Comment by mfro
1 day ago
For those interested or forced to buy a new car — I recently picked up a brand new Hyundai and was impressed the new tech does not get in the way. ‘Driver attention warning’ does not have a face camera, it just uses the front sensor to confirm you’re not all over the place. It can also be disabled. Lane assist can be disabled with one button on the wheel. Almost all important controls are real (non capacitive) buttons. Warnings can be customized. Smart cruise control can be customized. As someone who really liked his 90s Toyota, I’m impressed.
We have two new Hyunadai's. My experience is mixed. For one, I get the "consider taking a break" warning constantly - possibly my sleepy eyes? In the Sante Fe, the cruise control disengages constantly b/c it can't see my face when I drive with left hand (my default) - this does not happen in our Ioniq though. Rear view camera + warning has been helpful on one occasion, but both rear and side cameras have fully disengaged my ability to drive many (30+) times when it was safe to do so. Basically in a city where you need to pull out and weave into traffic, if you begin moving too early it'll stop the car and also prevent the gas pedal from working (even if you let off and press many times). My most favorite is it would do this in my kids school drop off (cars are close and all moving at 5mph). The traffic helper knew this would happen to me and we had many laughs about it, after the first few times of them waving me a bit aggressively (why aren't you moving yet?). "Did you forget something in backseat" alarm goes off every time I park, I suppose from kid's car seats. Lane assist is nice when helpful, but very annoying when not (~10% helpful, 90% FP). My general read on the lane assist warning is its simply too sensitive. I disable the lane assist on cruise control, otherwise the adaptive cruise control is 90% good (it only can't seem to figure out to speed up when passing a semi, and will slow down instead).
Very generally speaking, if I could disable all of the safety features I definitely would, they are almost exclusively false positives in my case and occur every time I drive. Yet its only two specific ones that are genuinely a nuisance (rather than annoying): The face detection on cruise control, and the car-disabling when I'm pulling out (which at times is out right dangerous).
Interesting. From the hyundai manual, driver attention monitoring only uses front sensor with no face recognition in the vehicle as far as I can tell. Are you sure your cruise control issue isn’t because of hand sensors?
Also, I think the issue with it stopping the car sounds like ‘collision avoidance forward safety’ which can be disabled according to the manual. I haven’t had any issues so far though.
I also disable lane assist but largely just because I prefer to have full control. The highway driving assist is really neat though.
Similarly, I have a 2026 Civic: the driver attention doesn't have a camera and ships disabled. Lane departure warnings are toggleable in settings, and it sticks between starts. This is different from lane keeping assist, which is part of the adaptive cruise control and fully steers for you. (Both steering and speed and controlled from buttons on the wheel.)
Climate controls are fully physical controls, but realistically I just leave it on Auto, because it's the 21st century.
The hybrid drive train also makes it feel like an electric car, and it makes older vehicles look like a joke.
I'm not sure if Genesis is vastly different, but the wife's G70 is my own personal layer of hell. The tech constantly gets in the way and pisses me off. They can't even figure out how to do interval settings on a windshield wiper. It's awful.
Are they not rain-sensing wipers?
I have a BYD Seal I bought last year, and it doesn't have a face camera. My mom's new BYD Dolphin does, so maybe it's just very recent.
I have to disable the traffic sign warnings and lane keeping assistance every time I start the car. It's a swipe and three taps, but still annoying. I wish it could at least stay disabled for some time.