I don’t like the way cars are being designed to help me with stuff.
I’m not talking about good things like crumple zones and mirrors. I mean stuff that seems to be helping you, but actually teaches you bad habits. I’ll give you some examples.
I got into the habit of wearing seat belts before I even had my drivers license. We’d gone to Vancouver one summer to visit relatives, and around that time a law was passed in British Columbia that required all vehicle passengers (ALL!) to wear seat belts or face a fine. So, every time any of us got in anybody’s car we got harped on to don the damned seat belts. It became a habit, and one that carried over through our return to civilization New York.
Fast forward a few years, and I was on a business trip. The rental car was nice (nicer than what I was driving at the time) and one of the features was an automatic seat belt thing. You know the kind, when you get in the driver’s seat the belt swings around you automatically. The problem was that this was only the shoulder belt – you still had to affix the lap belt manually. The problem for me, though, was that with the shoulder belt affixed I constantly forgot to put on the lap belt.
Did you know that the shoulder belt by itself is more dangerous than no belt at all? Auto-seat belt… NOT HELPING!
More recently is the decision to put little TV screens on the dashboard, which will show you a backup camera to make sure you don’t run into stuff. You see the commercials on TV of the drivers that narrowly avoid running into other cars, because they see them on the little TV.
The problem is that this teaches you to do two bad things. One is, watching a TV screen while you’re driving. The other is, NOT TURNING THE F*CK AROUND WHEN YOU’RE BACKING UP!!!
Sorry, car designers, you’re not helping!