I got a loaner while my car was being fixed a while ago. The volume control on the wheel was touch sensitive. I would swipe it and blow my ears out while turning.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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Im of the opinion controls for cars should be designed more like controls for airplanes. Every gage and button in that cockpit is where it is and points where it points to be able to convey a lot of information with a quick glance and allow you to interact as quickly and easily as you can read them. Marketing gimicks that remove layers of tactile response to esential controls don't belong in heavy machinery.
Touch controls are becoming increasingly common in airplanes and then backed up by mouse cursors. Flight critical controls still need to be backed by physical hardware but stuff like route planning etc is now almost entirely touch based. For light sports aircraft’s even flight critical stuff can be approved as touch controls. Look at the G3X or Dynon SkyView. They both have some form of dial-based backup controls, but it’s clearly designed for touch first.
Todays cars cockpit layouts are straight out dangerous for the roads tbh. Forcing you to point your eyes to some shitty display somewhere to turn down your AC, then try to tap tiny buttons and hope you won't tap on something else, instead of looking at a road in front of you? How is that even allowed ffs?!
Lots of cars got crossed from my list when shopping for a used one this year, no buttons meant no purchase. got a Kia stinger, fast car, looks good, good price, all physical buttons
Your autocorrect took the day off.
Kia Stinger looks like a nice ride, good choice!
That's exactly the reason I bought Kia too last year.
Ban all touch screens in cars.
I only accept Touch Screens for Media and Navigation. Everything else better be a button.
How would these be causing crashes? The ID.4 has a few cruise control buttons on the left side of the steering wheel. They are push buttons, but you can swipe the speed up or down to change it to the next 5 MPH. The resume button is not capacitive as the article states, you have to push it. Once again, this seems like people not wanting to take responsibility for their own lack of attention while driving and blaming it on the tech in the vehicle.
I've got a ID4 and they are all capacitive buttons. It makes a tactile vibration when engaged.
I hate my car. Nice to drive, but awful to use.
I have one too. The only part of the cruise control system that is capacitive is the speed up and down. Love it.
According to the article there is a “resume” button for the cruise control.
No idea because I don’t own one of these, but if it’s true that’s insane.
I’ve driven a lot of cars from a lot of different manufacturers, and have never encountered a resume button that works how the article describes, where it will accelerate you to whatever the last cruise control speed was.
That's how every cruise system I've ever used works.
that works how the article describes, where it will accelerate you to whatever the last cruise control speed was.
That's what the resume function does normally?
That is:
- You switch on and activate cruise control
- You've tripped it while active by pressing the brake
At this point cruise control is still "hot" and pressing resume will turn the cruise control back on, usually with a speed interlock so you can't activate it at a dead stop.
If the car has "one pedal driving" then inadvertent activation could be pretty surprising, and would require you to lift your foot off the accelerator and hit the brakes. Coupled with the rocket-ship acceleration of most EVs this could easily cause an accident I guess.
Never been in a car with such a feature, as it seems inherently dangerous to me.
Every car I’ve been in, when you accidentally disengage the cruise, you just hit cruise again and it re-engages at whatever speed you slowed down to, then you adjust back to what you want.
Having the car suddenly accelerate without deliberate input just doesn’t seem wise.
Can confirm, my car has the following cruise control buttons:
On/off - res/+
Cancel - set/-
The on/off button arms or disarms cruise control entirely. With it armed and no speed set, set/+ will set the current speed as the target speed. With no speed set, the only other button that does anything is the on/off button, which disarms the system.
With a speed set:
On/off will still complete disarm the system
Cancel will remove the set speed, but keep the system armed
Tapping the brake will pause the cruise control
Res/+ will increment the speed by one mph, or resume cruise at the previous set speed if cruise has been paused
Set/- will decrement the mph by 1, or if held pause the cruise control until it's released.
One of set or resume will set the current travel speed as the new cruise speed, if travel speed is higher than cruise. I think it's res.
For the most part this works fine. I don't use the resume function, like you said it can be a bit harrowing if you're not certain exactly what speed is set, and my car is over a decade old - it doesn't have that feature. But, critically, it's not a fucking CAPACITIVE BUTTON, and I've never accidentally hit it once.
But, critically, it's not a fucking CAPACITIVE BUTTON, and I've never accidentally hit it once.
Yeah. I use resume a fair bit because you can set it to the speed you want and if your cruising gets interrupted by a slow truck, or roadworks, or by passing through a town, you can just press it and the car will accelerate back up to the set speed. Not like a rocket, maybe a couple of km/hr per second.
But still, like you say, easily-triggered capacitive buttons for critical functions, holy shit that is a bad idea.
Wait a minute. There are SWIPE CONTROLS on the steering wheel that adjust the cruise control speed by 5 mph increments? And we don't think that's problematic? I'm either misunderstanding the controls or not sure how that seems like a good idea at all
Ya, even my Jettas physical buttons only increase the speed by 2km
I mean they literally were talking about multiple ways. Someone could hit a stereo control and spike volume while turning the wheel which causes a huge break in concentration leading to an accident. That is absolutely possible and could be extremely dangerous in the right situation.
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