KIA Bringing News & Social Media To Your Car 92
thecarchik writes "Earlier this week KIA made some major announcements about their future cars. They shed some light on the details of their new UVO system, which lets you answer and place phone calls, send and receive SMS text messages, and access music via voice commands. Moreover, their new widget-based system for the on-screen controls lets you include RSS news, financial information, and weather reports, along with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn updates. If there is one thing we can take away from this and Ford's recent announcement about the MyFord Touch system, it is that we'll see some heated internet technology battles between car manufacturers."
The NY Times pointed out a few days ago that many companies are already turning their attention to dashboard computing, much to the dismay of those who warn against distracted driving.
Dashboard Computing (Score:2)
CC.
"LOLZ" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Here in Maine there's a new(ish) distracted driving law. They took an interesting approach and opted to not single out texting while diving or using hand-held vs. hands-free and instead of just outlawing a single technology they've opted to simply make distracted driving illegal.
So far I've not noticed any cases of the cops abusing it which is nice. The one case that made the news was someone who was texting while driving and crashed. It should be interesting to see the initial judgments and challenges as i
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I see this being interesting, a very good idea as far as the ability to access information goes but a very bad idea as far as safety goes.
I agree with you that its a very bad idea regarding safety, but completely disagree about it being a very good idea as far as anything. Its a "neat" idea, and probably implemented in a fairly clever way, but adding new, irrelevant yet more-engaging distractions to the driver is just stupid. If you are driving, you should not be reading RSS feeds, whether on a cell phone, laptop, or the freaking dashboard. If you need to be accessing information while you are driving, get a passenger to read it to you. O
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I agree with you that its a very bad idea regarding safety, but completely disagree about it being a very good idea as far as anything. Its a "neat" idea, and probably implemented in a fairly clever way, but adding new, irrelevant yet more-engaging distractions to the driver is just stupid.
As much as I wish to agree I have to respectfully disagree on that part. It is my belief that access to information is always good. *IT* is good. The idiots that will use it while driving? Not so much. I can't ever agree that access to information is bad.
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Its not information that you cannot otherwise get just about anywhere else, is it? I'm not suggesting we restrict access to the information, but we haven't had it in the car yet, and we shouldn't. Such a device does not belong where it can be a distraction to the driver. I'm sorry, but I don't want to be killed in a head-on collision with someone tweeting on their steering wheel, "OMG. I think I'm on the wrong side of the road! LOL!"
It reminds me of the LG refrigerator with a web browser built in. Sure
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I want to play Urban Terror on a heads-up windshield display while cruising through town.
The game name would be oddly appropriate.
Negev FTW!
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I was thinking about this the other day... It would not surprise me to see people driving with joysticks (on a regular basis) at some point. Given the youth of today it would not surprise me at all. It seems (just guessing here but I'm likely to be applying some rather crappy logic) that it might even be better or easier. The whole wheel thing for driving doesn't seem like the best method anyhow.
Make them safer first (Score:5, Insightful)
I think an "infotainment" system for the car is fine for passengers, but if it tempts drivers to take their eyes off the road, it should be accompanied by a collision avoidance system that counteracts the increased distractability factor.
I think Volvo points the way with their low velocity laser/radar collision avoidance system (18 MPH). However I would like to see universal adoption of a high speed system that would at least make collisions more survivable, if not prevent them entirely.
With about 38,000 people dying on the road every year in the U.S. alone, it's unfathomable that our leaders (and the voters) pay so little attention to collision survivability. For a while back in the '70s, they were forcing car makers to increase the force absorption ability of bumpers every few years. It got up to 5 mph, but then in the '80s, with high fuel prices and a deep recession, the standards were relaxed down to 2.5 mph to encourage more profits.
The technology today is light years beyond what we had in the '70s. We could put RF chips in the major roads (buried, or on the railings, or whatever) to help cars stay in their lanes, we could mandate Volvo-style (and airplane-style) collision avoidance systems that would automatically swerve cars out of collision paths, and we could probably increase the shock absorption abilities of passenger vehicles. It costs money, to be sure, but we should ask ourselves, would we rather pay an extra $500 a year in taxes or an extra $100 a month in car payments and live, or be wealthier and dead (or paraplegic or quadraplegic or whiplashed)?
We went to war over 3000 deaths on 9/11, yet we consider the 3000 deaths per month on the road as a normal hazard of our transportation system. Let's take off the blinders and fix this problem already.
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I think an "infotainment" system for the car is fine for passengers, but if it tempts drivers to take their eyes off the road, it should be accompanied by a collision avoidance system that counteracts the increased distractability factor.
"Eyes off the road" like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0014BYKVO/ref=dp_otherviews_1?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&img=1 [amazon.com]
I think an in-car cocktail bar should have priority over a "collision avoidance system": http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-41146.html [spiegel.de]
I'm concerned that dorky drivers might come to *rely* on their collision avoidance system:
"It's OK, I can twitter now, I don't need to keep my eyes on the road . . . I got me a collision avoidance system!
Re:Make them safer first (Score:4, Insightful)
And as bad as 3000 deaths a month sounds, the part of that sample you don't mention are the number of people who go from point A to point B each day unscathed. Looked at that way, cars seem downright safe compared to say, being shot at in Afghanistan.
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And as bad as 3000 deaths a month sounds, the part of that sample you don't mention are the number of people who go from point A to point B each day unscathed. Looked at that way, cars seem downright safe compared to say, being shot at in Afghanistan.
Duh. What's the point of comparing going into a warzone with riding in a car? Nearly any activity is going to be safer than that.
How about a comparison of much more equivalent actions. Like say riding in a plane versus riding in a car?
In the USA each time you go for a trip in a car you are roughly 300x more likely to die than each time you go for a trip in a commercial airplane.
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We went to war over 3000 deaths on 9/11, yet we consider the 3000 deaths per month on the road as a normal hazard of our transportation system.
That's why I compared it to the life of a soldier in Afghanistan. Neither of these events is a "normal hazard", but since the parent was comparing road deaths to fighting terrorism... Of course it's stupid. That was the whole point.
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And as bad as 3000 deaths a month sounds, the part of that sample you don't mention are the number of people who go from point A to point B each day unscathed.
That's a horrible fallacy. Just because it didn't happen to you doesn't make it "highly unlikely." Reason [reason.com].
BTW, I've got some bad news for you: There is a 1 in 96 chance that you will die in a car accident in your lifetime. The odds seem pretty gruesome to me... Do the math yourself: Population = 300,000,000 people [google.com]; Deaths/year = 40,000 people/year [unitedjustice.com]; Life expectancy = 78.2 years [wikipedia.org]. If your family has four members, then there is a 1 in 24 chance that one of you will die in a car accident during their lifetime.
"A
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That's a horrible fallacy. Just because it didn't happen to you doesn't make it "highly unlikely." Reason [reason.com].
You have an interesting way of looking at statistics. The "odds" that you will get into a car accident are based on the number of times you step into a vehicle. If I drive one a day for a year and have one accident in that time, then my odds are 1/365. If you take the number of people in the nation driving per day, let's just say it's a third of the population, or 100 million people, and 3000 of them died, then the odds of dying in an accident on any one day are 3000/100,000,000, or 1/33,333 or .003% chance
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If I drive one a day for a year and have one accident in that time, then my odds are 1/365.
WTF?
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Does that actually save lives, ignoring the obvious saving when people drive at say 5 MPH all the time? Let's say you reduced the limit from 65 to 40. People would go slower, but they'd be on the road for longer. And even if this did save lives on the roads, it would literally waste thousands of man-years in increased transporation time. I'm not saying this wouldn't be an overall benefit, just questioning the "oh, it would obviously be a net be
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Anti-lock brakes work because it doesn't matter what the situation is. Locked brakes are never good.
Wrong. Locked brakes stop cars faster on loose surfaces like gravel roads. Just a few posts above I was complaining about driver education...
And as bad as 3000 deaths a month sounds, the part of that sample you don't mention are the number of people who go from point A to point B each day unscathed. Looked at that way, cars seem downright safe compared to say, being shot at in Afghanistan.
That comparison is almost as dumb as the fact that more people have died in car accidents in the US since 1940 than all American wars combined. What makes my comparison creepy is that it's actually part of an official USMC recruitment speech. My problem is that I, as an educated driver, am just as likely to be hit by a bad driver as a bad driver is. I'd much rathe
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I agree that getting the car to think for you is a bad idea (until we have cars that can drive themselves without any interference at all), but some kind of warning/alarm seems like a good idea. Driving is monotonous, so an alarm to warn drivers when their attention is needed (i.e. an accident is imminent) would probably help (assuming drivers don't panic).
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I don't have blinders on about the problem, but I also realize that part of being a free human being is having the ability to take calculated risks, without some entity (typically government) spending my money for me in the interest of my safety.
Where people can agree that the cost-benefit ratio is really there, we've seen car-makers add all sorts of technologies to improve vehicle safety over the years. Anti-lock brakes, for example, went from unheard-of to standard. After a little bit of initial resista
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To consider that the laws are for our own personal safety at our own hands is a very single minded concept.
It's not a matter of your own safety at your own hands that's the issue, the issue is the safety of everyone else around you. Passengers in your car do opt to rely on you for their safety. Other drivers on the road, and pedestrians do not opt to rely on you for their safety.
It's all of our responsibility to watch the road and be mindful of everyone else. That's what the laws are designed for, not you,
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"Many people consider driving almost like a sport. It's a very intimate, hands-on affair, and these people would rather accept the risks that come with it than have the experience "dumbed down" for safety."
Great, fine. Let them intimately control their cars somewhere where they can't hit me.
Once you're on the road, your personal preferences DON'T MATTER. If something makes driving safer (without significantly limiting speed) then it MUST be done. You don't like it? Well, tough.
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Sure... there's a mutual understanding that comes with driving. It benefits NOBODY to drive recklessly. If you attempt it, you endanger BOTH yourself AND others around you, and even ignoring the legal system - the insurance people carry dictates careful driving. (Otherwise, before long, you're punished financially by increased rates and potential cancellation.)
But I take issue with your last statement. If something makes driving safer, it merits consideration. It's not a case of "MUST be done" at all,
Nanny state here we come. (Score:1, Insightful)
With about 38,000 people dying on the road every year in the U.S. alone, it's unfathomable that our leaders (and the voters) pay so little attention to collision survivability.
And Millions more die from preventable diseases - like heart disease from obese or from smoking. 38,000 is nothing.
We Americans need to grow up and take responsibility for own actions instead of having momma Government take care of us.
Scratch that. We Americans are too fucking stupid and lazy to take care of ourselves.
We need more Government regulations! When the fuck is the Government guy going to come over and wipe my ass and change my underwear?! I'm starting to smell here!
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I have a very simple and obvious solution for you: ;)
A new “driving” runlevel, that gets enabled at, say, 5 mph, and can only be disabled by slowing down again. Sort of a reverse Speed bomb.
In that runlevel, the functionality is limited in the same way, when you are inside the engine of a racing game, as opposed to the menu (including the pause menu).
Building on top of that basic concept:
Everything that is displayed, is displayed on the front window, an a specific area with a maximum horizontal
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Presumably nationally, 3000 deaths per month on the road - compared against how many miles or hours spent on the road by the entire nation over a similar timeframe? Addictions such as cigarettes and alcohol have a higher death rate than vehicles. It's just that millions more people drive than are addicted to anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile#Safety [wikipedia.org] would actually indicate that by all metrics, travelling by car is safer than travelling by foot!
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Fatality rates are dropping annually [dot.gov]. I'd say we're already making good progress on making crashes more survivable. Adding more "avoidance" systems only ignores the true problem - people are being encouraged to stop paying attention to driving.
Fix the drivers, not the technology.
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The automotive insurance industry loves this shit. It jacks up the cost of the premiums insuring all that tech crap in your cars.
But soon, the industry will start accumulating data that suggests the people using all this crap are FAR more subject to filing claims, and they will start charging people more if they have such tech in their cars.
So this tech is going to have a hidden cost in that sense.
Here is the fun part. They will deny claims based on the fact the driver was distracted and thus at fault.
The a
Re:Make the drivers safer first (Score:2)
Fixed the subject heading for you. There is only one cause for every vehicle collision on the road: DRIVER ERROR. (note I said vehicle collision, not deer collision for example)
Everything you've suggested is just padding. The more padding you put on a football player, the harder they hit. The safer the cars, the less drivers concern themselves with safe driving.
For example, who here routinely keeps their blind spots clear? If you don't, remember to tell the officer "the other car came out of NOWHERE!"
Why do you all-cap Kia? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're not talking about someone killed-in-action (cue obvious jokes about distracted driving). Kia's not an acronym.
Are you one of those tossers who think it's necessary to all-cap "Mac" when you speak of Macintosh computers?
Extra points to Soulskill for non-editing.
KIA IS an acronym! (Score:2, Funny)
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KIA IS an acronym, it stands for Korean Internet Automobile.
And for all those years I thought it was the intelligence agency behind KDE's world domination plan.
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Duh, it is a KOREAN company, just like HYUNDAI.
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Dismay of those warning against distractions? (Score:4, Interesting)
How about dismay of those who don't want gimmicks? Those who want primarily...a car. With resources going into its reliability, low fuel consumption and safety?
Yes, "one doesn't exclude the other". But effort described in TFS as at best misplaced in case of cars. There is no place for doing anything else for driver than paying attention on the road, perhaps with some background music or telephone via hands-free and voice control - and that's almost covered, not by car manufacturers. If passengers want something more - it doesn't have to built into the car.
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Agreed. I read the NY Times article the other day, and it struck me that at least some of these systems are touchscreens. I can't be the only one who relies on feel to push the right button to change the radio station so I don't have to take my eyes off the road.
While I don't really see it as a problem now, I fear that a few years down the road these computer systems will be standard on all cars, and it will be rare that a car doesn't have some huge touchscreen in the center of the dash distracting drive
Ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been shown in several studies that car kits are not much less unsafe than using a moblie phone while driving. Introducing even more communication equipment in cars will only lead to more deaths. And do you really need to follow Twitter while you drive? I think it would be a good idea to forbid cars with this kind of equipment on board, or make the equipment stop working while the car is driving.
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Ugh, let me run that through my negation eliminator.... OK, if we change "unsafe" to "safe", we're negating the meaning. So what's the meaning with the word "safe"? That car kits are about as safe as using a mobile phone. Therefore this means that they are much less safe thatn using a mobile phone.
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I know of one car that does this already. My brother has a 2009 Pontiac G8, and it has a ton of options for the car built into controls on the steering wheel with a display on the instrument cluster. If the car is moving it only lets you change between two modes (IIRC digital speed display and odometer) while the car is in motion, even if you use the controls on the steering wheel.
Once the car is stopped, it will allow you to go into the setup
Why is this worthwhile? (Score:2)
You have now taken SMS technology and made it slower and more error-prone. Why not just
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Obviously, because phones can't be marketed as "social media", even though, really, they absolutely are.
What Charlton Heston would say (Score:4, Insightful)
"You can have my driver dashboard computing when you pry it from my cold dead haCRASH!!!"
A lot of places have rules about displays not being visible from the drivers' position.
Then there's the legal liability to the manufacturers when a pedestrian gets killed. *THEY* never agreed to any EULA.
And insurance companies, who will now raise premiums (it's what they do, you know).
I think I'll take the bus instead.
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is the car a second home now? Maybe this stuff belongs in a camper, or a van (for long trips), but do drivers need to be that distracted? If you think there's a chance you'll be in a long traffic jam and get bored, sure, turn on the radio or use your cell phone and make a call, but there's no need to set up your car like an office or a living room.
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I spend an hour a day in the car. I spend about six waking hours a day in my home. So it makes sense to me that a car should have a significant portion of the conveniences of home.
This particular convenience, however, doesn't interest me.
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Sucks to be you. I'd go crazy with a 30 min each way commute.
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Yeah. It makes me crazy too. I had a leisurely five minute walk to my previous job, and I liked that. Alas, commute time is a tradeoff with other things. Still, I have it far better than some.
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That doesn't make any god damn sense at all.
If you're spending an hour a day in your car, you need to spend that DRIVING, not fucking around on the internet.
If you're traveling at highway speeds, you're a menace to society if you're distracted. If you're stuck in stop-and-go traffic, you're just going to make the gridlock worse if you miss either the gos or the stops.
I don't understand how people can fuck around while driving a car. When I drive, the radio is low, my phone doesn't
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Well, okay, I don't know if you got to my second paragraph, but like I said, I'm not particularly interested in internet in my car, at least not for browsing while I'm driving.
The significant conveniences of home, of which I speak, are a heater, a radio, a big cushy seat, cup holders -- you know, the stuff that adds "bloat" to a car. I like that bloat.
And I don't have these myself, but other things would be nice like heated seats, satellite radio, a nice soft suspension, stuff like that.
You seem to have som
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You have a toilet and a shower in there?
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I'm ready! (Score:2)
I can't wait for dashboard programming.
Has it been determined yet that debugging syntax while driving is dangerous?
I don't know about the rest of ye but.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Modern cars isolate the driver from the road far too much. Soundproofing and power everything makes it easy to forget you are doing 100mph in a large lump of metal.
There is if course also the issue of Twitter and Facebook being long dead (hopefully) before the car reaches half it's expected lifetime.
Of course i have nothing really against driverless cars and people who have no interest in driving a car shouldn't have to, as long as I can still get on the same roads with a completely manual car
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There is if course also the issue of Twitter and Facebook being long dead (hopefully) before the car reaches half it's expected lifetime.
A valid comment it may be, but with modern cars having an expected lifetime of about 5 years, I think the car may expire before the social sites!
Personally, I'll stick to my pre-1985 classics! Cheap, easy to fix, and mostly reliable. I've had one 29 year old Land Rover for the past 11 years. I know some people who are on their 6th car in those 29 years, after the other 5 expired. Dread to think of the waste they've created :-(
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. Modern cars have expected lifetimes of way way more than five years -- more like thirty years. Are you sure you didn't flip your facts? Cars from the 70s and 80s didn't last nearly so long as modern cars, which have all sorts of special materials which break down far slower than older cars.
It's true that old 'classic' cars were easier to fix, because they were less subtle and complicated, and all of the parts were human-scale instead of microchip-scale. That is indeed a benefit to backyard
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The cars themselves should last 20+ years but in that time a lot of the crappy consumer electronic gadgets they permanently affix to the interior will give up the ghost and their replacement can be quite tedious.
This 'new cars are harder to fix' stuff
Price of airbags:10yrs, airbags deploy:Totalled (Score:2)
It's no better for overpriced cars. 1 Airbag for an old M3 is $4500 wholesale.
Who knows what they raped the idiot for it installed (dude I know had to find the part, nobody guessed the price or even close).
There will come a time when almost all cars older then 10 or 15 years will have salvage titles and no airbags.
The nut jobs will scream about it being a conspiracy against the poor.
As far as Kias. I think they should skip the information appliances on the dash and spring for fancy options like a t
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Five years? You've got to be kidding. Modern cars far outlast older ones.
Back in what is often considered the golden era of American cars, the mid-Fifties to the mid-Sixties, you were doing well if you got ten years and 100K miles out of a car before it was time to start shopping for a new one. My current vehicle, on the other hand, is 15 years old with 120K miles on it and still doesn't use a drop of oil. Well, not as long as I keep the speed under 80 mph or so. Luckily, it's a Ford Ranger, which means it
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He said he has a Land Rover. Those are not American. In fact they're not really cars either.
For user convenience... (Score:2)
1st KIA Tweet (Score:2)
Helo. Iz in yr hwy, killin yr doods. KTHXB...[connection lost]
More distractions = More deaths (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's look at it another way. (Score:2)
Too much head-down time (Score:4, Insightful)
A touch-screen in a car, at least for the driver, is a terrible idea. It can't be operated by feel; the driver has to look away from the road, and probably for more than a second. Not good. Twittering while driving? Please. "Fully Loaded" [bookofjoe.com], a Bruce McCall drawing, isn't a design goal.
Auto designers, desperately trying to get margins up with "more car per car" (an old GM slogan) are hanging on unneeded features that are cheap to install. Overpriced car stereos aren't enough any more. Giant hood ornaments are out (there's a "pedestrian impalement" test cars have to pass, in response to a period in the 1950s when auto hoods were weaponized). So now we have dashboard gimmicks.
In aviation, this is called the "head-down time" problem, and efforts are made to minimize head-down time. The military takes this to an extreme in fighters, with the HOTAS ("Hands On Throttle and Stick") concept. This leads to a proliferation of buttons on the throttle and stick, though. Aviation people think hard about how many seconds of head-down time it takes to do something.
If you want to cause accidents, put in a touch screen that's stateful, so the driver has to look. Then give it a timeout, so it goes back to the ground state if the driver doesn't give it undivided attention. This forces the driver to look away from the road. One of the examples in the original article looks very like that.
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A touch-screen in a car, at least for the driver, is a terrible idea.
I got to drive a Prius around christmas, for the first time ever. In the dark, in the snow. The touchscreen was AWFUL. The climate controls are all touch-screen based, and as you so insightfully put it:
If you want to cause accidents, put in a touch screen that's stateful, so the driver has to look. Then give it a timeout, so it goes back to the ground state if the driver doesn't give it undivided attention.
That's the Prius' touchscreen! It kept hopping back to the fuel efficiency graphs from the climate controls. As I had to adjust heat, turn on defrost/defog stuff, I kept having to completely take my eyes off a dark, slippery road, and focus on a glowing screen which changed every few seconds.
I was no
Young drivers (Score:1)
What I want in a motor vehicle... (Score:1)
Really, the whole thing a
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The distractoin issue will work itself out (Score:2)
It's fine, this sort of technology's rise will coincide with the rise of technologies that drive our cars for us -- so ultimately the distraction issue won't be an issue at all. We could probably have self-driving cars now if consumers weren't so leery of the idea.
Error codes (Score:2)
Where is KITT when you need him?? (Score:2)
if they are going to put this much C**P in a car then they should go all the way and put a full AI in the car
of course then you will have
"Well Bozo not only can i drive better than you but i can Tweet about how much of a drunk moron you are and still get you back to that Hovel you call a house safely"
hmm new way to get out of a DWI jump: "But Officer ask my car im not driving HE WON'T LET ME"
just make a good car already (Score:2)
How can any of this be considered a major announcement about a car?
When a car maker tells me they have removed some electronic assholes from their vehicles, then I'll be interested.