Shannon Taylor and her 2013 Chevy Suburban have been together for only a month, but already the car is on her nerves. It interrupts conversations to announce traffic jams and nags her to fill up the gas tank. It has even sparked arguments with her husband over how much to rely on the rear-mounted cameras when backing up.
“It’s annoying,” the Hingham mom said.
Comments
...a chevy suburban...really??? Anyone who buys one of these gas guzzlers deserves to be annoyed!
And the Range Rover, the Sequoia, the Envoy, and the GX470, behemoths all. Do Honda Civic owners have these problems?
If someone has the money I don't care what vehicle they drive. That said I think the limousine liberals of the Globe would refer to this article as "rich people problems". Gosh, my $45,000 vehicle just does not know its place!
Interesting. I see all of these techno advances as progress. I welcome any type of back-up assist device in a car. I've driven a new Suburban and a giant Infiniti SUV during my travels and for work. Both of these monsters need multiple warning systems to keep safe.
So true. People buy these yachts thinking they'll be be safer, protect occupants better, etc. But they don't handle well, poor braking compared to smaller vehicles, restricted visibility, a bit top heavy, etc. They certainly have their place, but the best way to survive an accident is to not be in one in the first place.
Bad enough having cell phone and texting distractions. Now the vehicles themselves are the problem.
You can turn off the phone.
I'll take my no bells, no whistles, 20th century ride any day. I wouldn't trade it in for a free brand new car. No way.
I have a 1998 Subaru Forester, AWD, stick shift. It NEVER annoys me. One cool thing: If you don't have the key in the ignition, the headlights won't work. Very nice, you can't leave your lights on by accident.
I remember when car radios were AM only, when there were outside rear view mirrors on the driver side only, when windshield wipers had one speed, when your left arm doubled as a turn signal, when you had to crank the windoes up and down, when you had to use a key to lock the doors.
Turn signals were standard before radios. The "one-speed" wipers I remember ran off the engine, and slowed at stops and sped up at speed. GM cars of that era let you lock the door without a key, but I don't remember if any outside mirror was standard.
I also remember our wheel drum brakes that, when wet, took forever to stop. I remember seat belts that were nearly useless and steering columns that coul spear you in the chest and kill you in what today would be a survivable,walk away from, crash.
Not all new features are bad.
It's official: Cars are now as proportionally annoying as the people who drive them.
Your article neglected to mention the plus side. My Ford Focus tells jokes. Everytime I ask my steering wheel to call my friend Beth Mass, she responds, "Calling Beth Massachusetts." Cracks me up!
These people have serious issues if they are that annoyed at their automobiles. Stay off the road or concentrate on what's important in life.
We're not allowed to be annoyed at relatively trivial things? What about people who are annoyed at articles like this one?
Machines that people interact with alot, up close, and personally often are "humanized" by their owners. (I think the term is anthropomorphized?) They get imbued with emotions and intentions as if they are living things. So you have people who name their boats after a significant woman in their life, or pet their computer when something important is being processed for a long time and they get nervous. I once saw an office camera video on the Internet which showed an enraged office worker taking a baseball bat to his monitor, one of those old, CRT types.
Don't most of these things have off or mute buttons?
Safety features are great. But, if car makers really cared the car makers would allow the OWNER of the vehicle to choose which electronic options to turn off or leave on.
Lack of choice with electronics of all kinds has certainly become an annoying trend where each maker tries to keep us captive in their "eco" system. Very annoying. Maybe I want a Samsung phone and an Apple computer to be able to swap information easily.
The car and electronic manufacturer who lets me choose for myself gets my vote.
I have a 2010 Honda Civic. I lease. It doesn't shut off interior lights. It continuously locks all door and windows and isn't clear how to unlock. I have drained my battery more times than I care to admit because the indoor light stays on a full 2 minutes when you shut off the car, and you don't realize you may have used that light earlier to see something and it doesn't automatically disengage when you leave the car. The only way I can be sure the light doesn't stay on is to wait the full two minutes outside the car to see if all the lights go off. Passengers cannot leave the car because they're locked in, and get frustrated because they can't use the windows either. these are all "perks" I do not want. I haven't got children and I'm assuming these "features" are for them. I constantly have my manual open to try to find out how to disengage but still wind up with the same trick. The clock is on the same button as the AM/FM so resetting it is not an easy task. My side windows are unusable in bad weather. All of the controls are bundled and it's hard to figure how to use them. As far as I'm concerned foreign cars are for foreigners. Thank heavens my lease expires in May, I will not get another foreign car! YOU'RE SO RIGHT- Realtor!
It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Why? 1) these things are designed by engineers and they are clueless, 2) they will support the interests of the manufacturer, not the user -- for instance, avoidence of liability, 3) hardly anyone is good at end user design even if they want to be; the thinking will just not be very deep 4) guess what it will be like when these electronic devices get old and start to get glitchy and fail? Welcome to the future, when institutions, people, and object around you know more about you than perhaps you do yourself, and where they all are driving to satisfy their needs, not yours...
Between muting the handy Google traffic predicting GPS & fiddling w/a paper map or curbing to ask directions, I'll take the GPS. The rotary dial check your own air, oil & coolant crowd has such a keen sense of appreciation for today's technology that the Xbox generation will never understand or appreciate...
I am disappointed in the slant of the video presentation as it neglects to focus on the safety advances in the newer automobiles but instead talks about something like automatic seat and mirror adjustments. The driver was correct in stating that she can choose to not use the feature.
What is important to think about is that advances in technology will permit older drivers to continue to drive safely as they age (as long as they remain healthy). This is very important for those that live in locations with limited or no transit service. As folks age in place (a desirable thing for many), mobility is essential to a good quality of life.
That "fatalities and serious injuries resulting from accidents are down 25 percent since 2005, Gage said" is, I would guess, almost completely due to stability control. That was made clear when European cars had it and US cars did not. Air bags, I would guess, add to safety. This is clearly a wonderful development.
I don't think most of the systems that interact much (and possibly annoy) the driver are as significant, and, of course, there ARE ways to make them NOT be annoying (if enough effort were to go into that).
The story should be "Suburbanties Continue to Drive SUVs; Kill Planet."
This crazy trend towards useless, distracting gadgetry and complicated electronic controls that will probably break down at some point is yet another reason why I don't want to own a car. In fact, I moved (from California) to an area with excellent public transportation so that I could extricate myself from the automobile world as much as possible. The trends described in this article confirm what I thought was going on. In the unlikely event that I need to buy a car again, I'm going to look for manual transmission and no gadgetry, even if I have to buy used.
One of the main reasons cars are so complex these days is that increased complexity makes them more expensive to fix, and that's where the real money is in the car business. A window wasn't working on my German sedan so I took it to the dealer expecting that it might cost a couple of hundred bucks to fix it. And I thought THAT would be expensive. The dealer's estimate was $950. Absurd.
Your mistake was going to the dealer for any non-warranty service. How do you think those fancy lounge style waiting areas are paid for. A glass replacement firm may have been able to eitherfixitorsend you to someone who could.
No doubt, we will someday have a government mandate from the Dept. of Health and Human
Services requiring all new toilets to have an electronic warning system that broadcasts, "You forgot to flush", when required.