I’ve seen a few car advertisements lately, and one thing’s for sure: they’re sure putting a lot of gizmos into cars these days. But where some people see “cool feature”, I see “distraction” and “point of failure”. Electric windows were bad enough, now it seems I’d be hard-pressed to find an automobile that doesn’t tie my shoes for me and tell me how devilishly handsome I am.
If I were king of an auto company, every new proposed feature my marketing whiz kids threw at me would have to answer these questions:
- Does it add weight to the vehicle?
- Does it divide the driver’s attention?
- does it require an instruction manual?
- Does it increase maintenance costs?
- How many different ways can it break?
- When it breaks, how will that affect the owner of the car? (Crash? can’t roll up the windows? Can’t unlock the door?)
I don’t know if there exists a new car (within reason) that I would prefer over my ten-year-old, already-too-fancy car.
The real-estate agent with whom we’ve been working in Arizona has a GPS screen that turns into a rear-view video camera when he shifts into reverse. Does he use it? No, he uses the rear-view mirrors and turns his head to look back. I don’t know whether he’s even noticed that feature.
I think the answer to your question is “no”