What about extreme violations of privacy? Let me know when that is “out”, too.
Yeah, so the thing is, any amount of trust that I had has already been completely destroyed. “We don’t do it anymore because it’s illegal, trust me bro” isn’t going to cut it. Does the bill include mandatory prison time for executives for violations, or just cost-of-doing-business fines? Will this be enforced by a government regulatory body that is not literally outnumbered 20:1 by car manufacturer lawyers?
If the car has any kind of network capabilities and 100% of the car’s software is not open source, I’m not buying it. Period.
This bill would not need to exist if cars were FOSS, or if cars were non-networked. Those are the only 2 solutions that I will accept. This bill is worthless to me.
Touchscreens can stay, but only for non-essential tasks like changing settings or entering addresses. Climate, media, and all other controls you usually use while driving should be tactile by mandate.
Here’s my rule: Anything in my Chevy S10 that you control by turning a knob, moving a lever, or momentarily push a button? That needs to be a physical control in a car. Anything where you push and hold a button, or mash a button multiple times (like setting the clock or turning off the DRLs respectively) can be moved to a settings menu in a touch screen. These things shouldn’t be done while moving.
And no, touch sensitive single-function panels like the climate controls in my father’s Avalon are not good enough, it needs to be a mechanical control that you can feel for without activating.
Can we address headlights that are brighter than the sun now?
my issue isn’t really with the brightness, it’s the height. Don’t get me wrong bright headlights are annoying as fuck, but a huge ass truck behind me with their headlights literally higher than my back window is insane.
My point exactly. The brightness is great, when it works in your favor. But when a modern car sits at such a height, where the low-beams shine directly over the top of my car, it’s obnoxious
That, and people don’t know how to adjust them, or are unwilling to. My parents’ cars have a dial to adjust the headlight angle for when carrying weight in the back of the car, or when towing, but they never touch the setting.
I miss that in my old car. When I’m drivng around in the city and don’t rally need much headlighting I’d angle them all the way down. When I’m in a dark area where there’s enough people that I can’t use my brights I’d just angle them up. My current car has stupid self leveling headlights so I don’t get any of that fun :(
Touchscreens were never popular with customers. Manufacturers kept cramming touchscreens in cars and using them to control everything becuase they were being stupid with new tech.
Edit: I guess I should have been clearer. I was talking about as a replacement for tactile controlls in a car like the article is talking about. Reverse cameras and other things that are good to have a touch screen for make perfect sense but using your touch screen to control your Air conditioning in a way that you have to divert your attention from the road to operate sliders and buttons on a touch screen is dumb as hell.
Also the fact that touch screens are cheaper to build with how expensive battery tech has been in electric cars.
Cheaper to build and can be adjusted and patched as you go
Touchscreens are great to have, controlling Android Auto or Apple Carplay with physical buttons like you have to do in a Mazda is a nightmare.
The problem is when the touchscreen is used as a replacement for physical controls, instead of an addition. Stuff like controlling your climate control should not be exclusively controlled through the touchscreen
And don’t even get me started about VWs stupid decision to put touch controls on the steering wheel. At least they backpedaled on that decision pretty quickly
Fuck yeah, I love tactical controls. There’s just something nice about something physical you can feel and manipulate.
Like, not dying while trying to go through menus while driving
No.
Out the way, boomers.
