The problem with some of these “safety” features is they malfunction at such a high rate they seem more likely to kill me than save my life. They also don’t anticipate future consequence in any way.

The collision detection malfunctions regularly giving a loud beep or applying breaks when nothing is ahead.

The lane departure does not understand situations where you had someone wander into your lane and you may drive onto the shoulder quickly before signalling. I don’t need my car fighting me while im making the correct call. I also think having the car take over, even gently, is so startling that it could cause the accident it was meant to prevent. If I’m startled I might over correct and lose control. While that has never happened, with everything considered, it seems safer to leave some of these features off.

I don’t need to be an early adopter on flawed technology that could get me killed.

After my car suddenly slammed on the brakes for the third time on wide open highway while screaming warning beeps at me I went to the settings and disabled everything. I had enough “safety” thanks.

This article is 2/3 fluff. The majority is about convenience features, not safety.

That said, I recently moved from a ~15 year old car to a modern one, and have driven several newer models with the features described.

Adaptive cruise: it‘s often poorly designed. It brakes far too rapidly and abruptly should traffic or a car ahead slow, and there‘s absolutely no reason to apply as much throttle as it does should it decide acceleration is appropriate. Also for uphill driving the cruise control often drops into far too low a gear in order to maintain speed. It‘s more of a nuisance than an aid, and it‘s even worse if traffic increases or you‘re in a lane with jackasses that can‘t maintain a steady speed. Adaptive cruise attracts idiots, too. The new versions will stay engaged and slow to a complete stop. If the driver has set the following distance to maximum the car will stop with a 4-5 car distance from the car ahead. They‘re treating it like some kind of autopilot that will run the car for them.

Lanekeeping: there‘s a huge span of quality here. Some are shit, some are far too aggressive, some are “jerky” following a segmented plotted line rather than a smoother curve. They can overcorrect and really make for an unstable drive attempting to counter intentional driver input. Some “give up” and disengage with little warning, the audible alerts are often weak. Some briefly follow merge, exit, or widening lines for an additional lane pointing you off the road before they get confused and disengage with the car pointed in an unsafe direction.

Auto braking: in my experience it has engaged every time when I was already braking, or engaged when there was no need to brake. The few times I thought it should have engaged, it didn’t. It’s a nuisance at best, ineffective at worst.

Reverse cameras don’t provide a full picture and are awful in developing driver proprioception about the dimensions of their car. They’re fine for what’s immediately behind you, but use of mirrors and looking around is far better for backing out and looking for approaching people or cars. That said, I love the “360°” view ones. Those are great for centering oneself in a parking space.

So I completely understand why drivers don’t use them. They’re often low-quality, inappropriate overcorrections for the situation, and make for a worse ride and potentially even detrimental to safety. That’s saying a lot considering the quality of a lot drivers on the road today.

I run 80% of the time with adaptive cruise and lanekeeping off. I can’t disable the autobrake, if I could I would.

I had way more issues with phantom braking in the 3 months it was enabled than I’ve had with actually crashing in 20 years of driving.

I want graded licences so people who have no crashes don’t get forcibly subjected to bad technology just because those that can’t drive need it.

I can’t back up my own driveway with “maneuvering assist” enabled or it slams on the brakes every time it gets close to a completely harmless fern on the passenger side. Every time it happens it’s so infuriating that I could actually scream. So it’s now off.

When I was in Australia last year I was overwhelmed by how much modern cars beep at you. The worst offender by far was a 2025 Kia Carnival that had different beeps for every possible thing the system might label a driving error.

It was more distracting than helpful to be honest.

I turn off all that shit for one reason: too many electronic nannies mean less attention is required to drive. I rarely even use old cruise control.

In this topic, people not being able to spell ‘brake’

So glad my 2019 car is a standard but still has CarPlay.

Like, CarPlay is about the most “smart” feature I need/want. I just want a good map and the ability to play podcasts and listen to music easily. That’s it.

Since it’s a standard the car couldn’t get any of the “smart” features I didn’t want anyway.

I’ll drive the car, thanks.

I know a couple people who one could describe as “twat” who turn off traction control and abs, thinking they are going to be rally drivers on the way to McDonalds. They tend to end up in the ditch.

Subaru has been good. The lane warning was the only thing we turned off because it was just obnoxious. If something is beeping constantly and erratically, what’s the point? The lane centering had a tendency to pull towards semis when passing but that seems to have been fixed in an update. The only other thing that is more a quality of life is a way easily and preemptively to turn off the backup warning and breaking assist when pulling a trailer.

Whenever I get into a modern hire car the first thing I do after starting it is turn all the ‘safety’ features off. They either don’t work well, are annoying, or both. Sometimes they’re downright dangerous. It was a large part of the reason I chose to buy a slightly older vehicle when I needed to change my car. The later models all had the annoying stuff.

and 41 percent use heated windshields.

What are they talking about here, the defroster?

I have a car from 2020 with most of the “modern” safety features. I have most of them off, but I do like the radar cruise control, makes long trips less stressful since it will adapt to traffic in front of me.

One interesting finding relates to driving modes. While almost all new cars have them, just 27.3 percent of respondents say they regularly use their vehicle’s driving mode. Those aged 25 to 34 were more likely to use them, at 38.3 percent.

so what, all these people are always driving in reverse…??

The lane keeper fucks up and tries to drive on the shoulder, driver turns it off, research group acts surprised that it’s turned off