"Improvements" to road vehicles which have arguably made things worse?

[Harpo]

Inferior in your opinion.

And mine! A VW salesman told me the manufacturer set itself a 5% weight reduction target on each model.

The cheese-paring has included replacing bonnet struts with a vintage stick prop (!), taking away the full paper manual, removing covers on internal compartments, no spare wheel, etc..

Inferior? Hell yes!

 

[Bletchleyite]

There seems to be more cars now which are equipped with reversing alarms which on one hand could be considered to be a good thing from a safety perspective but as they are not mandatory others may feel that they are more of an irritant than a necessity. The noise can sometimes seem to be excessive and often carries far beyond the potential danger zone to the annoyance of neighbours well removed from the proximity of the vehicle in reversing mode.

Yet to see this on any car.

Lack of analogue speed / rev dials - it’s all digital and bar graphs.

Yes, this is annoying. Given that it's a screen, let us select a classic style display.

 

[dangie]

Lack of analogue speed / rev dials - it’s all digital and bar graphs.

Our Ford Kuga has analog for both speed & rpm. It also has digital for speed. I tend to look at the digital reading for speed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Our Ford Kuga has analog for both speed & rpm. It also has digital for speed. I tend to look at the digital reading for speed.

That'll just be down to what you're used to. It is a bit rubbish if the screen can't be set to replicate classic dials, though, as that's easy to do and some will prefer it. Another reason I disliked the MG ZS is that that didn't have that option (or if it did it was very well hidden), it was just a silly bar chart with a number.

I have an issue with touchscreen controls of key features because it has a negative impact on safety. I'm more than happy with replacing classic dials with screens if it's cheaper to do so (though if normal dials are cheaper I'd choose those because I don't have a strong view on either) - but I do think it should be possible to select a classic style display if that's what one prefers, as doing multiple display formats is very easy software work.

 

[najaB]

No it doesn't hill assist is just in the software of the abs system. The handbrake is irrelevant.

That depends on if it's a cable or caliper system.

 

[dangie]

There seems to be more cars now which are equipped with reversing alarms….

On a similar vein, reversing camera.
Our Ford Kuga has a reversing camera which frankly I couldn’t do without. I’ve never been the best at reversing, passable but not brilliant. Without the camera I would find reversing quite difficult due to the poor view out of the tinted side & rear windows plus the side mirrors which somehow seem to give a distorted view. Added to this at 74 years my mobility at spinning myself around to look behind me is quite limited.

 

[Bletchleyite]

On a similar vein, reversing camera.
Our Ford Kuga has a reversing camera which frankly I couldn’t do without. I’ve never been the best at reversing, passable but not brilliant. Without the camera I would find reversing quite difficult due to the poor view out of the tinted side & rear windows plus the side mirrors which somehow seem to give a distorted view. Added to this at 74 years my mobility at spinning myself around to look behind me is quite limited.

Reversing cameras are a great safety feature, certainly an improvement rather than an "improvement"

Having owned a Kuga I've not found the door mirrors a problem, though, even with the tint. So odd that you do, unless different models have different levels of tint, or you bought used and it has an illegal front window tint you didn't know about.

 

[DelW]

The decision not to have a spare tyre on board was never an improvement.

I have never had a puncture (across two cars we had five last year) and thought 'what a convenient time for that to happen, I have all the time in the world to use some gunk and wait until the tyre is fixed before I can use the car again'.

Doesn't the gunk also mean the tyre can't be repaired? I'd like to hear your outcomes on that. My current car doesn't have a spare either, but fortunately so far I haven't (touch wood) had a puncture in it so I've never had to try the can of goo. I hope I don't have to!

An arguable or controversial one could be keyless locks & ignition. Undoubtedly a convenience when entering and starting the car, but inconvenient that I need to store keys in a Faraday Pouch when not in use to hopefully prevent the car from being stolen.

Recently some organisation (possibly an insurer?) was recommending that anyone with a keyless entry car should fit a mechanical steering lock. So to avoid having to, err, press a button on the keyfob, they now have to wrestle with an awkward lump of metal and another key in a mechanical lock. When buying my current car I deliberately chose a spec' that avoided keyless entry.

 

[Harpo]

Recently some organisation (possibly an insurer?) was recommending that anyone with a keyless entry car should fit a mechanical steering lock. So to avoid having to, err, press a button on the keyfob, they now have to wrestle with an awkward lump of metal and another key in a mechanical lock.

A family members CCTV recorded a neighbour’s car stolen without keys. The thieves took 33 seconds!

So yes, I’ve bought an annoying metal lump and RFD pouch for our crappy mk8 Golf.

On VW keyfobs, our 22 plate Passat was even more annoying, opening the boot on the move if the key fob got squashed in my pocket.

 

[ainsworth74]

The proliferation of touch screen controls I think is something that needs massively cracking down on. I think all the basic control functions of a vehicle need to be on switches, buttons and dials and that includes the climate controls and at the very least the basic media controls (play/stop, volume, next/previous, etc etc). I can see how it's appealing to the manufacturers because it no doubt makes their life easier from a fitment point of view but I think it's faintly disastrous from a safety point of view. I can blindly reach out and hit basically every control I need whilst driving to do everything I need to do in a car which has switches, buttons and dials. Doing the same on a touch screen with no tactile feedback or worse, where controls are hidden behind a menu, is much more likely to cause driver distraction.

There needs to be a standard agreed for what controls must offer the driver tactile feedback and be on separate physical controls. By all means have all sorts of fancy settings and gizmos available (Bruce's driving profile has these settings, Sheila's has this, whilst Tarquin has this third choice of their own) via the touchscreen but the basic controls must be physical.

The other thing is, but this probably a bit more down the line than my first complaint, I think we need to clamp down on now rather than later is driver assistance devices. Such as lane steer, auto-breaking and whatnot. I have no objection to the tech itself but I think we're rapidly wandering into a world where it's not quite clear who (or what) is in charge of the car. Yes the car manufacturers go to great length to state that the driver remains in command at all times (after all they don't want the liability!) but I think the issue is more around what the human behind the wheel, including a conscientious driver, has in their mind of who is in charge and how to respond appropriately.

This has been an issue in aviation for a while now where accidents are being caused by pilots making mistakes when automation does something they're not expecting or isn't behaving in a way that they're expecting. Air France 447 (the one that stalled and crashed into the Atlantic back in 2009) for instance was in part caused by the pilots not responding well to the automation disabling itself unexpectedly and an unfamiliarity with hand flying the aircraft at high altitude. There have been other incidents big and small where pilots have made errors when responding to issues with the automation.

Whilst cars and other vehicles are less likely to have accidents be as significant as those encountered in aviation (it's unlikely that a car driver who suddenly finds that their lane assist disables itself will end up causing an accident that kills several hundred people) I do think it is worth spending time now thinking about how exactly these automatic functions interact with the human and how the human is expected to respond to them.

 

[dangie]

Recently some organisation (possibly an insurer?) was recommending that anyone with a keyless entry car should fit a mechanical steering lock. ..

Yes as well as storing the keys in a Faraday Pouch we also use a steering lock. Not so much a problem when parking overnight on the drive, but bit of a pain when stopped for a few minutes in Tesco!

 

[66701GBRF]

I would prefer to not have electric windows. I often find them distracting when they don't do what I want them to, like opening fully instead of just a small amount. Also when parking having to turn the ignition back on when I've forgotten to close them.

Can you not open/close your windows with the key fob? Hold unlock to open them and hold lock to close them?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Doesn't the gunk also mean the tyre can't be repaired? I'd like to hear your outcomes on that. My current car doesn't have a spare either, but fortunately so far I haven't (touch wood) had a puncture in it so I've never had to try the can of goo. I hope I don't have to!

Yes. Most people just replace tyres rather than repairing, though. There's an understandable lack of trust in repairs and it's only worth repairing anyway if fairly new. Often a tyre can't be repaired anyway, depends on the location and severity of the damage.

Nonetheless I would prefer to have a spare, ideally a full size one so the puncture has no effect on my journey bar the short delay in changing it. A can of gunk is a useful secondary thing in case you're unfortunate enough to get two punctures at once or a second one once running on the spare. No particular issue with this being at extra cost, but modern cars often don't even have anywhere to store one!

 

[Indigo Soup]

A friend of mine won’t have a car with an electric handbrake because he says it takes away the ability to do emergency handbrake turns…!! I’ve asked him when was the last time he had to do an handbrake turn?

If one isn't regularly performing handbrake turns to maintain competence , it's far more likely that attempting to do so in an 'emergency' will result in bringing the vehicle to a complete stop, striking an obstacle, or rolling over.

And that's quite apart from the question of what kind of emergency the average driver is likely to encounter for which the appropriate action isn't 'come to a controlled stop'.

Doesn't the gunk also mean the tyre can't be repaired? I'd like to hear your outcomes on that. My current car doesn't have a spare either, but fortunately so far I haven't (touch wood) had a puncture in it so I've never had to try the can of goo. I hope I don't have to!

One of the reasons why spare wheels have largely been replaced with patch kits is that modern tyres are significantly less likely to be punctured, and blowouts are vanishingly unlikely. For the vast majority of drivers, the additional boot space and reduced fuel consumption resulting from not carrying an extra wheel around is more valuable than the time that might be saved in a very rare situation.

An arguable or controversial one could be keyless locks & ignition. Undoubtedly a convenience when entering and starting the car, but inconvenient that I need to store keys in a Faraday Pouch when not in use to hopefully prevent the car from being stolen.

Keyless ignition is the bane of my life. It's entirely too easy to leave the key in a coat, or bag, or somewhere in the car for comfort while driving, then forget to take the blasted thing out again when stopped. I'm not sure what perceived problem it's actually trying to solve.

Curiously, the regulation mandating speed limiters on all new cars seems to have actually resulted in some manufacturers removing speed limiters. When the limiter was engaged on my old (66 plate) car, there was resistance on the throttle that had to be overcome to exceed the set speed. My new car (22 plate, same manufacturer) offers no resistance whatsoever, only sounding an alert when the set speed is exceeded.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The proliferation of touch screen controls I think is something that needs massively cracking down on.

RoSPA and a few other road safety charities seem to agree, by the way. Fiddling with a touchscreen while driving is no better than fidding with a mobile phone, and you shouldn't need to be doing either.

Fortunately physical buttons for basic stuff seem to be making a comeback. No issues with radio and sat-nav being a touchscreen as you shouldn't be fiddling with those while driving, but it's nice to have volume and change station/skip track as simple buttons on the wheel so as to be able to do that while moving. I can see a fairly solid argument for making touchscreens inoperable while the handbrake is off unless someone is detected in the passenger seat, for what it's worth, most cars do have that detection now so they can show a seatbelt warning.

 

[jmh59]

Yes as well as storing the keys in a Faraday Pouch we also use a steering lock. Not so much a problem when parking overnight on the drive, but bit of a pain when stopped for a few minutes in Tesco!

Given Faraday pouches have a cost to the end user why don't manufacturers simply have an on/off switch on the key fob - charge a bit extra but no need to buy a pouch. I read somewhere that some fobs can be turned off somehow but ours cannot so they live in pouches in a room furthest from the car.

As to all the driver assists I've come to like them now. It's almost fun shouting at the car that I want to take a particular line through a corner and to stop tugging the wheel from me! But on the whole I think the danger is it makes us less aware drivers, more complacent. Mind you, hill assist (or auto hold on our Hyundai which is hill assist++) is the one thing I would not do away with, but annoyingly it is the one thing on our car that cannot be set to be on by default. And physical buttons for heat etc - the Hyundai does have a press button for demist but a touch screen for heat up/down as well as for heat direction etc. Bring back the twiddly knobs!

 

[Bletchleyite]

As to all the driver assists I've come to like them now. It's almost fun shouting at the car that I want to take a particular line through a corner and to stop tugging the wheel from me!

The Seat Arona I found has the best designed setup as far as this goes (presumably a standard system on all Volkswagen-Audi-Gruppe cars) - it seems to genuinely recognise the difference between drifting out of lane on a motorway and deliberately taking the racing line on a bendy single carriageway - so it can be done without artificially pulling you into the wall!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Feb 2025 ==

As to all the driver assists I've come to like them now. It's almost fun shouting at the car that I want to take a particular line through a corner and to stop tugging the wheel from me! But on the whole I think the danger is it makes us less aware drivers, more complacent. Mind you, hill assist (or auto hold on our Hyundai which is hill assist++) is the one thing I would not do away with, but annoyingly it is the one thing on our car that cannot be set to be on by default. And physical buttons for heat etc - the Hyundai does have a press button for demist but a touch screen for heat up/down as well as for heat direction etc. Bring back the twiddly knobs!

I found the MG ZS hill assist quite annoying, it wouldn't release the brake until you tapped the accelerator, but when manoeuvring a torquey diesel at low speed you don't need to touch the accelerator, the clutch is enough. Another piece of terrible design on that car. Wouldn't buy one in a million years. Presumably it's just the same system as is used on automatics/EVs which don't have a clutch, but even then it's poor design - automatics/electrics usually creep forward/backward (depending on selected gear) when the handbrake is released so you don't need to touch the accelerator, requiring that strikes me as something that would artificially cause cases of pressing it too hard and hitting things/people by accident. Awful design.

Other systems seem better designed, e.g. releasing when the biting point is reached (i.e. it detects that the car is starting to pull against the brake).

 

[Llanigraham]

Doesn't the gunk also mean the tyre can't be repaired? I'd like to hear your outcomes on that. My current car doesn't have a spare either, but fortunately so far I haven't (touch wood) had a puncture in it so I've never had to try the can of goo. I hope I don't have to!

That is what the tyre shops will tell you, but it can be washed out with warm water. However there is little profit in repairing a tyre, whereas if you buy a new one............kerching!

 

[edwin_m]

Whilst cars and other vehicles are less likely to have accidents be as significant as those encountered in aviation (it's unlikely that a car driver who suddenly finds that their lane assist disables itself will end up causing an accident that kills several hundred people) I do think it is worth spending time now thinking about how exactly these automatic functions interact with the human and how the human is expected to respond to them.

However, there are a lot more cars out there than 737s, and the average level of competence for a road driver is far less than for an airline pilot. So an unreliable lane assist system is potentially going to kill more people than MCAS.

 

[DelW]

Yes. Most people just replace tyres rather than repairing, though. There's an understandable lack of trust in repairs and it's only worth repairing anyway if fairly new. Often a tyre can't be repaired anyway, depends on the location and severity of the damage.

I had two punctures on my last car (which did 130,000+ miles). Fortunately both went down slowly when the car was parked, so I was able to re-inflate them and get to the nearest tyre bay. Both were caused by a nail in the middle of the tread, so were repaired and lasted their normal lifespan.

Nonetheless I would prefer to have a spare, ideally a full size one so the puncture has no effect on my journey bar the short delay in changing it. A can of gunk is a useful secondary thing in case you're unfortunate enough to get two punctures at once or a second one once running on the spare. No particular issue with this being at extra cost, but modern cars often don't even have anywhere to store one!

Agreed!

One of the reasons why spare wheels have largely been replaced with patch kits is that modern tyres are significantly less likely to be punctured, and blowouts are vanishingly unlikely. For the vast majority of drivers, the additional boot space and reduced fuel consumption resulting from not carrying an extra wheel around is more valuable than the time that might be saved in a very rare situation.

When I was deciding whether no spare was a deal breaker, I thought back and could only remember changing a wheel during a journey on three occasions in nearly 40 years and 700,000 miles. The cause of the first wasn't obvious, the second was when I hit a piece of wood lying across the outside lane of a dual carriageway in the dark, and the third was hitting a sharp edged pothole in a country lane. The last two wrecked the sidewalls so a new tyre was inevitable.

Given Faraday pouches have a cost to the end user why don't manufacturers simply have an on/off switch on the key fob - charge a bit extra but no need to buy a pouch. I read somewhere that some fobs can be turned off somehow but ours cannot so they live in pouches in a room furthest from the car.

Or just go back to open and close buttons on the fob, as has been standard on most cars since the 1990s.

 

[gg1]

Thing is, how many minor accidents/incidents have been prevented by the hill start assistance that electronic handbrakes make possible, and how many cars haven't rolled away because the driver forgot to put the handbrake on or didn't apply it firmly enough?

I find hill starts on manual cars far more awkward with an electronic handbrake than a manual ne. It's one aspect of driving I never had a problem with until I owned owned a 2014 C4 Picasso with and electronic handbrake and hill start 'assist', I did get the hang of it but still found hill starts to be easier with a manual handbrake. My current car is an automatic where I can see the advantage of the electronic handbrake, but it's the first automatic car I'd driven so nothing to compare it to.

Yes, this is annoying. Given that it's a screen, let us select a classic style display.

My aforementioned C4 Picasso let you do exactly that, there were 3 dash display options, one of which were old style dials.

Lane keep assist is my main dislike as it's actively dangerous. It works be detecting the road markings and nudging you away if you get too close to them, all well and good until you're driving on narrow country lanes where it's necessary to keep very close to verge when something's approaching from the opposite direction, the lane keep assist attempts to nudge you directly into the path of the oncoming vehicle.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Lane keep assist is my main dislike as it's actively dangerous. It works be detecting the road markings and nudging you away if you get too close to them, all well and good until you're driving on narrow country lanes where it's necessary to keep very close to verge when something's approaching from the opposite direction, the lane keep assist attempts to nudge you directly into the path of the oncoming vehicle.

As mentioned some of it (e.g. the VAG implementation) is clever enough to realise that a country lane isn't a motorway. Given that it influences control in the way you mention I can't see any reason why all implementations shouldn't be held to that standard.

 

[DelW]

The cheese-paring has included replacing bonnet struts with a vintage stick prop (!)

I suspect a lot of owners never open the bonnet these days. There's very little that needs attention, or indeed is even recognisable, in my engine bay. I do check the oil level occasionally (although there's also a sensor), but that's about it. Washers and radiator seem to go between annual services without needing topping up.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don't see what's wrong with a prop. Every car I've owned has had that, I've never had one with struts. It is enough for what most people do under the bonnet.

Here's another one - automatic doors on a car (aside from possibly the boot opener if your hands are full). Pointless extra electricals to go wrong and extra cost. I see the point on a train or bus but not a private car.

 

[Indigo Soup]

As mentioned some of it (e.g. the VAG implementation) is clever enough to realise that a country lane isn't a motorway. Given that it influences control in the way you mention I can't see any reason why all implementations shouldn't be held to that standard.

It can simply be turned off when on roads where it's inappropriate, but that does require that the control to do so be somewhere accessible whilst driving.

Washers and radiator seem to go between annual services without needing topping up.

You must either have very low mileage or drive on very clear roads - screenwash can be a weekly job around here in winter!

One of the manufacturers (possibly Ford) did look at making the bonnet non-user-openable. There'd be a filler cap for screenwash, covered similarly to the fuel filler, and everything else would only be accessible at a service. Certainly a few manufacturers have made the dipstick an optional extra, since checking the oil level is no longer a weekly maintenance task.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It can simply be turned off when on roads where it's inappropriate, but that does require that the control to do so be somewhere accessible whilst driving.

Yes, it should certainly be a single press of a single-purpose physical button to do so. As with any safety-related matter.

It mostly seems to be several layers deep in a badly designed menu.

 

[Indigo Soup]

Yes, it should certainly be a single press of a single-purpose physical button to do so. As with any safety-related matter.

On mine it is those things... only the button is located such that the driver can't see it while driving, can't be identified by touch, and is next to the controls for internal lighting and headlight level.

 

[66701GBRF]

One of the manufacturers (possibly Ford) did look at making the bonnet non-user-openable. There'd be a filler cap for screenwash, covered similarly to the fuel filler, and everything else would only be accessible at a service.

That is crazy and I would never buy a car where I couldn't get into the bonnet when I wanted.

 

[Harpo]

Yes, it should certainly be a single press of a single-purpose physical button to do so. As with any safety-related matter.

I believe the way the annoying safety features work or get switched off is about achieving Euro NCAP safey ratings. I seem to recall that it mandates that they must need more than one operation to switch off as well as switching them all back on automatically every time the car is started.

By ‘annoying’ I include the twitchy steering wheel stuff on a snow covered road, one bit of ‘help’ I definitely didn’t want.

 

[Ghostbus]

Audible warning systems.

If you can't make sensor based warning systems that are weather proof, vibration proof or mechanic proof, but it's basic purpose is to distract me when I'm doing my pre-flight checks or even while I'm driving, then don't make it at all.