this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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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.
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
It’s fine. Making a mountain out of a molehill.
Sure, I totally can't see someone swiping on their steering wheel, say, shuffling across it to... I dunno, turn it? And either jetting forward because they just bumped it from 55 to 75 over the course of a turn, or suddenly slowing, probably without brake lights. Swipe on a steering wheel has got to be the worst car idea I've heard in a while, and I've heard some bad ideas.
Again, unless I'm misunderstanding the controls, which I am open to the possibility of. Please, if this is the case, let me know.
Modern cruise control systems are smart enough to not accelerate in a corner, regardless of what they are set to, and tapping the brake will cancel them.
I don't think this is as much of an issue as you think.
Fine, it won't accelerate in the turn, you're still set higher coming out of it. Now you accelerate in the straight instead of the corner. There's no case in which that's a good or desirable outcome, and it can be easily mitigated by not having these controls so easy to accidentally press.
Cruise control speed changes don’t rapidly accelerate or decelerate the vehicle, much like any vehicle. IMO, if someone is too addled to handle that state change, someone should take their keys from them.
The point is, your car shouldn't be state changing suddenly. It shouldn't be accelerating when you're expecting it to coast or cruise. Unless something is wrong. Which I guess there is, there are capacitive slide inputs on the steering wheel.
This issue is only a couple of levels of abstraction removed from Boeing's mcas system. A poorly implemented feature no one asked for that isn't explained properly. Trained pilots can't react to their planes suddenly operating in a way that they don't expect. You expect a layman in traffic to?
It's easy to decry individual responsibility, and say only the most fit should be able to drive. What about the responsibility to the manufacturer? It's clear enough that there's a design flaw with this system. More drivers need to be aware, but why the hard-on for defending a clearly bad implementation of a feature? What's at stake for you?
Well, ok, how do you feel about Toyota’s or any other manufacturer’s cruise controls being on the wheel, where they almost always are now? It really isn’t that different.
Physical buttons I'm fine with. It's the capacitive/swipe buttons. They're far too easy to accidentally activate, since they only require a touch, and they're in the one spot of your car that you touch the most often.
Critical functions, so things that effect how the car cars, should never be on touch buttons. There is too much wiggle room with them consistently activating when you expect them to. If you want to put non-critical components on touch buttons, so things like radio, AC, locks... Fine. I don't prefer it, but at least you're not creating a hazard. Acceleration, deceleration, steering, braking, and safety should NEVER be on a capacitive sensor.
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.
The stereo causing someone to crash the car? That’s just Darwin at work.
There are falsehoods in the article. Go test drive an ID.4. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is yet another EV hit piece.
Not really at all. I believe your view is wrong. Just because you believe your high level of intellect makes it impossible for you, you may be forgetting the legion of morons and old people out there driving. Is 100% entirely possible someone could be turning a corner and accidentally does something to cause a distraction and run someone over because they instantly look down away from the road.
Regardless of the persons intelligence, it absolutely can and almost guaranteed has happened numerous times over humans driving careers. The button style just makes these situations easier to take place.
Edit - this isn’t a hit piece on EVs, touch capacitive controls suck in general in cars. Physical buttons are always better, easier to press and locate, and do what you need without drawing your attention from driving.
Keep finding your axe against capacitive buttons, I don’t like them either. However, the ID.4 is most definitely not causing more people to crash than other cars. People can accidentally swipe touch controls on steering wheels, too.
Yeah, no shit? These controls are shit in any car, including yours.
Lol, this sort of shit also comes in ICE vehicles. The only reason this is more predominant in EVs is because some braindead MBAs think EVs need to somehow be more "futuristic" and tactile buttons are too old-school for them. How is it difficult to fathom that in certain situations this can lead to accidents?
I’m not defending capacitive touch in cars. I don’t like it either. I’m just saying that it being blamed for an accident is silly to me.
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 what the resume function does normally?
That is:
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.
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.
That's how every cruise system I've ever used works.