Is it that one is passive, one is (slightly) active?
My 2018 has lane warning, but it is just a warning, no steering input capability.
I am no luddite, but this stuff really is getting beyond a joke. I'll take as much passive safety as you like (ABS, airbags, stability control etc), as long as it isn't "intrusive" into the driving. Having to live with something which can give "false" interaction (rough road edges etc) and has to be temporarily disabled by menu selection each time just gets tedious.
Having come from the auto industry I often use a comparison with, for example, modern tech where there are continual updates and having to select menus and settings. If when you got into your car it asked you to select ignition timing, fuel enrichment, idle speed, voltage correction etc etc before you could start it, you'd be pretty disillusioned. In engine calibration the engineers did all that for you, just turn the key and drive. That's how consumer products should work, the techy stuff should be largely invisible. Once you start noticing it, then it is lacking.
Excellent post. I don't have your background but, for a while "labour saving" devices were the buzz words. Things designed to make life easier.
At some point the whole concept of user friendliness went out of the window and complexity became the name of the game as a new generation of tech wizards assumed a level of competence that huge swathes of the population simply do not have and will never have. A neighbour, a woman in her 70s but in no sense of the word senile, described trying to get in touch with our local GP surgery who have been using E Consult since the onset of the pandemic. She phoned the surgery up and was asked to do an E Consult, she refused, she was asked if her husband could do it and she said that he probably could but that wasn't the point.
An American writer, Dave Eggers, wrote about the digital divide at least 10 years ago now and some aspects of the new Jazz in which complexity is seen as a virtue are increasing this divide between the IT savvy and the rest of the population.
The tech absolutely should be in the background. The accursed RDMS should be capable of being disabled by a single flick of a switch even if it does default to "on" after you have stopped.
Just to be clear, I'm not having a go at Honda per se. All car manufacturers are guilty of this. My brother's BMW is actually causing him anxiety.
It's got to stop!
