There's an awful lot in modern cars that can drive a person meshuge. Although I know active safety systems save lives, air bags give me the creeps. They're essentially loaded guns pointed at your chest and head. It's not quite law yet, but by 2012 traction control will be mandatory. Fine on paper. Saves lives, etc. But the application of these nannies will be far from uniform. The really bad systems (hello, Ford) apply too much brake force while simultaneously cutting the gas. The effect on the driver is discombobulating, to put it goofily. Then you have my personal pet peeve: idiot warnings. Every time it's sunny out I'm reminded that babies and short people should beware the passenger side airbag and sit in back. Jeremy Clarkson pointed out the full extent of this lunacy when he showed the warning sticker comes in a Viper: if you have a navigation system you must agree not to crash the car every time you turn the key. Or– ick– push the button. But the one that kills me, and will always continue to kill me, is the damn beeping when your seatbelt isn't fastened. Despite much evidence to the contrary, the motoring public isn't sub-mental. Anyhow, what's your biggest peeve?
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My pet peeves are nothing compared to their necessity. I.e. I actually do believe that a large portion of the drivers are “sub-mental”, in the sense that so few people concentrate on driving that it turns roads into extensions of living rooms. Not good.
From that perspective, I understand that automakers put their stupid warnings everywhere.
I’d love to see robot hands in each car, ready to whack skulls that suffer from excess stupidity:
– texting: whack!
– taking notes on a paper pad while driving (seen it!): whack
– cellphone: whack
– 60 in the left lane: whack
And so on. It would probably decrease state revenues, though.
AKM: 60 in the left lane: whack
You said it. Worse still is phenomenon I term “the Axis of Evil.” This is when you are stuck behind the same number of cars as lanes, all moving at identical sub-limit speeds.
The cruel, cruel persecution of young men by the auto insurance business is another chart-topper. What, just cuz I’m young, inexperienced and immortal, I’m somehow more likely to crash/kill/etc? Bullshit.
Little or no resonable thought appears to be given to the gauges in vehicles anymore. Ford insists on making the tachometer and speedometer the same size, despite that most drivers do not use the tach at all because they don’t need it. The speedometer should be larger, since it is the gauge used primarily. Conversely, Honda jams a giant speedometer right in the middle of the IP, but it goes to 160 mph, and the increments are evenly spaced (unlike in a Saab). Yes, that is correct, 160 mph, on every vehicle. So a driver will not only never go that fast (especially in their Fit or Odyssey), but they won’t even get the needle to use half of the gauge. Don’t people think about this when designing and building things?
Cars that lock you in and won’t let you out. Seat belts that won’t retract and get soaking wet while the car is parked. Wheel bearings that use integral ABS sensors. To make the system work, you have to change a perfectly good bearing. Catalysers integral with exhaust manifolds – to change one, you have to change both. $200 bulbs for those infamous glaring blue lights. Heads up instruments on a dark road in the rain.
Seatbelt minders are high on my list as well, especially on trucks driven around job-sites. I’ve found that most Ford vehicles have a very nebulous procedure in the owner’s manual for over-riding the belt-minder.
Another that I don’t care for is the horn beeping when locking the doors remotely.
Dumbed-down four-wheel-drive systems are annoying to those of us who demand such vehicles at work. The rental place says a Dodge Nitro is a 4×4, I say it doesn’t have low-range.
3rd row seats in vehicles less grandiose in size than Suburbans. (Minivans get a pass on this one)
OnStar or any other such service. BMW’s maintenance advisor who can interrupt you at any point while driving is creepy.
Airbags. They cost money, add complexity, and don’t really do anything useful.
I was in a wreck a few years ago. The seatbelt held me in place as it was supposed to. The airbag poofed up six inches in front of me and looked pretty. I survived uninjured, but I would have even if the car had not had an airbag. Because the airbag deployed, the insurer totalled the car.
Just about everything about cars today. I’ll stick to my BMW 2002, thank you (at least for as long as I can).
I have pet peeves in general about cars, and pet peeves about specific cars. For example:
My wife’s Jeep Liberty has a check engine light that never goes off, even when the issue has been fixed and the OBDII computer is set to clear the light. From what I hear this is a common problem with Jeeps in general.
Speaking of lights, the “high beam” light on my VW Jetta is like a gawdamn laser beam, searing it’s bright blueness at my face at full strength, no matter how low I dim the rest of the dashboard lighting. I’ve blanked it out with a bit of electrical tape. (Something I may resort to with the Jeep’s check engine light)
In general, I agree with Mr. Lieberman that the Legal Disclaimers of Potential Risk labels all over everything are annoying as hell. They have rendered the Owner’s Manual completely unreadable, as every paragraph of useful information is bracketed by 27 paragraphs of BOLD FACED ALL CAPS WARNINGS ABOUT THE RISK I FACE SHOULD I DO THIS OR THAT, accompanied by “!” exclamation marks in triangles and warnings in German, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.
I treasure the Owners Manual in my mid-60s Jaguar, which includes actual service and maintenance instructions, and (obviously pre-lawyer era!) details on how to prep the car for competition driving! It is a breath of fresh air.
–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org
Personally, I think the Tach should be bigger. If I am not pushing the car, I have no fear of speeding because I can’t see the guage. OTOH, if I am pushing the car, I am intentionally speeding.
My personal pet peeve is still the terrible menu systems on many nav packages. Some are as bad a the cellphones designed to make anything that they charge you for convenient and likely to be used accidently, while hiding the things you want. At least with the cell phone, I understand the foolishness behind the design. What’s the excuse for iDrive?
My pet peeve: The inability to turn off anti-lock braking in slippery conditions. I swear my car is going to kill me one of these days because the brakes go haywire on a patch of ice.
Just because most idiots don’t know how to pump their brakes doesn’t mean I should suffer.
(1) Putting chrome or metal on door handles (looking at you Mercedes). Nice getting your hand burned in a blistering hot day.
(2) Not putting a fuel door indicator on the fuel gauge so those of us who rent, borrow, switch cars can tell at a glance what side it is on.
(3) Lame ass trunk latches that are hard to use with glove on.
Instrument clusters positioned in the middle of the car instead of in front of the driver.
Landcrusher, I am like you in that I sometimes think the tach should be larger, a la Porsche or in something that you can “push”. But on a Windstar? Minimize, please.
I can’t see the logic of turning ABS off. Similarly, airbags will save your bacon more often than unnecessarily deploying in lower severity impacts, at least in the newer model cars.
My pet peeves:
Speedometers reading to 140 or 160 mph in cars that can’t get over 100 (and therefore cramming in the useful range of numbers).
Styling gimmicks like fake fender vents, gunslit side windows, overly large and chromey grilles, oversized emblems, and gigantic wheels on rubber band tires.
Also can we have nice padded dashboards back, please? Sans faux aluminum, wood, or carbon fiber trim?
Don’t take away the temp gauge, but can we move away from those painted body-color plastic bumper covers? The slightest touch against a rough or protruding object causes a scuff, scratch, or indentation.
Scarcity. Why don’t the dealers have the cars that are advertised, and get my attention? “Oh, we never get more than two coupes a month” Local Honda store.
Rick, I agree with you. I don’t care (that much) that cars come with all this silly ABS, ESP, Airbag nonsense, I just want the ability to turn it of for the (few) times where I know more about what’s going on in the car. I can’t get up my driveway in my new 4Runner without 4×4 because the traction control keeps cutting the throttle. In my old 4Runner, I just spin my tires all the way up (It’s a long steep snowy/muddy driveway). Of course, if I need 4×4 in my old 4runner, I can just pull the stick down and I have instant 4×4. In the new 4runner, I turn the silly little knob and whenever the vacuum actuator decides to pull the splined sleeve over then I get 4×4 (assuming the splines line up and it doesn’t get stuck), so I can’t quickly go in and out. That’s going to be expensive when that breaks.
My automotive pet peeves:
Flimsy turn signal stalks, or ones which automatically deactivate too early or late.
Undefeatable daytime running lights. On my ’92 Jetta every light on the car would light up as soon as you turned the key. Parking brake wouldn’t turn them off. The only thing the headlight switch was for was to allow the use of the high beams. I’m normally the first guy to want his lights at night/during fog/funeral, but I’d like to be able to turn them off when I feel the need.
Hidden hazard light switches. Normally I want to hit this during some emergency-type of situation – mechanical problem or sudden slowing in traffic. I definitely don’t want to fumble around on the steering column to find it. Put the damn thing smack in the middle of the dash like the Germans have since the beginning of time. And light the thing up at night.
Trip reset buttons that basically make you reach THROUGH the steering wheel in order to push them. Is it really so hard to put it somewhere where I don’t have to use a dialing wand in order to press it?
Foot pedal parking brakes in non-vans. There’s a center console there anyway, and I need a way to have fun in the snow. What’s the problem?
Brake pedal transmission interlocks in automatics. You already have to push a dedicated button (or pull the lever back on a column shift) to get the car into gear. Are people really that stupid that they need an additional safety?
Starter interrupt clutch switches. Look, it’s a manual transmission; this should imply that the driver has at least some level of competence, and it’s an unneeded hassle in some circumstances to have to press the clutch when starting the car in neutral. Cars in Europe still don’t have these and there’s no need for them.
The manufacturers’ need to build cars that you can’t see out of. It seems to me that the #1 safety feature a car could have is to let you see where you’re going. Why does almost every new car have blind spots that could hide a small army?
The trend towards ever more capable and numb cars. People don’t use half the handling or power that a standard family car offers these days. They also pay about as much attention on their driving as I do on talking to fat girls at the mall. Design in something that will make the driver scared enough to pay attention. Or, at the very least, make the car engaging for me to drive. There’s no need for me to be bouncing off the e-limiter at 110 MPH and still feel at ease (and bored) enough to be playing with the radio. Let us feel the road!
Related to the last pet peeve: powerful cars with Amish electronic speed limiters. A 2004 Concorde has 240 hp and can’t break 110 MPH. I think it may have still been in third gear when spark was cut. What’s the point? Either ditch the limiter or give the car less power. It’s just a waste.
“Max A/C” and the A/C-linked front defogger. I’m smart enough to operate the recirculation and A/C independently. And on cold mornings, I don’t want the A/C running when I’m trying to melt ice off the windshield.
Biggest? Hard to say.
One car blog habit that irks me is the zealots that use a statistical metric to condemn small foibles in a brand they “disapprove” of when their same metric shows their “darling” to have a far worse score.
That, and those who need to attach some sort of heavy emotional/moral baggage to those who hold a different view point. “hater”, “basher”, “anti-(fill in blank)”- if you need this approach it just demonstrates to every rational blogger that you can’t support your point of view.
You know who you are.
If you can’t support it with REAL evidense or solid reasoning…stop typing. For your sake as well as ours.
Grumpily,
Bunter
My latest pet peeve: tire pressure monitors. Somehow we survived 100 years without them, but now all cars need them.
Conversation recently with wife while driving our relatively new highlander:
Wife: The tire pressue montior just came on!
Me: It’s OK honey, we’ll just put some air in it next time we get gas.
Wife: I think we need to stop now.
Me: We don’t need to stop, tires were fine when we left an hour ago.
Wife: We need to stop now!!
Me: No we don’t!
Wife (driving) Well I’m stopping.
Me: Grumbling, get out check all tires’ pressure, they are all fine.
Wife: Are you sure your using the gauge right? The light’s still on.
Me: Increasingly angry–How can I not be using a M#*%&#$%#^&*& tire gauge right!
Days later, light still on, wife insists on service. Get to service guy, “Well the spare’s tire pressure is low, what are you dumb or something??”
The off-center Honda logo on the rear of all last design CRV’s. Loose license plates that flap in the wind. Upside down or way off center spare tire covers. Windows with 3 smoked window vent covers instead of four… I know these are stock pet peeves, but these drive me nuts…
1. Defrosters that run the A/C. Give me a separate button already. It’s 40F out. I don’t want A/C. Got it? If I was dumb enough to need climate controls that second-guess me, I’d get them.
2. Tire pressure monitors based on wheel speed will get confused by slipping on ice. Getting confused is OK, overall this is a nice feature included by piggybacking the feature on the wheel speed sensor for the ABS system. But why can’t they just reset themselves after a few miles of trouble-free driving? Maybe on some cars they do but on my Toyota? Nooooo….
Seat belt chimes annoy the hell out of me. The idiot lights are fine, but I could do without the buzzing. (And yes, I am a zealot when it comes to wearing my belts.)
The idea of speed limiters annoys me, but they don’t interfere with my actual driving. I already have a speed limiter of my own — made by Common Sense — that keeps me from driving at stupid speeds, so the nanny is not appreciated.
The black boxes scare me. Since it’s my damn car, I should be able to decide for myself whether or not my car can be used to record data that can be used against me in a court of law. My current car doesn’t have one, but I fear that soon enough, I will be required to have one whether I like it or not. In the meantime, you won’t find me having Onstar or anything like it, if I can help it.
I miss having real gauges. Finding an oil pressure gauge these days is near impossible, vacuum and oil temperature gauges are practically non existent, and even many turbocharged cars no longer have boost gauges. With digital displays now in common use, it should be easy to provide this information without filling the dash full of round dials, so I don’t see the excuse for not providing them, other than consumers who don’t appreciate the value of the information.
I’m all for ABS and traction control. This stuff saves lives, undoubtedly.
My biggest pet peeve is vehicular obesity. Why is it so hard to find a vehicle around 3000lbs?
My biggest pet peeve on my current car is the analog, instantaneous fuel economy gauge at the bottom of my speedo. It just swings wildly between 40+ mpg and 0 mpg.
Another major pet peeve – my car will go 250 miles on the first half of a tank of gas, and then 100 miles on the second half. That drives me nuts!
Anybody mention run-flat tires?
Then there’s the marketing types who decide that the US versions of certain import brand cars (or many domestic nameplates too) cannot be equipped with manual transmissions, with a real clutch. Including cars which could be appropriately so equipped (attention GM—Malibu? Aura?).
The economic analyses may tell them that it’s worth it to lose potential customers in this way. But I don’t care for it.
Cars smaller than 3000 pounds are easy to find. For example, a Scion xD is 2624 pounds. Probably most subcompacts are less than 3000 pounds.
The headlight/running light/turn signal assemblies on new cars. Butt-ugly for the most part and hugely expensive to replace.
Center consoles is cars with automatic tramsmissions. They waste space and encroach on my leg room.
Tachometers in cars with automatic transmissions, who cares how many rpms when you are not shiting the transmission manually. Give me something useful like a gas consumption guage or computer that tells me miles remaining at current speed. An oil level guage would be nice.
Rear exterior lighting in North America… there’s no standard or consistency to which lights do what and what color they should be. In particular, US OEMs with a single red lense/bulb that does everything, brake/tail/turn… dumbest setup ever. I will never own a vehicle with lights like that.
Can the world’s governments please get their transportation departments to all sit down together and make a WORLD standard for automotive exterior lighting… take the best features of US-DOT and ECE and whoever else and combine them into one, then OEMs don’t have to change lenses and wire vehicles differently for different markets… and drivers would see consistent lighting/signals no matter where in the world they happen to be driving.
My biggest pet peeves are:
1. Fake carbon fiber. I just don’t get the idea behind cheap plastic that is supposed to look like more expensive plastic.
2. The enormous Peterbuilt-sized front ends on today’s pickups. It’s just posturing. It’s the automotive equivalent of putting a sock in your pants.
3. Dealers that cook up their own maintenance packages that cost much more than the manufacturer recommended work. You’ve all heard their line of crap. The service adviser says “Your 12,000 mile service is due. It includes an oil change, tire rotation, head gasket replacement, brake job, new timing belt, and headlight realignment for only $1685. Do you want it?” Hey tool, I just came in for an oil change.
As an engineer, I’m probably worse than most when it comes to vehicular annoyances.
I remove the seatbelt beep on my cars. Usually that can be done by connecting a couple of seatbelt wires, but the wiring is more complex on newer vehicle like my Mazda3 and I had to disassemble the gauge cluster and break the beeper thing off. I always wear my seatbelt, but I put it on after starting the car and I don’t want to listen to the beeping in the meantime!
With the gauge cluster apart, I also put some tint over the blinding blue “brights” indicator that doesn’t dim with the rest of the dash. Now I can see at night!
Those air bag warning signs? I cover those with black stickers (plastic visors) or flat black spray paint (fabric-covered visors).
I took apart my HVAC unit to break a switch off and do some soldering so that my AC compressor doesn’t run unless I tell it to. I know that air conditioned air is dryer. I’ll use it when it’s appropriate.
I also had to jump some wires so all my doors would open with one push of the keyless entry button. I don’t know why some manufacturers don’t make that a programmable option. I’m not a woman; if someone wants to sneak into my car with me they can take their chances!
While I dislike ABS in the winter, it works good enough with my studded tires and I believe it’s beneficial in summer, so I haven’t disconnected that. I can definitely see myself disabling traction control systems someday if I can’t buy a car without it in the future. I drove a Toyota Highlander that wouldn’t allow you to steer and apply throttle at the same time on snow, even with TC supposedly off. If I want to spin my tires, let me spin them!
Anything that interferes with driving fun that cna’t be turned off. Anything obnoxious. The disappearance of sticks in most cars. Windshields that have a shallow angle, like the current Civic, and the football field dashboard solar collectors that go with them. Lack of window area useful for seeing out. Lack of headroom in a lot of cars. Automotive obesity.
Fortunately my ’99 Accord lacks all of the above, and has the clutch.
Xenon headlights. I realize that you can see more with these, but how is it any safer when the person driving past you is blinded by your headlights. I know people who have these and complain that people sometimes flash their brights at them because of the intensity. My eyes really don’t like these.
Also as another commentator noted, cars that can’t be seen out of.
I HATE DRL’s!!! When I bought my Alero, the first thing I did that weekend was find and pull the fuse for them. I know, they help oncoming motorists see you, but I don’t like being blinded by them when I’m behind an oversized truck with a chrome bumper. Thankfully, the autolamp feature still works, so the lights will come on automatically at night, and I like that. Now, if GM made the DRL’s to work like they did in the last Buick Century, as in through the parking lamps, I wouldn’t have much of a problem with that. Why can’t they ever do anything consistent???
Leather upholstery! Do we really eat so many hamburgers that we have all this stuff lying around, or are herds of cattle freezing in the cold because we put their skin on our seats?
Dinky windows
Lack of available manual trannies.
All the electronic nannies, unless they can be switched off.
KixStart
1. Defrosters that run the A/C. Give me a separate button already. It’s 40F out. I don’t want A/C. Got it? If I was dumb enough to need climate controls that second-guess me, I’d get them.
Every defroster will turn on the A/C, maybe not full-blast, but at least partially. Why? Because the air coming out of the a/c will always be drier than the outside air, and it is more effective at defrosting your windshield (easier for the moisture to evaporate). Even when it’s 40F out. And you live in Nebraska. And the relative humidity is 5%. Plus, it’s good to run your A/C even just a little bit in the winter.
My personal pet peeve is the idiot seatbelt ping in the LGT. The second i sit in the passenger seat, it starts pinging at me for having the audacity to be seated for a fraction of a second without being buckled up. My GTI doesn’t do that. It doesn’t care. It knows that I’ll buckle up eventually, and when the car is parked and the parking brake is set, there’s no need to ping at me. Subaru allegedly fixed it in more recent models, but whoever put it in in the first place should be taken out and shot.
On the other hand, the TPMS on the GTI drives me up the wall. I had to get a super accurate tire pressure gauge in order to measure the pressure accurately enough that the gorram thing will shut up. Granted, I’m sure i’ll appreciate it someday when it saves me $100 on a new tire because I didn’t drive on a flat, but it’s aggravating to have it flashing at me when i know that my tires are full enough to drive on safely.
cjclaymore,
Okay, you have a good point. I had to chuckle. Do they make manual windstars? Do they really even need a tach?
In my car the passenger-side airbag warning says that children under age 12 should not sit in the passenger seat. What useless information! As the parent of an above-average sized boy, I want to know at what weight and/or height he can safely sit in the passenger seat.
– Road salt in Northeast. It should be mandatory both to buy appropriate tires and know how to drive in winter. Average driver fails on both counts. I noticed that Colorado gets along fine without road salt.
-Other drivers. 1- they exist. 2- too many. 3- they are mostly stupid drivers or uncaring or both. Present company excepted.
-blinkers- they are treacherous. Enough don’t use them that they are counter productive. Professional truckers seem OK here and it helps with their rigs in traffic.
-The worst thing about cars you HAVE to drive them- lack of decent mass transit. Get these other people off the road.
-EPA. Everything they do is wrong on purpose. They are so close yet so far from doing it right.
-Detroit. They should all be taken out, lined up and shot (with pink slips not bullets). Union and management. USA should completely dominate world car industry. We did before AND after WWII and gave it away with MBA management and union costs. Now we suck, instead, due to long term short sight and players are actively having coronaries, even without China cars. Only remaining US car I would drive is older Focus hatch, if cheap enough, and I am not poor so no. Well I could see me in a Corvette, but that is out of line with everything and is always the exception. Its yet more proof that they should be shot; why aren’t all American vehicles astoundingly awesome instead of sad.
Good question. Thanks. Good rant. That felt good. Off to buy 1999 Miata tomorrow.
My pet peeve: The Check Engine light. It only goes on when there’s emissions problems, and most of those problems are evaporative emissions. Why do I care if a bit of fuel is vapouring into the air? It costs less than the $150 to fix it.
The CEL should only go on when there’s actual engine problems! Like, you know, it’s on fire, or the timing belt breaks, or something else nasty happens.
RPN453- I wish you lived next door!
I can’t stand huge 2 seaters! I love little efficient cars.
The use of “GT” on a car that is far from being a GT.
– No manual transmission (Pontiac G6 GT)
– V6 with single exhaust pipe (again Pontiac G6 GT)
Megan,
How can a car partially turn on its A/C compressor? Are you saying that some cars cycle it on and off?
I could accept the logic behind having the A/C activate on pure defrost mode (though I’d still probably rewire it on my own vehicle). However, a lot of vehicles now run A/C even on floor only (Mazda and Chrysler do this). Normally, my feet and floormats don’t need to be dried off. Defrost is my favorite ventilation setting. What does one do when they want fresh air but don’t want it blowing on their feet or their body, and they don’t want the A/C on? My ’98 Pathfinder had it right, IMHO. It never assumed that I wanted the A/C on.
Lack of information display. I bought a $200 toy that gives me instant mpg, any type of trip information you could ever want, and information from practically any sensor in the car. Tell me, why can’t manufacturers just build some of this in?
I like knowing my oil temperature!! I’d rather be able to tell that it’s getting hotter than it should BEFORE the big red light comes on and something fries.
My 1987 has built-in instant and trip MPG, and it’s pretty darn accurate. I repeat, my 1987. It also has a digital gas gauge that tells me down to the gallon, not “E” when I still have 5 gallons left.
When the Check Engine light pops on, my little device gives me a code. Nothing fancy, but enough for me to throw in a search engine and fix myself. I’ve used it on 3 family cars and 2 friends’, meaning that it’s already paid for itself, with interest. I don’t see why we should have to pay someone $70.00 because cars still don’t have proper displays – the code is all anyone needs!! Throw a code, list it in the owner’s manual, and presto! tons of money saved – oh, right… tons of money saved for the customer.
My biggest pet-peeve, though, is definitely the new “false” sense of security a lot of cars let off. Idiots get behind the wheel, and since the road is muted, think it’s quite OK to drive their 6,000lb SUV 110 mph on the highway. That is, until they need to change lanes; talk about some unexpected Physics 101 coming into play. I do appreciate a properly-tuned stability system – there are times when they come in handy – but as the muting of the road allows morons to drive past their limits without realizing, the esp systems gives false hope that a car will correct itself. Forget the fact that the roads are 3 inches deep in water, you have racing tires on your SUV, and you can’t see more than 10 feet in front of you, the ESP will take care of it all!!
What’s even worse is the AWD B.S. – Those fools at least know for a fact that their car has it, vs. the 50% of people who don’t even know what stability control is. Same symptoms, though – more idiot driving on the streets.
Back to a previous post about new pickups; I couldn’t agree more!! I drive an xA for the most part, and I could almost swear that 3/4’s of my car could fit in one of these truck’s hoods!! How much space does a 5.xxL V8 need?? Nissan managed to fit theirs in a nice-sized hood – most everyone else, though, felt that they needed space for one person in front of, beside, under, and on top of the engine. I wouldn’t be surprised to see built-in stairs for easy-access.
On manual-shift cars, having the accelerator and brake on wildly different planes such that it’s obnoxiously difficult to heel-and-toe.
The tendency on many, many cars to have a low enough seat and high enough beltline that you can’t see any corner of the car from the driver’s seat without a periscope.
Radios that insist on saying “Hello!” in bright, cheery letters.
Traction control on modestly powered front-wheel-drive cars. Does a Hyundai Elantra automatic need traction control? I think not.
The obnoxiously wide drop in ratios between first and second gear on a vast majority of manual-shift cars.
The gradual disappearance of temperature gauges from new cars. I don’t like not having an oil pressure or voltage gauge, which are already endangered, but being without a water temperature gauge is just asinine.
offroadinfrontier :
Lack of information display. I bought a $200 toy that gives me instant mpg, any type of trip information you could ever want, and information from practically any sensor in the car. Tell me, why can’t manufacturers just build some of this in?
I want one of these. What’s it called and where can I get it?
I loved Edward Niedermeyer‘s “Axis of Evil” term; now we have a name for it! Beauty…
As for pet peeves, the top one without a doubt is overly-intrusive and -compensating traction control. I hate that head-bob when you’re suddenly robbed of power unexpectedly, because of a bit of dust under the drive wheel at that moment. Give it a second!
A smaller one, but consistenly peeving nonetheless, is throttle-by-wire (specifically in a manual-tranny’ed car). It’s never natural-feeling; I always get that feeling that I’m not stepping on the throttle, I’m only making a request for more throttle please. I’ve lived with the BMW and Acura systems, and both were bothersome.
Megan,
I understand the theory. But at 40F and bone dry, the A/C is not needed; it just sucks up extra gas.
David:
It’s a ScanGauge. I believe they are still on Version II, but with updated software that allow for trip displays on the main gauge screen.
And I’m serious about paying for itself – you can view the code and send the “Clear” signal without paying anyone for it! Very handy when you get a Check Engine light from something silly, or something you can fix yourself.
http://www.scangauge.com/
Just a few examples of what should be displayed on these new “high tech” cars of the future..
supremebrougham :
February 29th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I HATE DRL’s!!! When I bought my Alero, the first thing I did that weekend was find and pull the fuse for them. I know, they help oncoming motorists see you, but I don’t like being blinded by them when I’m behind an oversized truck with a chrome bumper. Thankfully, the autolamp feature still works, so the lights will come on automatically at night, and I like that. Now, if GM made the DRL’s to work like they did in the last Buick Century, as in through the parking lamps, I wouldn’t have much of a problem with that. Why can’t they ever do anything consistent???
Amen. I’ve wanted to do that to our Aurora forever, but the second-generation Aurora was changed from the fuse-based DRL to one that’s built onto the ECU motherboard (is that the right term?). It cannot be disabled, as it could in the first-gen Aurora.
Also, I’ve been an Intrigue fan forever and the parking light DRLs in Intrigues and Regal/Centuries were notorious for corroding and causing shorts, busted turn signals, and other problems. It’s not exactly inherrent in making them turn signal-based, but bad design ruled that day. Equally W-Body Impala/Luminas and Grands Prix (hehe, that sounds funny) never had this problem, since they used de-powered high-beams for their DRLs.
Two words: Drunk Driving
Without getting into the deplorable state of what constitutes adequate driving ability when it comes time to issue a license in this country, I will focus my answer on the modern vehicle itself.
1) Warning stickers. This could apply to just about every product sold in the U.S., and possibly other countries. Of course we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Juries are still made up of people, aren’t they?
2) “Idiot” lights. I prefer the gauges in the dash of my 58 Chevy. I much prefer the info I get from the ammeter, oil pressure, and water temperature gauges than a battery light, oil light, and thermometer light. The people who can’t understand what these gauges mean are probably the same ones who wouldn’t know how to check there oil and probably ignore the “idiot” lights anyway (see opening paragraph).
I hope that traction control (at least traction control that can’t be disabled) doesn’t become a requirement. In certain circumstances, I feel safer with the traction control turned off in my Mazda6s. While most of the time I prefer to leave it on, I want to have the option of turning it off when I think it may be detrimental.
1:) People who don’t make right turns on red when they can. I have seen more than one driver sit thru a red light waiting to turn but they just SIT till it turns green impeeding the flow of traffic!!!!!!!!
2:) People who drive slow in the inside lane, thinking they are out of the flow of traffic in the slow lane when in reality they are blocking up the fast lane and they make NO effort to get out of your way.
3:) Women who think all the mirrors in cars are for putting on or adjusting their make-up at stop lights and stop signs. And some women do just that. So don’t rake me over the coals for that comment. It’s a fact.
4:) People who text and gab on cell phones while driving. Makes me wonder what they are steering the car with ????? Their feet or knees?????
5:) The people who only stop once when the vehicle ahead of them stops at a stop sign. When that driver goes they go, thinking they have already stoppped for the sign when the driver ahead of them stopped for it so why stop when they get to it and they give you the finger or a nasty look or both when you try to go ahead of them when it’s your turn and not theirs !!!!!!!!
6:) DRL’s. Anyone who can’t see something as big as a vehicle coming at them in broad daylight with it’s headlights off are more blind than a bat and shouldn’t be driving anyway. On a cloudy, rainy, snowy or foggy day i can see the benifits and usefulness of DRL’s but not on a clear sunny day. Who needs to see a vehicle coming at them from 2-3 miles away?????? I have a 2008 Honda Accord and it has DRL’s. I can’t disable them by pulling the fuse as was stated by Supremebrougham because the DRL’s are also my high beams so i am also disabling them if i pull the fuse. Guess they do it this way to stop people from pulling the fuse to kill the DUMB things!!!!!!!!
7:) Options put on a specific trim level of vehicle that the consumer has no way of deleting. Example: Honda puts a moonroof on every EX and EX-L trim level vehicle they build. Some customers may not want this and should have the right to delete it for a credit. I remember the days when you could option a vehicle the WAY you wanted not the way the manufacture wants to build it. I know this save money and time but give the shopper some choices other than 4,6 or 8 cylinders, front or all wheel drive, color and number of doors.
I’m sure there are others but i can’t think of them now.
My older 2 Plymouth Voyagers, 1984 and 1989, had push-pull heater/AC buttons.
If you pulled a button other than AC or MAX all the way out, then all the way back in, you got the AC compressor to kick in in that mode. If you pushed in the button from the “neutral” position,not from the extended position, you only got heat/fresh air in those non-AC positions. What’s so hard about bringing that back?
Add to the stop sign complaints the idiots who jump out from the stop sign/driveway entrance before you’ve cleared the intersection/driveway.
dereka :
February 29th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
In my car the passenger-side airbag warning says that children under age 12 should not sit in the passenger seat. What useless information! As the parent of an above-average sized boy, I want to know at what weight and/or height he can safely sit in the passenger seat.
I think that the raised the age requiremetn to 7 years old here in California. I don’t think they coud make a child safety seat that would have held me at the age of 7, and as far as your point, I was already 6′ tall and 155 lbs by the age of 12. I was already bigger than the average full grown man and almost all women (unfortunately, I stopped growing by the age of 12, and my dreams of playing in college and the NBA quickly faded).
By the way, daytime running lights have been required in all new cars sodl in California for several years, though maybe not the entire US.
People who play the trumpet while driving (on I-80 between Sacramento and SF).
Coating a steel wheel in plastic and selling it as an alloy.
Losers with poor taste in music who think I want to listen to their bass while I’m waiting in a left turn lane or trying to enjoy my evening at home.
Interior panels that don’t even come close to lining up or matching color (03 Taurus, 98 Lumina).
Coin trays. Obsolete.
Chemical off-gases that coat the inside surfaces. Really bad on the Taurus. 10 minutes after washing the windows, they’re hazy again.
I agree with those who have complained about the lack of visibility in today’s cars. It may be related to thicker pillars – which the conspiracy-theory side of my brain says may be related to NHSTA roll-over requirements.
And before I put on my foil hat, let me say that many manufacturers (especially the domestics) have made it impossible for those over 6’1″ to find a decent driving position in their cars. So naturally, we HAVE to buy trucks…
It’s like the food conglomerates forcing you to buy 8 hot dogs and 12 buns…
For me it’s climate control systems where you have to go through a convoluted menu system to set a temperature. A simple dial with blue and red segments is far superior since comfortable temperature is an abstract thing..you are either too hot or too cold. Setting an exact temperature is really meaningless since it doesn’t relate to how the person feels. Moreover repeated tapping a button to get to the temperature is tedius. Truning a dial is much quicker. This segues neatly into another pet hate…electric motorised seats. They are way too slow, the manual bar used to slide the seat back is infinitely quicker than holding a button and waiting for the low geared motors to do their thing. Electric seats are a luxury feature that add nothing.
To be honest I’m having problems understanding folk’s reticence toward ESP – it a great thing, why would you want to turn it off?
Nicodemus:
There are several occasions where Any modern ESP system will hamper driving. The most obvious/annoying one is off-roading; light-duty that might just possibly require 4-hi is sometimes OK with ESP, but when you’re down in 4-lo going up a steep hill, ESP just gets in the way. Sometimes when it tries to act as a “limit-slip” by braking the slipping wheel, all it really does is cut the throttle, killing any chance of the non-stuck wheel to actually get power. There are plenty of other times where ESP has gotten in my way on dirt paths and off-road, but I learned to just shut the damn thing off when leaving the pavement (downhill assist, though, is actually pretty cool). Fortunately for my truck, whenever I locked the rear differential, all of that crap shuts off anyway.
When you are on the pavement and the road is slick or has ice/snow, ESP can sometimes help while you are already at speed, but it is next to impossible to get your vehicle moving. Again, sometimes a little bit of slip is necessary. Another bad situation – you get stuck in slick mud. The ESP is going to try and stop ANY wheelspin, while you actually need the wheels to spin a bit to try and grasp some solid ground.
Don’t get me wrong – on the road, ESP can be a blessing. In a lot of situations, once you get used to the ESP system (assuming it’s a properly functioning system, such as what Nissan offers), the ESP system can allow greater control in emergency situations. When driving on poorly-constructed roads with heavy rains, it helps keep all of your wheels on the road. I played around with my system on my last SUV (in a safe, empty place, of course) and the ESP system really can bring a huge truck out of a spin, fishtail, or just about anything very quickly and very efficiently – it’s quite amazing, considering it does so by controlling the brakes. Of course, when you’re Trying to whip that rear end around…
factotum :
Losers with poor taste in music who think I want to listen to their bass while I’m waiting in a left turn lane or trying to enjoy my evening at home.
Bingo!!! My #1 peeve. I’ll admit to occasionally turning up the volume on my car stereo, but always with the windows UP
Why it it that every monster SUV I see with 22″ wheels and 35 series tires have the stereo CRANKED and every window down. If you like your music that much….KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!!!!….I don’t like it
This has got to be the funniest peeve here:
(from factotum)
“People who play the trumpet while driving”
I have to believe factotum; I witnessed a dude strum a guitar from Corte Madera to Santa Rosa in awful (normal) traffic one sunny eve on the 101.
OT: Rear Fog Lights. And the morons who slow down for them. Do the doofuses with the rear fogs blazing even know they’re on?
No. 1 Seat belt chimes. They could at least have a womans voice ask me(once!) to buckle up, not some cheap chime circa 1975.
No. 2 Did someone mention headlamp washers? http://www.wak-tt.com/videos/alien1.mpa
No. 3 All new cars dont need a huge LCD monitor in them! And if you dont want one, I dont need a cubic foot of sunglasses storage.
Has anyone noticed theres not much wrong with the first gen Audi TT’s interior, and a whole lot with the new model. They made the chime more pleasant ehem, threw in a huge lcd, and destroyed one of the best no nonsense driving layouts in a modern car.
Many posters here are dissing DRL’s. I disagree. It depends on where you live.
Where I live in California, the weather can change within seconds depending on your altitude and location. So on your morning commute it may be clear, but you go up a mountain pass and you are in fog. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen idiots driving in the fog with no lights on.
Some of the roads have signs that ask/demand you turn on your lights (Hwy 154, 17, etc). But not many people pay attention to these signs.
Ask anyone who lives in the Bay Area about how the fog is suddenly there during a drive.
I think DRL are a small price to pay to increase visibility when conditions are not the best and there are so many dumb drivers out there.