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European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

arstechnica.com

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Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#171

Post by Aurornis »

static_void_ wrote: post #89
I_Am_Nous wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least the steering wheel and pedals still behave the same. For now, companies are experimenting with drive by wire. Don't think I like that concept.

Electronic power steering already exists. It's used in a lot of cars, and has been for at least 10 years. Your car may have one of these systems in it. In an electric power steering system there are steering angle and torque sensors that know what direction the wheel is turned an how hard it has turned, and this is connected to an electric motor that powers the gears to move the steering rack. There are still regulat…

> Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body

Electronic throttles became widespread much later than the 80s. Pop the hood of common 2000s economy cars and you’ll find a mechanical throttle linkage.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#172

Post by culopatin »

AsmaraHolding wrote: post #92
culopatin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experimenting? It’s been around for a long time. My 1999 Jetta had it. It’s smoother and you can control the fuel adder on throttle opening from all angles. Sure, it’s not instant, but stabbing the gas in a non dbw is not great either. In electric cars there is no other way than dbw

A 1999 Jetta doesn't have steer-by-wire. Wikipedia says the first production car to have it was the 2013 Nissan Infiniti Q50.

Well I see what you mean. Steer by wire is part of drive by wire if you want to be specific. But before that was a thing “drive by wire” meant a throttle body controller by the ECU.m for many years. So if you go to a shop and say DBW what the other end hears is “stepper throttle”

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#173

Post by richardw »

userbinator wrote: post #16

But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn Are there really cars where the horn is not a physical button/ring on the steering wheel? IMHO the driving UX peaked in the 1960s, and was largely unchanged into the 2000s, until touch screens started taking over. Compare: https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads... https://images-stag.…

Except for radios. It's very annoying that every radio had a different UX, likely in the name of innovation and differentiation. I think that's a safety issue for e.g. rental cars.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#174

Post by aurareturn »

branko_d wrote: post #119
aurareturn wrote: post #4

Around 10 years ago, I started looking into buying a new car. I couldn't believe the number of cars that switched to touch controls even 10 years ago. It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving. I refused to buy any car that replaced physical buttons with touch controls 10 years ago and I still have this rule today. Then again, it also boggles my min…

> Then again, it also boggles my mind how car makers in the US continue to use flashing red lights as the turn signal instead of yellow lights. Technology Connections channel had a video about that a while back: https://youtu.be/O1lZ9n2bxWA?si=xKRgMFK1DFBrB3i0

It boggles my mind. It really does. I refuse to buy a car that uses red turn signals.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#175

Post by arlort »

focusgroup0 wrote: post #30
bhpm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t it be safer to require all cars to have voice controls? Then the driver doesn’t have to move their hand off the wheel at all.

I took a ride with an owner of a brand new BMW with glass cockpit and minimal buttons. He complained to the dealer about not being able to find any of the actions in the endlessly nested menus. The dealer's response: Use voice controls. He tried it, and it's even worse than Siri in terms of reliability. Absolute unmitigated disaster.

And that's presumably in english, which is likely the language which had the most money poured into having good voice to text and vice versa

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#176

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Reason077 wrote: post #109
lokedhs wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any of these cars available outside the US? From what I've been able to tell, US regulations are much weakest in this regard which is possibly why there are so many words cars there.

The Lexus steer-by-wire tech is expected to ship in Europe later this year: https://www.drive.com.au/news/toyota-lexus-steer-by-wire-sys... (In some aspects the US automotive regulations are actually stricter than in Europe. For example, in Europe there are some vehicles (eg: Audi) where the wing mirrors are replaced by screens/cameras, but this is not permitted in the US. Adaptive matrix headlights are also not allo…

Adaptive headlights are coming soon.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#177

Post by [deleted] »

spdustin wrote: post #58
userbinator wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you don't press the left one to stop, and the right one to go?

You don't feel the hydraulic feedback in the brake pedal (just the ABS buzzing), and gas pedals in many modern EFI vehicles feel more like foot-operated potentiometers than throttle linkages.

[deleted]

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#178

Post by arlort »

wnevets wrote: post #67

> In 2026, Euro NCAP points will be deducted if some controls aren't physical. > Euro NCAP is not a government regulator, so it has no power to mandate carmakers use physical controls for those functions. Why isn't this headline clickbait, what am I missing? edit: the headline used to have the word Regulator in it.

Not too familiar with this specific sector, but I can see two reasons why this could be more than nothing

1. If the evaluator is well established it's likely companies would be negatively impacted if they get lower scores even if it just means lower sales rather than an outright ban

2. It seems that while Euro NCAP is not a regulator it is pretty involved with national agencies, so this might be a signal that things are starting to move towards official rules. Of the "self-regulate or you will be regulated" variety

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#179

Post by devsda »

ggreer wrote: post #160
breadwinner wrote: post #11

Couldn't agree more. Tesla is the biggest violator. In new Teslas, they are removing physical stalks, so if you want to reverse the car, you have to use on-screen controls!

Is someone forcing you to drive a Tesla? Yes, many people find these touch screens annoying, and they’ll tend to buy cars with physical controls. But just like people who prefer physical keyboards on their phones, these consumers are a vocal minority who aren’t big enough to cater to. If touch screens make cars less safe, then we should see higher liability insurance rates for such cars. So far that doesn’t seem to b…

> Is someone forcing you to drive a Tesla?

The same argument can be made about other products too but it only distracts from the real problem.

Bad practises and products do stick around regardless of their actual usefulness and benefits.

For example take headphone jack. Nobody forced anyone to buy an Apple phone without a headphone jack, yet it is a challenge now to find a good premium/mid-range phone with a headphone jack. Other OEMs are simply copying Apple and people too get along with the new trend.

The same is happening with touch controls too. Once a popular desirable brand introduces an (anti)feature, its competitors misunderstand the feature as a contributing factor for its desirability and blindly copy it without getting into actual merits.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#180

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

2143 wrote: post #158
aurareturn wrote: post #4

Around 10 years ago, I started looking into buying a new car. I couldn't believe the number of cars that switched to touch controls even 10 years ago. It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving. I refused to buy any car that replaced physical buttons with touch controls 10 years ago and I still have this rule today. Then again, it also boggles my min…

> Then again, it also boggles my mind how car makers in the US continue to use flashing red lights as the turn signal instead of yellow lights. This is probably a US government regulation thing. Because those same cars sold elsewhere in the world does have flashing yellow lights as indicators.

It's an allowance not a requirement. Some models that used to have amber indicators have been switched over to red for the cost savings.
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