I forgot how to drive a car...

[RickZieger 0]

But Bryon, I might not make it to the pond. 🤣

Rick  

[vicrider 0]

On 3/18/2024 at 1:35 PM, Bryon Anderson said:

I love my 2017 Subaru Outback, but Nick you're right, the controls took a little getting used to, especially seeing as it's the first foreign car I've ever owned. I thought the self-correcting and lane centering features were neat in theory, but I ended up turning them both off because I didn't like feeling the wheel "fight" me while driving, and the beeping was driving me crazy. 

Subaru's focus on safety is, I think, a good thing, but sometimes the lengths they've gone to in their attempt to ensure that you drive safely amuse me a little bit. For example, mine has a heated steering wheel (which is fantastic; all my future cars will have this feature if I have my way), but it doesn't heat the entire steering wheel -- only the ten- and two-o'clock and five- and seven-o'clock hand positions. You want warm hands, you have to be in one of the "safe" positions. 😄

Speaking of safety, here is my idea for a feature that I think all cars should have: in addition to all the safety features, I think there should be what I call accountability features as well. For instance - if you do something dangerously stupid--tailgating, cutting other cars off, pulling out in front of oncoming cars that are too close, forcing other drivers to change lanes to make room for you when you refuse to correctly merge onto an expressway, etc.-- you receive a mild electric shock through the pedals, seat, and steering wheel, then a full-autopilot feature takes over, pulls your car safely off the roadway to a complete stop and shuts the engine off. The steering wheel retracts into the dashboard and is replaced by a display screen, that then plays you a recorded video of the dumb thing you just did, complete with a scathing voice-over (ideally done by comedian Wanda Sykes or that scary lady that used to host the British t.v. show "The Weakest Link") explaining in graphic detail the way(s) in which you just endangered other human lives. There follows a mandatory "time-out", the duration of which corresponds to the severity of the driving infraction (tailgating =10 minutes; reckless speed/maneuvering = 20 min., etc.) When this period expires, the display screen will re-activate and administer an interactive driving safety quiz, which you must pass with 100% accuracy before the steering wheel will re-deploy or the engine will re-start. 

It's a work in progress, but I think it has potential.

2017 Outback? Ours was 2019 and didn't have lane centering. It had the steering wheel nudge you back if you got close to stripe but this one can steer through curves with no problem and our 2019 couldn't do that.

I agree about the autopilot feature for the most part but like Rick it might slow me down on way to  pond at times. The other thing with so many people having eye/object fixation you are too likely to get run into on side of highway. Just ask any highway trooper how many times their cars are hit by people just staring at them.

[Bryon Anderson 0]

>>The other thing with so many people having eye/object fixation you are too likely to get run into on side of highway. Just ask any highway trooper how many times their cars are hit by people just staring at them.<<

That's an excellent point...perhaps instead of the autopilot moving the offending vehicle to the side of the road, it could engage a "hover" function that would raise the car about 15 feet up -- that should get it out of the way of even the big semis -- and just dangle it there for the prescribed "time out" period. Actually, I like that idea better; in addition to being more safe, it makes more of a spectacle of the bad drivers. 😄