehicle has blind spot detection, which turns on an amber light by the mirror. If you're changing lanes, it's an obvious indicator that it may not be safe. A more thorough shoulder check can identify if the vehicle is actually at risk for collision. For example, if you just passed a vehicle and are pulling away, the detection light may still be on, but you aren't at risk of collision. Alternatively, if I thought the lane was clear and decide to change lanes, the light may be on due to a speeding driver who is approaching to pass me in the adjacent lane. The light will be on even though he isn't in the way yet, and changing lanes could result in an accident. Or maybe someone has been sitting in your blind spot for a few minutes and you decide to change lanes. A quick mirror check indicates you're safe, but that amber light says maybe not. If your shoulder check doesn't catch the problem, you probably haven't done it well enough.
Again, can be good assistance tools, I don't think they're good enough to be replacements yet.
woah, that's pretty cool actually.
The amber light in the mirror is what I've seen in other people's blind spot assistance. It's really cool but I'd hate to get used to it and depend on it the day it stops working.
That really is the greatest risk for some of thses features. It's easy to get complacent when something works well, and then you're in trouble when it doesn't.
I have a Toyota with lane assist and it doesn't. The "lane assist" is part of cruise control. It's off by default.
I love it because it removes a little of the mental load giving me more time to scan the road for potential problems.
Off by default should be the default.
OK yeah, if I have the cruise control on I can see having lane assist. Can you use the CC independently of lane assist?
Can't also for Toyota, but yes, my Mitsubishi has the option of simple cruise control without lane keeping.
Yeah. It can be set on or off as default when CC is activated.
When cruise control is on, yes, but it's extremely gentle. The slightest bit of resistance from the driver will overpower it.
I should try this stuff and then see which of those cars I can disable the tracking antennas
I can't speak for other manufacturers, or even in other countries, but Mitsubishi Canada at least has an opt-out for data collection. You need to call their customer care number and they will remotely disable it.
I liked lane assist. It's kind of like the Playstation triggers haptic feedback. It just makes the wheel slightly stiff as you near a line, but it's very passive.
I think Ford does a good job of offering the features and tech, but not making them required. Even their EVs have settings that can mimic a gas driving experience. Be a Luddite trust what you trust. But don’t pigeon hole your acceptable years of manufacture.
Drove a few cars with "lane hold" and it's infuriating to have to suddenly correct the car's trajectory at every curve because it misjudges the road line. Some cars are worse than others but it was literally the first thing I disabled every time. I wonder how truck drivers feel about it. Do modern trucks even have this?
I don't know what professional truckers have for "assist" but I'm sure they resist it. "I'm a professional fucking driver! I don't want this shit."
Closest I've come in a truck is an annoyingly loud alert for everything the computer reckoned was an issue and that was painful enough. Every time I'd drive it it'd be blaring the alarm for some reason or another and if it had been a long term company truck instead of a rental I probably would have ended up removing the speaker.
For example the lane departure warning would fire off every time you moved over to not run into someone parked on the side of the road, the close distance warning would fire off regularly when people merged in front of you, and if it was windy it'd set off an alarm to let you know the truck was being blown around when driving. Could be useful if you're mentally challenged or blind but that sort of thing is just going to annoy anyone who isn't. You couldn't even turn the alarms off properly - you could go through the deliberately prolonged procedure to turn them off temporarily but then they come back again every time you start the truck.
I've driven an SUV with lane keep assist and it would pull at the wheel trying to follow lane markings that were outdated or ones it just made up, I hope that particular bit of 'safety' tech doesn't make it to any truck I have to drive.
My wife had a rental for a trip she and my daughter were going on for a gymnastics event and I got to drive it back from the rental place and it had lane assist.
Every time another car passed in the opposite lane the damn thing would try and jerk in the opposite direction of that car, sometimes almost running itself off the road into the ditch in the process.
That's horrible
I've got a 2008 manual. It doesn't even have cruise control. It's perfect. I'm keeping it as long as I possibly can.
'96 and '05 pickup trucks I keep flogging along for work, '05 SUV that's owned by my wife. They aren't going to last forever but I'm going to try.
I'm helping by using it as little as possible.
I like electric cars well enough for their simplicity and acceleration. It's all the other computerised gubbins they hang off them that I dislike, and Teslas are the worst for that.
I saw an old VW Beetle that had been converted to electric on the road recently. I wonder how hard/expensive it would be to do that with my 2 when the engine dies.
Every study ever done on the subject has concluded that vehicle fires happen far less in electric vehicles than ICE ones. If you want to talk about responsibility we would ban them all.
100 fires that you can actually put out is better than 1 you can't.
Brother if your life is dependent on someone coming to put out the fire, you're not gonna make it.
"Brother" putting words in people's mouth is literally definition of bad faith.
I was not speaking for terms of "life". Though life certainly is affected by the problems.
Lithium fires cause immensely more damage than ICE fires do. Hell just think of a benign situation like a car catch fire under a bridge. A BEV is more likely to structurally damage the bridge than an ICE fire would.
Lithium fires burn much hotter and spread much faster since it's self-oxidizing. I'll take an ICE fire any day since they will burn slower just by it's very nature. I will have more protection by sheer thermal mass in between me and the firey bit (the engine) than I do would with an EV where the battery is literally underneath the entire passenger cabin.
It's well known that BEV fires are much more destructive. The fact that they happen less often doesn't fix the fact that it ends up being a wash all around.
Edit: Eg, more often x less damage = less often x more damage
Good thing no one did that?
I mean that's pretty clearly the topic at hand, and the most important one.
Damage to what? There ain't gonna be anything left of the car either way.
That's an extremely obscure and cherry-picked scenario to make your point.
Thermal mass is not relevant. You don't die from metal contact, you die from smoke inhalation.
It absolutely is not, and the mere insinuation otherwise leads me to believe you're just being disingenuous.
You did.
Factually wrong. ICE cars are much much easier to put out. Often times ICE engine fires can put themselves out. And since they burn slower anyway, it's more likely you can escape the fire in of itself. Eg. if the fire occurs from a runway combustion in the chamber and the engine locks up starving the combustion chamber from oxygen.
Not really? There's a lot of bridges on the planet... There's lots of tunnels on the planet. There's lots of infrastructure that is a part of our roadways or are close enough to roadways to be affected. Tunnels are actually an even better problem to discuss. Heavy metal toxicity will stick around a lot longer and cause much more problems than an ICE engine that can actually be doused out 1/10th of the way through the burn.
More things between you and the fire = more protection overall... period. And you want to talk about people being disingenuous?
It's not. And you didn't even bother to dispute it.
😂🤣😂🤣 what? There's supposed to be fire in the combustion chamber. If it doesn't leave there, it's not "a fire". If it does leave there, the engine locking up does nothing.
If there's something between you and the fire then there's not a threat to life.
Humans first
They don’t need to be banned. We just need to not buy them.