u/KYpeanutbutter

Hi everyone. Madeira is super sick, love it here. Beautiful. Thanks for having me here. But what the hell is up with ur multi lane traffic circles lol so inefficient and accident-prone

So I drive a 2021 Volkswagen Jetta S. Nothing flashy at all. It's reliable, it's not too smart, it's not too lite.. it's good and it's good for me. Currently, my car is getting some work done on it and I'm driving a rental car, which is a brand new VW and is what I'm assuming is a middle of the line model. Every so often when I have to drive a rental car, I am reminded how much I HATE driving new cars. I remember growing up thinking "wow new cars look so cool, I wonder what cool features they'll have in xyz amount of years" and such and such.. well how the tables have turned.

For more of a prelude, I bought my car new, and I guess I did a good job; to be honest, I didn't do much research when I bought, and I guess because I bought the base model in 2021, it wasn't packed with all these crazy features. I have what I need; a backup cam, CarPlay, (non-adaptive) cruise control, good fuel economy. It's almost perfect, I just might like blindspot alerting, (kinda) parking sensors, (even though it's absolutely almost pointless) push to start, and a sunroof.. other than that, I'm set.

Back to the rental car I'm currently driving, oh my GOD. Where do I even start? I hate adaptive cruise control. It detects speed limit changes on the signs, sometimes it misses the signs by the way, it then brakes to the correct speed (or sometimes the misread, incorrect speed), also I HATE the way it brakes. It's not a smooth & comfortable brake like a normal driver would do. Same goes for the acceleration. The gas pedal is also super sensitive. Also, when a car in front of you brakes to turn, the car just comes to a complete freaking stop super abruptly, and then does the slowest resumption of acceleration I could imagine. I love cruise control, but this is NOT the way!! You could go the other route of instead of using adaptive cruise control (no idea if there's a way to dumb down the cruise control, there probably is somewhere buried in the 49294838 different settings), you could use the speed limiter, which would just allow you to slam on the gas pedal and go whatever speed you set the limit to, but that's annoying because you constantly have to hold down the gas pedal. Next problem I have is the parking sensors. Now listen, they can convenient, and they should be! But these??? Way too sensitive. They're like normal, louder/faster, and then they're screaming at you.. so you're like "okay it looks like I still have space but the car seems to be advising highly against going a little closer" and then you get out, and you still have like a solid foot and a half left to go. This could be implemented way better.. like come on, dude. Finally, if you take your hands off the steering wheel while it's supposed to be in lane assist, it freaks out, beeps at you, and then eventually beeps super loud and pulls ur seatbelt tight and activates an SOS mode.. very odd.

TLDR: I don't like this stage we're at with car design. Cars are at this weird limbo between fully self-driving and human-operated. I don't like it and I think it should be one or the other. Either drive the car for me, or let me drive the car with features similar to that of maybe a nice car from 2016. Nothing in between. Just give me my normal cruise control and blind spot assist, or drive the dang car completely for me.

Sidenotes:

The only reasons I can see keyless ignition being good are 1. If you're in a rush and 2. Because I have broken 2 keys after several years of usage and some manufacturers make low quality keys, so keyless ignition would eliminate that possibility, which is a hassle to deal with if it happens that you break your car keys.

Hello. A little about me, I'm part Lithuanian, part Polish. My wife and I used to live in Lithuania for some time, we travelled around essentially the whole country, and I greatly miss it, miss learning the language, miss the cuisine, miss the national pride, and I totally miss the culture. I oftentimes cook Lithuanian food at home and listen to Lithuanian music to keep the connection alive with the country and the culture in Lithuania. We now live near Nürnberg, and I'm wondering if there are by chance any Lithuanians near Nürnberg? I'm interested in making some new friends and perhaps doing a language exchange or something.

Hello. A little about me, I'm part Lithuanian, part Polish. My wife and I used to live in Lithuania for some time, we travelled around essentially the whole country, and I greatly miss it, miss learning the language, miss the cuisine, miss the national pride, and I totally miss the culture. I oftentimes cook Lithuanian food at home and listen to Lithuanian music to keep the connection alive with the country and the culture in Lithuania. We now live near Nürnberg, and I'm wondering if there are by chance any Lithuanians near Nürnberg? I'm interested in making some new friends and perhaps doing a language exchange or something.

If you are stationed overseas, like for example in Spain, Germany, or Belgium, Poland, Japan, or wherever it may be, please please please follow the local traffic laws. I see oh so often over here in Europe service members or their family members (especially rotation service members) not knowing how turn signals work or roundabouts/traffic circles work (you put on ur turn signal when you're EXITING!! I see maybe half of service members where I am actually using turn signals in roundabouts), or people speeding because they don't understand road signs (the 3 lines in Germany does not mean autobahn speeds when you see that sign on a backroad/state road...). Just the other day I saw a service member/family member/American leave post and overtake a truck at a dangerous dead-end where you must turn right, in a no-passing zone (because there are incoming cars coming from the right). This could've caused the truck driver OR the service member (or whoever it was from post) to crash.

Some of you guys should stop Quizlet-ing your U.S. armed forces drivers license tests lol.

Does anyone else perhaps feel this way, or am I just a Karen? Anyone have similar experiences or thoughts?

I'll take a value menu McChicken with a small fry. Medium fry if my card doesn't decline.