Luddite alert - here I go again moaning about modern tech. But, really, steering that tries to overrule you? When did we ask for that?
Inspiration for this rant comes from the drive home last night in the new Skoda Octavia vRS. Nice car (other than we accidentally ended up with a diesel) and just the ticket as fast family transport for those mature enough to put value for money ahead of badge snobbery. In the petrol form we meant to book in it's basically a new Golf GTI with room to spare and a more reasonable price tag - win.
Before I clamber onto my soapbox two disclaimers in the Skoda's defence. One, it's been 'gifted' the technology from the VW group parts bin. And two, it's an industry-wide trend. Just bad luck on the Octavia's part that it was the first car I've really encountered it.
Dan gets out and lets the Skoda drive itself
Anyway. I first noticed something was up when those tiny steering corrections you instinctively put in during motorway driving started coming back at me. Measured in fractions of a degree and tiny pressures it was only when the steering bit back that I noticed it. This wasn't feedback. This was the car disagreeing and trying to force me to follow its line. The car was literally arguing with my steering inputs and this, it turned out, was the Skoda's 'Lane Assistant' in action. I read up the system as I was stationary on the M25 for half an hour after some Herbert crashed into someone up ahead. Thankfully you can switch it off, for now.
Clearly though there are people who struggle with the apparently simple task of guiding a car along at a steady speed between a pair of generously spaced white lines. If you're one of those people I don't want to share the road with you, let alone have your inadequacies masked by an electronic Lane Assistant.
As per a previous rant about Volvo's Cyclist Detection System I find it terrifying that car manufacturers are not just complicit in encouraging a sense of invulnerability in drivers, they're actively encouraging it. The more bleepers, warnings and assist systems there are the less inclined we are to actually look where we're going. Or take responsibility for our actions.
Manufacturers probably dream of some crash-free utopia where cars keep each other apart with electronic intervention rather than fallible human input. The reality more likely being I'll spend more time stationary on the M25 after some chump swapped lanes without looking, assuming his blind spot lane keeping assistant whatnot would keep him out of trouble. Grr!