Where I live in California, the weather can change within seconds depending on your altitude and location. So on your morning commute it may be clear, but you go up a mountain pass and you are in fog. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen idiots driving in the fog with no lights on.

Some of the roads have signs that ask/demand you turn on your lights (Hwy 154, 17, etc). But not many people pay attention to these signs.

Ask anyone who lives in the Bay Area about how the fog is suddenly there during a drive.

I think DRL are a small price to pay to increase visibility when conditions are not the best and there are so many dumb drivers out there.

No. 2 Did someone mention headlamp washers? http://www.wak-tt.com/videos/alien1.mpa

No. 3 All new cars dont need a huge LCD monitor in them! And if you dont want one, I dont need a cubic foot of sunglasses storage.

Has anyone noticed theres not much wrong with the first gen Audi TT’s interior, and a whole lot with the new model. They made the chime more pleasant ehem, threw in a huge lcd, and destroyed one of the best no nonsense driving layouts in a modern car.

OT: Rear Fog Lights. And the morons who slow down for them. Do the doofuses with the rear fogs blazing even know they’re on?

(from factotum)

“People who play the trumpet while driving”

Losers with poor taste in music who think I want to listen to their bass while I’m waiting in a left turn lane or trying to enjoy my evening at home.

Bingo!!! My #1 peeve. I’ll admit to occasionally turning up the volume on my car stereo, but always with the windows UP

Why it it that every monster SUV I see with 22″ wheels and 35 series tires have the stereo CRANKED and every window down. If you like your music that much….KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!!!!….I don’t like it

There are several occasions where Any modern ESP system will hamper driving. The most obvious/annoying one is off-roading; light-duty that might just possibly require 4-hi is sometimes OK with ESP, but when you’re down in 4-lo going up a steep hill, ESP just gets in the way. Sometimes when it tries to act as a “limit-slip” by braking the slipping wheel, all it really does is cut the throttle, killing any chance of the non-stuck wheel to actually get power. There are plenty of other times where ESP has gotten in my way on dirt paths and off-road, but I learned to just shut the damn thing off when leaving the pavement (downhill assist, though, is actually pretty cool). Fortunately for my truck, whenever I locked the rear differential, all of that crap shuts off anyway.

When you are on the pavement and the road is slick or has ice/snow, ESP can sometimes help while you are already at speed, but it is next to impossible to get your vehicle moving. Again, sometimes a little bit of slip is necessary. Another bad situation – you get stuck in slick mud. The ESP is going to try and stop ANY wheelspin, while you actually need the wheels to spin a bit to try and grasp some solid ground.

Don’t get me wrong – on the road, ESP can be a blessing. In a lot of situations, once you get used to the ESP system (assuming it’s a properly functioning system, such as what Nissan offers), the ESP system can allow greater control in emergency situations. When driving on poorly-constructed roads with heavy rains, it helps keep all of your wheels on the road. I played around with my system on my last SUV (in a safe, empty place, of course) and the ESP system really can bring a huge truck out of a spin, fishtail, or just about anything very quickly and very efficiently – it’s quite amazing, considering it does so by controlling the brakes. Of course, when you’re Trying to whip that rear end around…

To be honest I’m having problems understanding folk’s reticence toward ESP – it a great thing, why would you want to turn it off?

And before I put on my foil hat, let me say that many manufacturers (especially the domestics) have made it impossible for those over 6′1″ to find a decent driving position in their cars. So naturally, we HAVE to buy trucks…

It’s like the food conglomerates forcing you to buy 8 hot dogs and 12 buns…

Coating a steel wheel in plastic and selling it as an alloy.

Losers with poor taste in music who think I want to listen to their bass while I’m waiting in a left turn lane or trying to enjoy my evening at home.

Interior panels that don’t even come close to lining up or matching color (03 Taurus, 98 Lumina).

Coin trays. Obsolete.

Chemical off-gases that coat the inside surfaces. Really bad on the Taurus. 10 minutes after washing the windows, they’re hazy again.

In my car the passenger-side airbag warning says that children under age 12 should not sit in the passenger seat. What useless information! As the parent of an above-average sized boy, I want to know at what weight and/or height he can safely sit in the passenger seat.

I think that the raised the age requiremetn to 7 years old here in California. I don’t think they coud make a child safety seat that would have held me at the age of 7, and as far as your point, I was already 6′ tall and 155 lbs by the age of 12. I was already bigger than the average full grown man and almost all women (unfortunately, I stopped growing by the age of 12, and my dreams of playing in college and the NBA quickly faded).
By the way, daytime running lights have been required in all new cars sodl in California for several years, though maybe not the entire US.

If you pulled a button other than AC or MAX all the way out, then all the way back in, you got the AC compressor to kick in in that mode. If you pushed in the button from the “neutral” position,not from the extended position, you only got heat/fresh air in those non-AC positions. What’s so hard about bringing that back?

Add to the stop sign complaints the idiots who jump out from the stop sign/driveway entrance before you’ve cleared the intersection/driveway.

2:) People who drive slow in the inside lane, thinking they are out of the flow of traffic in the slow lane when in reality they are blocking up the fast lane and they make NO effort to get out of your way.

3:) Women who think all the mirrors in cars are for putting on or adjusting their make-up at stop lights and stop signs. And some women do just that. So don’t rake me over the coals for that comment. It’s a fact.

4:) People who text and gab on cell phones while driving. Makes me wonder what they are steering the car with ????? Their feet or knees?????

5:) The people who only stop once when the vehicle ahead of them stops at a stop sign. When that driver goes they go, thinking they have already stoppped for the sign when the driver ahead of them stopped for it so why stop when they get to it and they give you the finger or a nasty look or both when you try to go ahead of them when it’s your turn and not theirs !!!!!!!!

6:) DRL’s. Anyone who can’t see something as big as a vehicle coming at them in broad daylight with it’s headlights off are more blind than a bat and shouldn’t be driving anyway. On a cloudy, rainy, snowy or foggy day i can see the benifits and usefulness of DRL’s but not on a clear sunny day. Who needs to see a vehicle coming at them from 2-3 miles away?????? I have a 2008 Honda Accord and it has DRL’s. I can’t disable them by pulling the fuse as was stated by Supremebrougham because the DRL’s are also my high beams so i am also disabling them if i pull the fuse. Guess they do it this way to stop people from pulling the fuse to kill the DUMB things!!!!!!!!

7:) Options put on a specific trim level of vehicle that the consumer has no way of deleting. Example: Honda puts a moonroof on every EX and EX-L trim level vehicle they build. Some customers may not want this and should have the right to delete it for a credit. I remember the days when you could option a vehicle the WAY you wanted not the way the manufacture wants to build it. I know this save money and time but give the shopper some choices other than 4,6 or 8 cylinders, front or all wheel drive, color and number of doors.

I’m sure there are others but i can’t think of them now.

1) Warning stickers. This could apply to just about every product sold in the U.S., and possibly other countries. Of course we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Juries are still made up of people, aren’t they?

2) “Idiot” lights. I prefer the gauges in the dash of my 58 Chevy. I much prefer the info I get from the ammeter, oil pressure, and water temperature gauges than a battery light, oil light, and thermometer light. The people who can’t understand what these gauges mean are probably the same ones who wouldn’t know how to check there oil and probably ignore the “idiot” lights anyway (see opening paragraph).

I hope that traction control (at least traction control that can’t be disabled) doesn’t become a requirement. In certain circumstances, I feel safer with the traction control turned off in my Mazda6s. While most of the time I prefer to leave it on, I want to have the option of turning it off when I think it may be detrimental.

I HATE DRL’s!!! When I bought my Alero, the first thing I did that weekend was find and pull the fuse for them. I know, they help oncoming motorists see you, but I don’t like being blinded by them when I’m behind an oversized truck with a chrome bumper. Thankfully, the autolamp feature still works, so the lights will come on automatically at night, and I like that. Now, if GM made the DRL’s to work like they did in the last Buick Century, as in through the parking lamps, I wouldn’t have much of a problem with that. Why can’t they ever do anything consistent???

Amen. I’ve wanted to do that to our Aurora forever, but the second-generation Aurora was changed from the fuse-based DRL to one that’s built onto the ECU motherboard (is that the right term?). It cannot be disabled, as it could in the first-gen Aurora.

Also, I’ve been an Intrigue fan forever and the parking light DRLs in Intrigues and Regal/Centuries were notorious for corroding and causing shorts, busted turn signals, and other problems. It’s not exactly inherrent in making them turn signal-based, but bad design ruled that day. Equally W-Body Impala/Luminas and Grands Prix (hehe, that sounds funny) never had this problem, since they used de-powered high-beams for their DRLs.

It’s a ScanGauge. I believe they are still on Version II, but with updated software that allow for trip displays on the main gauge screen.

And I’m serious about paying for itself – you can view the code and send the “Clear” signal without paying anyone for it! Very handy when you get a Check Engine light from something silly, or something you can fix yourself.

http://www.scangauge.com/

Just a few examples of what should be displayed on these new “high tech” cars of the future..

I understand the theory. But at 40F and bone dry, the A/C is not needed; it just sucks up extra gas.

As for pet peeves, the top one without a doubt is overly-intrusive and -compensating traction control. I hate that head-bob when you’re suddenly robbed of power unexpectedly, because of a bit of dust under the drive wheel at that moment. Give it a second!

A smaller one, but consistenly peeving nonetheless, is throttle-by-wire (specifically in a manual-tranny’ed car). It’s never natural-feeling; I always get that feeling that I’m not stepping on the throttle, I’m only making a request for more throttle please. I’ve lived with the BMW and Acura systems, and both were bothersome.

I want one of these. What’s it called and where can I get it?

The tendency on many, many cars to have a low enough seat and high enough beltline that you can’t see any corner of the car from the driver’s seat without a periscope.

Radios that insist on saying “Hello!” in bright, cheery letters.

Traction control on modestly powered front-wheel-drive cars. Does a Hyundai Elantra automatic need traction control? I think not.

The obnoxiously wide drop in ratios between first and second gear on a vast majority of manual-shift cars.

The gradual disappearance of temperature gauges from new cars. I don’t like not having an oil pressure or voltage gauge, which are already endangered, but being without a water temperature gauge is just asinine.

I like knowing my oil temperature!! I’d rather be able to tell that it’s getting hotter than it should BEFORE the big red light comes on and something fries.

My 1987 has built-in instant and trip MPG, and it’s pretty darn accurate. I repeat, my 1987. It also has a digital gas gauge that tells me down to the gallon, not “E” when I still have 5 gallons left.

When the Check Engine light pops on, my little device gives me a code. Nothing fancy, but enough for me to throw in a search engine and fix myself. I’ve used it on 3 family cars and 2 friends’, meaning that it’s already paid for itself, with interest. I don’t see why we should have to pay someone $70.00 because cars still don’t have proper displays – the code is all anyone needs!! Throw a code, list it in the owner’s manual, and presto! tons of money saved – oh, right… tons of money saved for the customer.

My biggest pet-peeve, though, is definitely the new “false” sense of security a lot of cars let off. Idiots get behind the wheel, and since the road is muted, think it’s quite OK to drive their 6,000lb SUV 110 mph on the highway. That is, until they need to change lanes; talk about some unexpected Physics 101 coming into play. I do appreciate a properly-tuned stability system – there are times when they come in handy – but as the muting of the road allows morons to drive past their limits without realizing, the esp systems gives false hope that a car will correct itself. Forget the fact that the roads are 3 inches deep in water, you have racing tires on your SUV, and you can’t see more than 10 feet in front of you, the ESP will take care of it all!!

What’s even worse is the AWD B.S. – Those fools at least know for a fact that their car has it, vs. the 50% of people who don’t even know what stability control is. Same symptoms, though – more idiot driving on the streets.

Back to a previous post about new pickups; I couldn’t agree more!! I drive an xA for the most part, and I could almost swear that 3/4’s of my car could fit in one of these truck’s hoods!! How much space does a 5.xxL V8 need?? Nissan managed to fit theirs in a nice-sized hood – most everyone else, though, felt that they needed space for one person in front of, beside, under, and on top of the engine. I wouldn’t be surprised to see built-in stairs for easy-access.

I could accept the logic behind having the A/C activate on pure defrost mode (though I’d still probably rewire it on my own vehicle). However, a lot of vehicles now run A/C even on floor only (Mazda and Chrysler do this). Normally, my feet and floormats don’t need to be dried off. Defrost is my favorite ventilation setting. What does one do when they want fresh air but don’t want it blowing on their feet or their body, and they don’t want the A/C on? My ‘98 Pathfinder had it right, IMHO. It never assumed that I wanted the A/C on.

- No manual transmission (Pontiac G6 GT)
- V6 with single exhaust pipe (again Pontiac G6 GT)

I can’t stand huge 2 seaters! I love little efficient cars.

The CEL should only go on when there’s actual engine problems! Like, you know, it’s on fire, or the timing belt breaks, or something else nasty happens.