Modern Motorcycles... and Technology

Donk said:
How long will it be before there is a yellow light on the dash to remind us when there is a passenger on the back?
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The new Ford at work pops a message on the giant screen, along with an annoying alarm, admonishing you to check for rear occupants, every time you shutdown the vehicle and exit.....
 
rwthomas1 said:
The new Ford at work pops a message on the giant screen, along with an annoying alarm, admonishing you to check for rear occupants, every time you shutdown the vehicle and exit.....
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My 2023 Hyundai Kona did the same thing - til I found the 'setting' to turn it off. ;)
 
the Ferret said:
" til I found the 'setting' to turn it off."

same with my 2024 Camry
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Dealer explained how to deactivate a feature on my car......turns out that even him didn't know it didn't work on my specific model. There is no end to this.

Then there is the stuff you have no control over at all, like this.....

""""on many modern cars, double tapping the unlock button on your car fob can activate a feature that rolls down all the windows""""

Easy for that to happen accidently as you walk away and throw the fob in your pocket, Countless people coming back to their cars finding all windows down (some BMWs included), not good on a rainy day. This is a hard wired. No disabling it. Too many geniuses with too much time to dream features nobody really asked for.
 
Other than teeth, I'm lucky enough to have OEM parts every were else. Van needs rear quarter panels, which are still available, and some time it needs a electronic spark control module, vacuum pot leaks . Hard to justify 300dollars when it's still running okay. Yeah don't drive it that much, only when wife has the car and weather is bad or me can't ride do to poor health.
One nice thing about the Van is I get my right of way at intersections. Cheers
 
ST1100Y said:
OTOH they already know where your house lives... ;)
cybersecuritynews.com

Volkswagen Data Breach: 800,000 Electric Car Owners' Data Leaked

Volkswagen has inadvertently exposed the personal information of 800,000 electric vehicle owners, including their location data and contact details.
cybersecuritynews.com cybersecuritynews.com
Positive they're not the only MFG siphoning customer data en mass...
Sure, OnStar and eCall have only our safety in mind... right... the latter is mandatory over here, even them BMW motorcycles have it...

And you thought that William Gibson's Neuromance Trilogy was fiction... pfffff...
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Data 'leaks'? Nope. 'Sold for a profit'?
 
Anyone ever wonder why our incompetent/idiot count is on the rise? First off, all the safety devices have kept more in the gene pool since seat belts. They now have large numbers influencing our tech industries, at all levels. Purchasing, programming, assembly, contracting, engineering, management, regulatory agencies......
'Management' is outsourcing program coding to the lowest bidders to cut development costs, the more competent of the cutrate coders/programmers are reviewing their work. Yes, lots of our hightech heart and soul is developed in Mom's basement or in her spare bedroom (yes, I've seen too much of it).
The same mentality purchasing agents are insisting on cost cuts from electronics suppliers, who will comply even when that means violating performance requirements in their contract. Or, simply buy cheap crap from Unowhere without any regard for engineering requirements.
Put it all together and the customer may get lucky with the new car, aircraft, tv, whatever. Maybe not.
 
While looking at trucks recently I noticed that all the 24 and 25 Nissan Frontier trucks on a local lot had a "-$170" on the sticker for "Telematics Delete Package" which turns off Nissan Connect Services and the Wi-Fi hotspot. That would be my preference for sure, but I'd rather it was never installed at all.

For what it's worth, I bought a 17-year-old Honda Ridgeline. I like not having payments more than I want a new truck and don't need it for hauling, just tired of digging my 6'3"/260lb frame out of a hatchback. If I find a solid truck from the 70's I might buy it too.
 
My Brother told me that he routinely backs in to the same parking spot where he works several times per day. There is a crack in the asphalt and while he didn't state how big of a crack it is I got the impression that it isn't a big deal because he routinely backs over it to park. Every time that the car encounters this crack it freaks out. When the car sees this crack for some reason it must interpret it as the end of the asphalt or a drop-off he figures. Every time it gets to that crack it will slam on the brakes and stop the car. The first time that this happened it freaked him out because he thought that he had hit something or someone. This also slammed his head in to the head-rest. Now he knows to expect it but he still has to wait for the car to have its little hissy fit before he can continue backing in to the parking spot.

He also told me that there is a road that he often drives on that heads Westerly. At this time of year when the sun sets early if he is on that road the sun will be shining directly in to the front of the car at a very low angle. This freaks out the forward facing sensors and the car disables that system because of it. Every time that this happens warnings will be set off in the car to alert him that the forward facing sensing system has been disabled and that he has to be in control now. At the start of the hissy fit it may or may not also apply the brakes momentarily, but he never knows in advance whether it will or not.

I know that I have a distorted view because my Brother works for Nissan so it is Nissan product idiosyncrasies that I hear about mostly. At the same time there have been several comments in this thread about Nissan products. I don't have any vehicle with any of this latest tech so I have no experience with any of it. I wonder if the Nissan tech is particularly sensitive or if these foibles are common to most new vehicles similarly equipped now.
 
I have a Nissan and have had the experience where the car warns it disabled lane keep assist feature but it doesn’t freak out just a polite beep and a message on the dash followed by an amber warning light that remains on till it is able to reinstate the feature. Similar thing happens if ice builds over the area the sensors for the adaptive cruise control are located. In both cases it isn’t anything that would startle me. I have never experienced the situation with the crack in the parking surface initiating a warning. I have experienced where driving a little too fast towards a stationary object that the dash has red flashing warnings followed with the brakes automatically applied, but if it saves me from running into a wall or worse someday I am ok with it.
 
Andrew Shadow said:
…
I don't have any vehicle with any of this latest tech so I have no experience with any of it. I wonder if the Nissan tech is particularly sensitive or if these foibles are common to most new vehicles similarly equipped now.
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I think this is accurate.
 
Someone has to program these AI engines. And we only have to look at the state of the art as far as programmers are concerned to think about whether we want to pay any attention to what is produced.

Think of the number of things that you turn off in a car before you set off.
How much effort do you put into plotting routes that the satnav cannot screw up.
How careful do you have to be with torque settings in the workshop manual.

It relies on people being thorough, meticulous, and have a good overview of whatever they are developing. And by and large they are not given the time to use any of those qualities - even if they have them.

We bought what is probably our last car. It was available now, had been on the showroom floor for a couple of years. So we took it and it had all of the bells and whistles.

So we play this game. You have to remember I am in the Uk. We drive on the left, overtake on the right. I try to overtake a cyclist. My car spots that I have gone over the white line and steers me back into the cyclist. Now maybe I should have indicated - but that looks like I am going to turn right, and numpty behind me will immediately switch to my inside to go past - straight into the cyclist.
I cannot turn this feature off permanently. I have to turn it off each time I turn on the ignition.

As I understand it, This is the same company that developed a bit of logic that prevented the car from braking if the accelerator was being pressed. Apparently for one poor family, the accelerator got stuck under the carpet and the brake would not operate. Occupants were killed at a junction while on phone trying to get help.


And it has radar detection / cruise control. So if the car in front slows down, my car slows down. If the car ahead speeds up, my car speeds up. It is pretty aggressive when it speeds up and it seems that it can do only one thing at once. So if the car ahead speeds up, and then slows down, my car is still speeding up before it starts to check the distance. Two or three cycles of this, it would crash.

Similar sort of thing with automatic white line centring. On motorways, the car will 'steer' itself. That is, if it spots that the white line at the side or centre of the road is turning right, it will ease me round the bend. Sometimes, no, often. Often it doesn't spot the white line is turning until it is about to cross it. It then over corrects, and then overcorrects the other way. I don't know what it does after that 'cos I chickened out and yanked it back into line, but it feels as though it would very rapidly get into an oscillation from which it cannot escape.

And it doesn't look ahead. It knows the car up ahead is slowing, because the dash shows me it is in radar range. At motorway speeds it is pretty good at slowing down. At country lane speeds it doesn't bother and waits until almost crisis point before it slams on the brakes. At least, I assume that it does. I take over long before it has got to that state. But it is happy to slam on the brakes on a left hand bend when the oncoming traffic on my right appears to be directly ahead.

My headlights move automatically as I turn the steering wheel. So the beam points in the direction that I will be heading. So if I am turning on a bend that is gradually going right, my main beam is moved so that it is pointing towards the oncoming traffic. I don't know about you, but when I am taking bends at night, I don't stare at the oncoming traffic. I look at the nearside of the road - ahead and on my left. I can see beyond the oncoming glare and that is where my dipped beam would normally be pointing. But now, it not only points the headlight at the oncoming driver, it also takes the beam from the left side of the road that I using for my point of reference.

Someone has programmed these behaviours into the car. Someone else has approved them as a good idea. Everyone seems to be jumping onto the computer gimmick bandwagon and saying that it is AI. it isn't. It is, in my opinion, just very questionable design and programming.

(I Reposted this - this is a much more appropriate thread)
 
Mellow said:
I like tech.. but I'm an IT guy so makes sense.
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Joe pretty much summed it up on post 7.
We are in an age where folks like tech. I can take it or leave it, but of course the products are tech laden because drivers are now very IT savvy. Most folk want the latest gadgets, they even want to retro fit gadgets onto older vehicles. They want an "old" ST11 with GPS, heated grips, heated seats, ABS, TCS, bluetooth compatibility, cruise control.....it's just the way it is. Hell, if a new oil is released we'll have a two hundred post thread saying it's new and improved.
When we bought our last car about 18 months ago we tried to stay fairly low tech but in reality it made our 10 year old Beemer look like an antiquity. You get used to the quirks fairly quickly and so far they haven't driven me completely bonkers and again I chose a vehicle where the systems which can annoy the hell out of you are disabled with easy accessible switches and no scrolling through menus is necessary.
If every purchaser of a new vehicle regardless of the number of wheels bought the base model without some of the gizmos it may send out a message, but of course that won't happen.........because?
We (99% of the population) like new stuff.
Upt.
 
jfheath said:
Someone has to program these AI engines. And we only have to look at the state of the art as far as programmers are concerned to think about whether we want to pay any attention to what is produced.

Think of the number of things that you turn off in a car before you set off.
How much effort do you put into plotting routes that the satnav cannot screw up.
How careful do you have to be with torque settings in the workshop manual.

It relies on people being thorough, meticulous, and have a good overview of whatever they are developing. And by and large they are not given the time to use any of those qualities - even if they have them.

We bought what is probably our last car. It was available now, had been on the showroom floor for a couple of years. So we took it and it had all of the bells and whistles.

So we play this game. You have to remember I am in the Uk. We drive on the left, overtake on the right. I try to overtake a cyclist. My car spots that I have gone over the white line and steers me back into the cyclist. Now maybe I should have indicated - but that looks like I am going to turn right, and numpty behind me will immediately switch to my inside to go past - straight into the cyclist.
I cannot turn this feature off permanently. I have to turn it off each time I turn on the ignition.

As I understand it, This is the same company that developed a bit of logic that prevented the car from braking if the accelerator was being pressed. Apparently for one poor family, the accelerator got stuck under the carpet and the brake would not operate. Occupants were killed at a junction while on phone trying to get help.


And it has radar detection / cruise control. So if the car in front slows down, my car slows down. If the car ahead speeds up, my car speeds up. It is pretty aggressive when it speeds up and it seems that it can do only one thing at once. So if the car ahead speeds up, and then slows down, my car is still speeding up before it starts to check the distance. Two or three cycles of this, it would crash.

Similar sort of thing with automatic white line centring. On motorways, the car will 'steer' itself. That is, if it spots that the white line at the side or centre of the road is turning right, it will ease me round the bend. Sometimes, no, often. Often it doesn't spot the white line is turning until it is about to cross it. It then over corrects, and then overcorrects the other way. I don't know what it does after that 'cos I chickened out and yanked it back into line, but it feels as though it would very rapidly get into an oscillation from which it cannot escape.

And it doesn't look ahead. It knows the car up ahead is slowing, because the dash shows me it is in radar range. At motorway speeds it is pretty good at slowing down. At country lane speeds it doesn't bother and waits until almost crisis point before it slams on the brakes. At least, I assume that it does. I take over long before it has got to that state. But it is happy to slam on the brakes on a left hand bend when the oncoming traffic on my right appears to be directly ahead.

My headlights move automatically as I turn the steering wheel. So the beam points in the direction that I will be heading. So if I am turning on a bend that is gradually going right, my main beam is moved so that it is pointing towards the oncoming traffic. I don't know about you, but when I am taking bends at night, I don't stare at the oncoming traffic. I look at the nearside of the road - ahead and on my left. I can see beyond the oncoming glare and that is where my dipped beam would normally be pointing. But now, it not only points the headlight at the oncoming driver, it also takes the beam from the left side of the road that I using for my point of reference.

Someone has programmed these behaviours into the car. Someone else has approved them as a good idea. Everyone seems to be jumping onto the computer gimmick bandwagon and saying that it is AI. it isn't. It is, in my opinion, just very questionable design and programming.

(I Reposted this - this is a much more appropriate thread)
Click to expand...
The current marketing scheme... features & gimmicks & technology for technology's sake...
And (too) many jump blindly on that bandwagon... or getting them force fed by lobbyists manage "accessories" being mandatory now...

From money we don't have, we buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like...

In my small world life is too short to ride bad, over-complicated motorcycles... :cool:
 
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Having led teams of software development (in a business setting), there are often some folks that have no business programming anything.
My observation with most development is the person who is writing the software has never done the job so they are 'disconnected' from using it.
One of my teams developed a fairly complex warehouse management system I had designed many years ago (before wi-fi and PCs).
The design goal was to go from shipping 1/4 million dollars a day to 1 million dollars a day, add no people, and pay for itself in 1 year (and we did it).
It had remote terminals on forklifts, barcode scanning, tons of interlocking conveyors systems and all sorts of 'interesting' stuff.
When they finished I told them -
"Tomorrow we will put on our jeans and go over to the warehouse.
There you will operate alongside the warehouse workers the stuff that you just wrote.
That way when Suzy on the forklift tells you it takes too many clicks to do a particular function, you will understand and come back and fix it right!"
It was a very valuable learning experience for the developers and gave them a real 'taste' of programming versus use. :biggrin:
The system was a bit ahead of its time so much so that a small car company (Saturn GM) brought an entourage to come and see it. ;)
 
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