Opinion: Driving pleasure is ruined by nagging car alerts

Am I the only person who hates it when cars tell me what to do?

Really, we’re supposed to be controlling the machines, not having them nag at us and ruin a pastime that used to be a pleasure.

I was recently driving a new Toyota and it was repeatedly nagging at me to ‘observe all traffic regulations’. When driving through the suburbs the nag would tell me when I was ‘approaching a school zone’, followed by, ‘you are now in a school zone’ and finally, ‘you have left a school zone’.

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Drive any more than a few kilometres through Melbourne’s suburbs and you’ll inevitably pass through multiple school zones, and at every one the pleasant music I had chosen to listen to was interrupted by this incessant nagging. To make it worse, this was on a Sunday when the school zones weren’t in force! I couldn’t wait to get out of the car.

I picked up a new Isuzu the other day and, while electronic safety systems on new cars are a good idea, they need to be calibrated correctly. The MU-X bleeps lane-guidance warnings constantly on freeways, where other cars with similar systems don’t.

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Then there was an instance where every time I slowed down to a certain speed, the front parking sensors went nuts; continuing to do so when stopped with nothing in front of the car. This drove me wild for a while, then it stopped and hasn’t done it since. But another drive ruined by a nagging car.

While I don’t like being told what to do by a machine, I’m happy to listen to a living expert tell me the best way to do things. Never stop learning, as they say.