On the "yelling at me" part - I find this an absolutely puzzling design pattern that a number of automakers have adopted. I was driving a Volkswagen ID4 - their mid-size electric car - the other day, and my dog was on the back seat.
She triggered the seat belt alarm, but not straight away, only once we were on the German Autobahn. It showed the icon on the dashboard, then it started beeping. Then it started beeping louder. Finally, it settled into a loud, high pitched beep that continued throughout my drive, designed to force me to obey.
This is directly dangerous. I'm going 130km/h - what the fuck am I supposed to do about the seatbelts now? Not that I even wanted to...
It is this idea of "forcing your customer to obey by inflicting discomfort" that's puzzling me. I can't think of any other industry or product that would think this would be a good idea. Just show me the damn icon and if I decide to ignore it, that's my choice...
”In 2003, the Transportation Research Board Committee, chaired by two psychologists, reported that "Enhanced SBRs" (ESBRs) could save an additional 1,000 lives a year.[100] Research by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that Ford's ESBR, which provides an intermittent chime for up to five minutes if the driver is unbelted, sounding for 6 seconds then pausing for 30, increased seat belt use by 5 percentage points.[100] Farmer and Wells found that driver fatality rates were 6% lower for vehicles with ESBR compared with otherwise-identical vehicles without.[101]” [1]
Not asking nicely for seat belt makes people actually use the seat belt. It’s saving bunch of people every year vs annoying me. And it sure does annoy me, but truth be told sometimes when I move the car just a bit the only reason I use seat belt is that the car is angry at me.
That's the driver, but I've had similar problems with the car yelling at me when I put a sufficiently heavy bag of shopping on the passenger seat.
The only seat where the weight is guaranteed to be a human is the drivers seat. By all means, put an alarm on that seat, but the other seats can contain things other than passengers.
Something like this happened in my Skoda a while ago. Driving along on the Autobahn when a really minor irregularity in the road caused the bag I had placed on the passenger seat to be pushed into the seat very gently, triggering the passenger-side seat belt alarm. I had to take the next exit and park somewhere to get it to shut up.
Unrelated but also relevant to the story: My father's new car (a brand-new Nissan) starts yelling at you to put the seat belt on the second you start the car. It's really annoying because the rest of the car systems take their precious time to start up, so I like to start the car first so the stupid computers start booting and THEN put my seat belt on. But that means being bullied by a loud alarm every time someone uses that car. Why oh why? My Audi only starts the alarm once you actually start driving, and even then only if you go faster than 10km/h or something.
on the flipside, one of my first times when learning to ride a car, I was so focused on adjusting the mirror and seat that I forgot to put on my seatbelt. I was able to get out of the parking lot and get onto a pretty busy road with semi-high speed before the alarm went off!
the alarm mostly stressed me out more than realizing I was not wearing a seatbelt, which only made it harder to find a suitable exit so I could stop the car and put the belt on!
I think this is mostly an edge case though, because I probably held a much lower speed than expected in the parking lot due to being very inexperienced behind the wheel.
My dad spent most of his working life on "preaching" road safety for the local health service, reviewing all the data in the world (more or less) to tell people what works and what doesn't.
Unfortunately, one thing he learned is that every measure of forceful compliance is consistently more successful in preventing accidents and deaths. Seatbelts save lives, but they had to be made compulsory by law to drill the concept into people; and even with that, it takes un-inescapable annoyances like this alarm to get into compliance that last 5-10% of stubborn idiots who just won't do the right thing. Full-face helmets save lives, but so many people insist in using pointless "bowls" or even nothing at all. Respecting speed limits save lives, but it takes speed cameras to actually persuade people to do that. Etc etc.
The technical implementations can always improve, of course. And tbh, it takes nothing to fix the issue reported: just fasten the belt "empty" when you have the dog (and accept the poor thing will not survive an impact...). The industry is what it is because People Are Bad At Risk-Assessment, and that's that.
This raises a more fundamental moral issue: if I want to be stupid and I'm only endangering myself - why should't I?
I firmly believe that it's not the government's or automakers role to keep me from harming myself - but it is the governments role to protect others from being harmed by me. Consequently, I believe the government should outlaw drunk driving as it endangers others, but it should not force me to wear a helmet on a motorcycle.
Just to be clear: I absolutely believe you SHOULD wear a helmet while motorcycling - but I believe if I choose not to and by doing so am only endangering myself, that's my choice.
It's a wider problem than just the seatbelts. The whole cockpit of a car is now a distraction from the most critical thing - driving safely.
For reasons I don't understand, tactile push buttons, with physical feedback, for most tasks are increasingly being replaced with a touch screen you have to look at rather than looking at the road instead and just reaching over to the dashboard.
Hanlon's Razor? It feels like the national road safety bodies world wide, have dropped the ball on this one.
I sat in a friend's Mercedes and the central display had a big flashy full screen warning that said something along the lines of "Don't let [name of their software package] distract you from driving!".
It seems the irony of screaming for your attention only to tell you not to pay attention was lost on them.
The annoying alarm is actually useful so you don't have to shout on your mother in law to get her damn seatbelt. It does the dirty work for you, you don't have to be that annoying person asking for people to put their seatbelt in your car.
In cases like you encountered with your dog, just put the seatbelt on your dog or bag / boxes. It's actually safer for you in case of a crash, they wont get flying into your face. If it's not possible, just put the seatbelt on under your dog just to silence the alarm
> It is this idea of "forcing your customer to obey by inflicting discomfort" that's puzzling me. I can't think of any other industry or product that would think this would be a good idea.
Telephones. The original UK ringtone was explicitly designed to be as irritating as possible (some really weird time signature, I think?)
Even with the chest harness, she can switch seats. You have to put the seatbelts on the empty seats as well, but that makes it harder for her to lie down comfortably.
The problem with a tesla is that it is like a finicky partner.
You're in love. It is romantic. smooth, sleep touchscreen for everything feels so modern. It is a better car than ICE, hands down. Everything that was before was terrible.
And everything is getting better!
But at some point, you realize some things are never going to change, and you are going to have to live with it.
- it is dangerously hard to use any control that doesn't have a dedicated button. The touchscreen in a moving car is a moving mess of tiny targets crowded too close together
- even if you have a dedicated control for say wipers, you will still curse interval wipers.
- if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really)
- some functions - tesla doesn't care about, and never will.
- don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm.
- going forward - cram all controls/settings and information displays into a small ipad. You are all peons, you get less control/safety/information because tesla wants fewer warranty claims.
I just got a new car (not a tesla), it has it has controls that have dedicated buttons, it does have a touchscreen, and turn signal stalk, check. gear stalk? that's been gone ages ago. I have a/c control buttons, radio dials, volume knob. Don't have a spare, but that's standard. They used to pack a real full size tire before they started with that extra small spare tire crap, then finally they just give you a kit that can repair your tire. The touchscreen is not small, and no there's not a lot of tiny targets crowded too close together. They're fairly spread out and all the controls are about 3 finger widths apart. Not everyone gets a tesla.
> - it is dangerously hard to use any control that doesn't have a dedicated button. The touchscreen in a moving car is a moving mess of tiny targets crowded too close together
No it isn't.
> - even if you have a dedicated control for say wipers, you will still curse interval wipers.
Sensor-based wipers fail to predict rain regularly. I discussed this topic recently with a friend, her Mercedes has the same problem and it does have a sensor.
> - if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really)
That's a valid point. But it remains to be seen how much of a problem this is. Certainly other manufacturers (Volkswagen ID.4 for example) cramp many more buttons on the steering wheel.
> - some functions - tesla doesn't care about, and never will.
Like what?
> - don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm.
Most modern cars don't have a reserve tire. Not sure what you're talking about.
> - going forward - cram all controls/settings and information displays into a small ipad. You are all peons, you get less control/safety/information because tesla wants fewer warranty claims.
Touchscreens demand I look away from my surroundings, because I will never know where anything is nor if I did whatever I wanted to do correctly. That is fundamentally terrible as regards safe driving.
> - if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really)
What? How do you signal a turn then? How do you change the gear?
> “Automatic” windshield wipers: This functionality is so insanely stupid. It regularly turns on when there is no rain, and regularly runs in the slowest speed when there’s tons of rain. I’ve read that this is because Elon vetoed a simple sensor that would have made this function as well as any other modern car. He was convinced the car’s AI could figure it out. It can’t.
Yep. First world problem for sure but so frustrating. And other first-world cars don't have this issue.
It is the same with the ultrasound reversing sensors that've been removed.. the Tesla Vision / AI simply is not as good and probably never will be in a dark carpark.
But in my own view, the reason for 'don't' is that against many expectations, the incumbents have largely caught up in the EV space and there are new entrants doing exceptionally well. Tesla's complacency might be what harms it the most.
If you read to the end, predictably, his biggest problem is Musk's politics...
The comparison to Apple is not particularly great. I don't know how distracted is Cook and what his politics are, but I am still dealing with major iphone bugs than apple never bothered to fix in years, like all the music artwork being randomly reschuffled. And the experience only gets worse with time with more aggressive nagging for Apple services, my phone feels like the web in the 1990s, pre adblockers.
> If you read to the end, predictably, his biggest problem is Musk's politics...
Not really sure how you got that; to me it seemed like more an afterthought. The author had already made his case before we got to the (fairly short) political section.
> That’s what the brain does: we learn not to see the ugly that we can’t change.
Huh. This must be what it's like to be a glass-half-full person. Speaking for myself, I tend to focus in on it rather obsessively.
> Elizabeth Holmes, at least, didn’t kill anyone.
Statistically, she almost certainly did.
> I’ve never actually thought that I needed a fart machine in my car, but pre-teens think it essential.
IMO this encourages bad behaviour, and should be banned. Its only apparent application seems to be startling pedestrians, potentially dangerously (obviously a horn would do this too, but the bad behaviour is more likely if it is made funnier to the sort of gormless idiots who indulge in this).
While I think that was once the case, today, thanks to Tesla's innovation(TM), you can treat passers-by to 100 decibel fart sounds: https://mashable.com/article/tesla-horn-fart
Anyone who _actually uses this_ should be shunned from society, of course.
A Tesla used to be called the "best car ever made" — eleven years ago.
In 2013 Consumer Reports called the Tesla Model S the best car it had ever tested. The Model S earned a score of 99 out of a possible 100 in the magazine's tests.
"If it could recharge in any gas station in three minutes, this car would score about 110," said Jake Fisher, head of auto testing for Consumer Reports. Fisher called the car's performance in the magazine's performance tests "off the charts."[1]
What happened in the last 11 years? Did Teslas get worse or did expectations change significantly?
Tesla focused on FSD almost exclusively and everything in the car's software suffered because of that and stupid decisions to remove hardware.
Autopilot is on a separate branch from FSD, not getting significant updates with the promise that at some point, it'll be merged with the FSD branch and it'll be super awesome - this year for sure, but maybe next year or 10 years after, look we made a robot that's definitely not a guy in a suit and it'll be out in 5 years, maybe 10, it can water plants now!, look a Cybertruck! isn't steel cool, etc
When they switched from Mobileye to their own stack, it noticeably regressed in performance, then they worked to get it to work decently, but dropped the radar during Covid, going all in on Vision, regressing it even further. They promised at that time to at some point match the original Autopilot by reintroducing a distance of 1 and a max speed higher than 140 km/h and it's been 2 years since then with nothing on the front.
Summon/ Smart summon as the guy in the article points out - is great, but doesn't work without USS sensors, which they removed and the functionality is coming back some day, but likely not soon, because it's not a priority. They've been selling cars for more than a year now that don't have that functionality, even though it's in a package worth 4000 euros that gets you basically nothing.
In the meantime FSD V11 will be the big one, V12 will finally drop the beta tag, etc, etc things that never happen and the rest of the functionalities just rot away.
I can't believe how much relentless online bitching there is about the sensors. You won't find anything approaching FSD in any other vehicle you could buy. Autopilot remains the most reliable autosteer product on the market. Smart summon sucks, so what - you won't find it on other cars and it might improve in a huge way with OTA. Unlike other cars. Autopark sucks big time. It might improve. It might not. Clearly, given the sales, online commentators care way more than actual consumers lol.
I think Model S is still quite good because it retains more physical creature comforts like turn signal, circular wheel, instrument panel, and hand-adjustable AC vents (in the model y, you can only change vent angle on the touch screen).
WTH is a “jammern” and why would this articles english writer use that foreign word in a sentence? I can’t be the only person who didn’t know what it meant and I was totally distracted from the article by their apparent presumption that the word was in common use.
A few legitimate but common complaints marred by a bunch of issues that aren’t common (my phone key works fine, Bluetooth is fine, etc) and completely unsubstantiated prediction that the runaway top seller of EVs, indeed the best selling cars several years running, will somehow “fail to compete” in the EV space
I personally think this prediction is grounded. It has been over-promising and under-delivering for a while, and Musk has gone from a money printing machine to someone perceived as toxic/erratic. They will face difficulties in a scenario where competitors can make better, cheaper cars, and their stock market value is not inflated to compensate for that.
I'm really having trouble understanding how a company with the best selling car on the entire planet (more Model Ys sold than Toyota Corollas or RAV4s in 2023) can be accused of "under-delivering".
There are some apparently legitimate issues, followed by political grievances against Musk personally, written by a guy who describes himself as "law professor, activist". This kind of partisanship taints the whole article, and lessens its credibility.
If you think the kind of partisanship Lessig have taint anything negatively, you either do not know about him or hang in the wrong place imho. I happen to think he's mostly wrong and disagree with a lot of what he write (sorry, it's true), but I have to respect the thinker and his ideology.
Readit News
She triggered the seat belt alarm, but not straight away, only once we were on the German Autobahn. It showed the icon on the dashboard, then it started beeping. Then it started beeping louder. Finally, it settled into a loud, high pitched beep that continued throughout my drive, designed to force me to obey.
This is directly dangerous. I'm going 130km/h - what the fuck am I supposed to do about the seatbelts now? Not that I even wanted to...
It is this idea of "forcing your customer to obey by inflicting discomfort" that's puzzling me. I can't think of any other industry or product that would think this would be a good idea. Just show me the damn icon and if I decide to ignore it, that's my choice...
Not asking nicely for seat belt makes people actually use the seat belt. It’s saving bunch of people every year vs annoying me. And it sure does annoy me, but truth be told sometimes when I move the car just a bit the only reason I use seat belt is that the car is angry at me.
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt
The only seat where the weight is guaranteed to be a human is the drivers seat. By all means, put an alarm on that seat, but the other seats can contain things other than passengers.
Unrelated but also relevant to the story: My father's new car (a brand-new Nissan) starts yelling at you to put the seat belt on the second you start the car. It's really annoying because the rest of the car systems take their precious time to start up, so I like to start the car first so the stupid computers start booting and THEN put my seat belt on. But that means being bullied by a loud alarm every time someone uses that car. Why oh why? My Audi only starts the alarm once you actually start driving, and even then only if you go faster than 10km/h or something.
This is the safe thing to do. A bag heavy enough to set off the sensors (usually 10kg) is gonna kill someone if not belted in in an accident.
It is not uncommon for bags to go through the front windscreen and kill someone in the car that crashes into you.
No idea about other countries, but in germany you are allowed to not wear the seatbelt while driving "walking speed". So that makes some sense.
Unrelated too but in France you must put your seatbelts before starting the car. It’s the law.
the alarm mostly stressed me out more than realizing I was not wearing a seatbelt, which only made it harder to find a suitable exit so I could stop the car and put the belt on!
I think this is mostly an edge case though, because I probably held a much lower speed than expected in the parking lot due to being very inexperienced behind the wheel.
Unfortunately, one thing he learned is that every measure of forceful compliance is consistently more successful in preventing accidents and deaths. Seatbelts save lives, but they had to be made compulsory by law to drill the concept into people; and even with that, it takes un-inescapable annoyances like this alarm to get into compliance that last 5-10% of stubborn idiots who just won't do the right thing. Full-face helmets save lives, but so many people insist in using pointless "bowls" or even nothing at all. Respecting speed limits save lives, but it takes speed cameras to actually persuade people to do that. Etc etc.
The technical implementations can always improve, of course. And tbh, it takes nothing to fix the issue reported: just fasten the belt "empty" when you have the dog (and accept the poor thing will not survive an impact...). The industry is what it is because People Are Bad At Risk-Assessment, and that's that.
I firmly believe that it's not the government's or automakers role to keep me from harming myself - but it is the governments role to protect others from being harmed by me. Consequently, I believe the government should outlaw drunk driving as it endangers others, but it should not force me to wear a helmet on a motorcycle.
Just to be clear: I absolutely believe you SHOULD wear a helmet while motorcycling - but I believe if I choose not to and by doing so am only endangering myself, that's my choice.
For reasons I don't understand, tactile push buttons, with physical feedback, for most tasks are increasingly being replaced with a touch screen you have to look at rather than looking at the road instead and just reaching over to the dashboard.
Hanlon's Razor? It feels like the national road safety bodies world wide, have dropped the ball on this one.
In cases like you encountered with your dog, just put the seatbelt on your dog or bag / boxes. It's actually safer for you in case of a crash, they wont get flying into your face. If it's not possible, just put the seatbelt on under your dog just to silence the alarm
Telephones. The original UK ringtone was explicitly designed to be as irritating as possible (some really weird time signature, I think?)
Check your insurance policy.
You're in love. It is romantic. smooth, sleep touchscreen for everything feels so modern. It is a better car than ICE, hands down. Everything that was before was terrible.
And everything is getting better!
But at some point, you realize some things are never going to change, and you are going to have to live with it.
- it is dangerously hard to use any control that doesn't have a dedicated button. The touchscreen in a moving car is a moving mess of tiny targets crowded too close together
- even if you have a dedicated control for say wipers, you will still curse interval wipers.
- if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really)
- some functions - tesla doesn't care about, and never will.
- don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm.
- going forward - cram all controls/settings and information displays into a small ipad. You are all peons, you get less control/safety/information because tesla wants fewer warranty claims.
Is it harder to change a spare on a tesla compare to other cars?
No it isn't.
> - even if you have a dedicated control for say wipers, you will still curse interval wipers.
Sensor-based wipers fail to predict rain regularly. I discussed this topic recently with a friend, her Mercedes has the same problem and it does have a sensor.
> - if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really)
That's a valid point. But it remains to be seen how much of a problem this is. Certainly other manufacturers (Volkswagen ID.4 for example) cramp many more buttons on the steering wheel.
> - some functions - tesla doesn't care about, and never will.
Like what?
> - don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm.
Most modern cars don't have a reserve tire. Not sure what you're talking about.
> - going forward - cram all controls/settings and information displays into a small ipad. You are all peons, you get less control/safety/information because tesla wants fewer warranty claims.
It's still wrong if you repeat it multiple times.
EDIT: never mind, I see Teslas come with a repair kit instead. (I suppose by modern car you might mean electric.) TIL
Touchscreens demand I look away from my surroundings, because I will never know where anything is nor if I did whatever I wanted to do correctly. That is fundamentally terrible as regards safe driving.
can you elaborate on this?
What? How do you signal a turn then? How do you change the gear?
Buttons on the steering wheel. It's not very usable when you're trying to indicate while turning (like around a roundabout):
https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/tesla-steering-wheel-mode...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA2dSHu-hns
> How do you change the gear?
Via the touch screen or buttons in the overhead console:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h6CgpHMuqC8
They are both dumb design choices.
Yep. First world problem for sure but so frustrating. And other first-world cars don't have this issue.
It is the same with the ultrasound reversing sensors that've been removed.. the Tesla Vision / AI simply is not as good and probably never will be in a dark carpark.
But in my own view, the reason for 'don't' is that against many expectations, the incumbents have largely caught up in the EV space and there are new entrants doing exceptionally well. Tesla's complacency might be what harms it the most.
The comparison to Apple is not particularly great. I don't know how distracted is Cook and what his politics are, but I am still dealing with major iphone bugs than apple never bothered to fix in years, like all the music artwork being randomly reschuffled. And the experience only gets worse with time with more aggressive nagging for Apple services, my phone feels like the web in the 1990s, pre adblockers.
Not really sure how you got that; to me it seemed like more an afterthought. The author had already made his case before we got to the (fairly short) political section.
Huh. This must be what it's like to be a glass-half-full person. Speaking for myself, I tend to focus in on it rather obsessively.
> Elizabeth Holmes, at least, didn’t kill anyone.
Statistically, she almost certainly did.
> I’ve never actually thought that I needed a fart machine in my car, but pre-teens think it essential.
IMO this encourages bad behaviour, and should be banned. Its only apparent application seems to be startling pedestrians, potentially dangerously (obviously a horn would do this too, but the bad behaviour is more likely if it is made funnier to the sort of gormless idiots who indulge in this).
Anyone who _actually uses this_ should be shunned from society, of course.
In 2013 Consumer Reports called the Tesla Model S the best car it had ever tested. The Model S earned a score of 99 out of a possible 100 in the magazine's tests.
"If it could recharge in any gas station in three minutes, this car would score about 110," said Jake Fisher, head of auto testing for Consumer Reports. Fisher called the car's performance in the magazine's performance tests "off the charts."[1]
What happened in the last 11 years? Did Teslas get worse or did expectations change significantly?
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consume...
Autopilot is on a separate branch from FSD, not getting significant updates with the promise that at some point, it'll be merged with the FSD branch and it'll be super awesome - this year for sure, but maybe next year or 10 years after, look we made a robot that's definitely not a guy in a suit and it'll be out in 5 years, maybe 10, it can water plants now!, look a Cybertruck! isn't steel cool, etc
When they switched from Mobileye to their own stack, it noticeably regressed in performance, then they worked to get it to work decently, but dropped the radar during Covid, going all in on Vision, regressing it even further. They promised at that time to at some point match the original Autopilot by reintroducing a distance of 1 and a max speed higher than 140 km/h and it's been 2 years since then with nothing on the front.
Summon/ Smart summon as the guy in the article points out - is great, but doesn't work without USS sensors, which they removed and the functionality is coming back some day, but likely not soon, because it's not a priority. They've been selling cars for more than a year now that don't have that functionality, even though it's in a package worth 4000 euros that gets you basically nothing.
Autopark - same thing, just look at these videos as a comparison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA&pp=ygUTcnN5bW1vb... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfM8pZS7PFU&t=190s&pp=ygUTcn...
It's easily the worst out of all manufacturers.
In the meantime FSD V11 will be the big one, V12 will finally drop the beta tag, etc, etc things that never happen and the rest of the functionalities just rot away.
I think Model S is still quite good because it retains more physical creature comforts like turn signal, circular wheel, instrument panel, and hand-adjustable AC vents (in the model y, you can only change vent angle on the touch screen).
My brain reasoned it meant approx “cry/complain” as the article was registering a grievance:
> This jammern is thus about the car
I personally think this prediction is grounded. It has been over-promising and under-delivering for a while, and Musk has gone from a money printing machine to someone perceived as toxic/erratic. They will face difficulties in a scenario where competitors can make better, cheaper cars, and their stock market value is not inflated to compensate for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig
I'm not sure any of this makes him terribly qualified to comment on Tesla's economic prospects though.