Whoa whoa whoa, this is 2026, you can also let buggy untested software drive for you
But full self driving will be available next year!
Safety is paramount. Unless some corporation needs to save $20 per vehicle on parts.
Yes, that’s exactly what it is, savings. Cheaper to just make the screen bigger and get rid of all buttons since there’s gonna be a screen anyway.
It’s not in any way “premium”, regardless of what they advertise it as.
I’m a Mercedes guy at heart (yes I know what community I’m in, but this is one of the points I agree with all of you on). Here’s the interior of the 2005 Mercedes S-Class:
There’s physical buttons for all the climate features and some other stuff. The infotainment has a keypad and multiple physical buttons in addition to a multi-axial knob used to navigate the actual screen. There’s NO touch capability on that screen, even though competing manufacturers were already adding touchscreens (you could get a Ford Fucking Mondeo with a touchscreen that same year).
Now here’s the 2020+ model (currently still in production):
Basically everything is touch and the screens themselves look like a complete afterthought, which might be because… they kinda are. They no longer have bespoke designs that fit the screens into the dashboard, they just have screens and they have dashes which are not designed to be integrated with eachother but rather as separate objects.
These aren’t exactly cheap cars either. The three pointed star itself costs a ton of money even in entry level cars, but the S-Class is the flagship, it sits ABOVE their large SUV (GLS aka “the S-Class of SUVs” like they call it). The absolute cheapest S-Class sold by the dealer is 141k EUR and I believe the only thing that has a more expensive base model is the AMG GT sports/supercar.
Now a comparison, here’s the C-Class, starting at around 55k EUR
Can you even tell the difference? The cost-cutting measures have gotten so bad that a car nearly 3x more expensive has pretty much the same interior as their entry-level sedan. Yes there will be more space, more rear seat amenities, etc in the S-Class and the chassis itself is different, but they look so similar getting into them that people buying the S must be feeling cheated by now. And this is pretty much the same for all the big manufacturers.
I’m a school bus driver and every year our boss has to remind us not to use our smartphones while driving the goddamn things. Because every year some of our drivers still do it. Last year one of them actually rear-ended a stopped car at 45 mph while on her phone and somehow still has her job.
Doesn’t that have more to do with how hard it is to hire bus drivers?
Our county can’t find anyone. We just have empty bus routes.
(Yes I’m aware it is 100% money)
Doesn’t that have more to do with how hard it is to hire bus drivers?
Yeah, that plus our union makes it very hard to fire people, even for gross illegality. Don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% pro-union (we make about $10 more per hour than our neighboring non-union districts and have health insurance and a pension) but there’s definitely a downside to it. Our shop steward got a DUI after blowing a fucking .36 (she was found passed out in her car with the engine running) and was driving her route three hours later, and she was eventually allowed to resign rather than being fired. Shop stewards are even more protected than regular union members.
Where I come from, they wouldn’t fire a bus driver who showed up at work in the morning smelling like booze, just tell him to go sleep it off. It’s a shit job, nobody wants to do it. I do live in a wholly different country though, so bus drivers are paid shit despite being unionized as even with subsidies the bus routes in small towns aren’t very profitable. Cities with people in them are a different story.
This is for regular bus routes, not school buses, we don’t have those, schoolkids just take the same bus as everyone else.
Also cops can be fully typing on a full Size laptop or talking to their buddies holding the phone to their ear with 0 repercussions ever.
They can shoot your dog, rape your wife, and strangle your black neighbor with 0 repercussions.
I’m a school bus driver and a couple of years ago I had a cop pass me in the opposite direction when I was stopped with my red flashers and stop sign out and about to let kids out to cross the street. He was face down in his phone. If I hadn’t noticed him coming he easily could have hit a kid … and then I probably would have been arrested.
They also don’t wear seatbelts.
No need to change that.
Or follow the speed limit. But when they do, it’s 5 under and they scare the shit out of other drivers
That’s for the best.
I wish more cars had built in keyboards, it would be less distracting thsn typing on a touchscreen
How about you wait when you aren’t operating a several ton death machine?
Shit, my normal old dumb car with physical buttons still also allows me to control it with my voice. They couldn’t do the same with their stupid touch-only iPad dash?
The new ones do still have that too, but try doing that with a thick eastern-european accent.
I think about this a lot while I’m cycling through traffic and see or have a few near misses. I’m trying to be careful and sometimes I have near misses with pedestrians or other cyclists, and I’m glad not to drive a car, because this shit would terrify me. I don’t understand how people can drive a car and not constantly be worried about killing or hurting someone. I don’t understand how lots of motorists can be so cavalier while driving a multi ton motorized vehicle.
Yeah I’ve been driving for… 12 years, 2 of those independently, and there’s always that sense. That being said there’s also periods where you get into a flow state and generally it’s the idiots that are causing problems. Though there’s been moments where it’s come close.
I think a lot of drivers actually are always anxious about hitting and hurting someone. To the point that when a story comes out about that happening, their primary concern is the emotional wellbeing of the driver.
I drive a car and I am constantly worried that I will hurt a pedestrian, cyclist, or animal with it. My car is an older EV that doesn’t make a noise outside the car when it is running, and it especially seems to startle deer and cyclists. Only thing I can do is give them more room.
Did you disable the low-speed noise speaker or did yours not come with it? I was pretty sure they’re mandatory on EVs because even first gen Leafs have them. And at speed you make more noise than an equivalently sized ICE vehicle anyway
I bought the car used and the only noises I hear from outside of it is the air conditoner, and a sort of quiet but apocalyptic-sounding backup chime. At low speeds moving forward it doesn’t make a noise. Later models of my car (Leaf) have a sort of white noise generator that gives it a bit of a TIE-fighter sound. I think the noisemakers were added in 2020?
Maybe bolt one of those whistling arrows to the outside of the car? Or some wind-powered noise maker more pleasant to listen to but still easily heard?
I might just see if I can adapt the noisemaker from a newer version of my car. Or install my own with my own set of sounds.
I’m not sure what you’re driving, mine is exempt too, but I have a plug where it’s supposed to go. I haven’t owned it long enough to decide if I want that or not yet though.
I have a second-gen Leaf.
With a name like yours, there’s only one option. You must make it one-to-one scale, stuka klaxon and mount it to your hood
This kills the efficiency
You’re not allowed to use the navigation or anything while the car is in any gear other than Park in my car
