Cruise control speed changes don’t rapidly accelerate or decelerate the vehicle, much like any vehicle. IMO, if someone is too addled to handle that state change, someone should take their keys from them.
The point is, your car shouldn’t be state changing suddenly. It shouldn’t be accelerating when you’re expecting it to coast or cruise. Unless something is wrong. Which I guess there is, there are capacitive slide inputs on the steering wheel.
This issue is only a couple of levels of abstraction removed from Boeing’s mcas system. A poorly implemented feature no one asked for that isn’t explained properly. Trained pilots can’t react to their planes suddenly operating in a way that they don’t expect. You expect a layman in traffic to?
It’s easy to decry individual responsibility, and say only the most fit should be able to drive. What about the responsibility to the manufacturer? It’s clear enough that there’s a design flaw with this system. More drivers need to be aware, but why the hard-on for defending a clearly bad implementation of a feature? What’s at stake for you?
Well, ok, how do you feel about Toyota’s or any other manufacturer’s cruise controls being on the wheel, where they almost always are now? It really isn’t that different.
Physical buttons I’m fine with. It’s the capacitive/swipe buttons. They’re far too easy to accidentally activate, since they only require a touch, and they’re in the one spot of your car that you touch the most often.
Critical functions, so things that effect how the car cars, should never be on touch buttons. There is too much wiggle room with them consistently activating when you expect them to. If you want to put non-critical components on touch buttons, so things like radio, AC, locks… Fine. I don’t prefer it, but at least you’re not creating a hazard. Acceleration, deceleration, steering, braking, and safety should NEVER be on a capacitive sensor.
