TopGear SA’s Top 9: Most Annoying Car Tech

TopGear SA’s Top 9: Most Annoying Car Tech

01: Lane keep assist

On paper, this is a literal lifesaver. Except when the road edges are poorly marked. Or the weather is iffy. Or there’s a cyclist or horse to overtake and the steering is insisting on dragging you back into them. These days it also usually defaults to ‘on’ whenever you start a car.

02. Pop-out door handles

As seen on Teslas, Aston Martins, Range Rovers and even the likes of the Porsche 992 and Mercedes-AMG SL, designers love pop-out handles. People in the real world hate them as they get frozen in on cold days, or try to bite your fingers off when they retract without warning.

03: Bad touchscreens

Touchscreens are here to stay, but as anyone who’s driven a recent VW, McLaren, Honda, Mercedes, Peugeot, Citroen or Opel will tell you, a screen which lags, gets too hot and is confusingly laid out is even more frustrating than a smartphone with 1% battery.

04: Voice control

Course, you could just use the voice assistant, which is happy to butt into a polite conversation, talk all over whatever you were listening to on the radio, and perform tasks on your behalf. So long as you speak very clearly. In complete silence. And don’t interrupt while it’s buffering a response.

05: Touch-sensitive controls

The purge of buttons over the past decade has led to a new obsession with touch-sensitive sliders and haptic feedback controls, which look clean and minimalist, until you touch them once and they’re coated with fingerprints. At which point, they work erratically. Or don’t work at all.

06: Hidden glove box releases

You’re sick of it too, aren’t you? You get in a car, and yuck. Euurgh! There’s a physical handle to manually open the glovebox. Thankfully this gargoyle has been expunged by carmakers, who now delight in hiding the glove box release in a button elsewhere, or even in the touchscreen.

07: Volume-down reversing

It’s incredible, really: despite all the cameras, sensors, radars and auto-brake assists nowadays, it’s still deemed impossible that a human being could slowly manoeuvre a car backwards while enjoying a song or hearing how the football’s going.

08: Slow electric tailgates

Electric tailgates have their uses, but they’re also stupid, moving in geological time until they’re 0.000001mm from latching, at which point the sensor decides a dog hair is fouling the clasp, and it must open again. Halfway. Slowly. And it’s now going to resist you forcing it back.

09: Pointless bongs

BONG. You’ve pushed the engine start button.BONG. You’ve selected reverse.BONG. The boot has been opened by your partner fetching their bag.BONG. You’ve opened your door to check you’re straight in a parking bay.BONG. You’ve lost the will to live. Wait, is there a bong for that?