Car driver assistance aids and MOT

Sam Vimes

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This post is prompted by the one started by Jcloughie about selling his Volvo which then went on about Blind Spot Indicator systems.

More on more we see supposedly Driver Assistance Aids being added to cars and I can't help wondering if there is a positive benefit to some of these or is it a marketing gimic but more worryingly does it take away skills of the driver. Suddenly these aids stop working and people who have relied on them may make mistakes.

Not only that, these Aids are now being included in MOT checks, possibly because people are relying on them. I always thought that the MOT was a roadworthiness test - wheels wouldn't fall off; brakes stopped you; bits of the car didn't fall apart sort of thing. Now though if some of these driving aids don't work they can be a cause of MOT failure.

Last year my old car had an airbag warning light come on. Despite cars not having Airbags for many years this would have been an MOT failure.

Last week a friend bought a Volvo 60XC. Went to get it MOT'd but it failed because the wing mirror signal repeater lamp didn't work.

Just a couple of days ago I had a stone go through the tread of my tyre. Not only caused an air leak but some of it broke off inside and damaged the TPMS sensor. Being in desperate need to get it fixed I could only get a budget tyre and a normal valve fitted. So running with one TPMS sensor dead would be an MOT failure.

None of the above stopped the cars from being road worthy.

When I changed my car last year I tried as best I could to get one with a minimum number of 'must have features' that can go wrong and cost a fortune to get fixed. I want to be in control.

Don't get me started on cars with Autopilots and Autonomous Driver features. :)
 
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I do wonder if some of these aids can be counterproductive as they can give drivers an increased sense of the car taking care of them and relaxing more because of that.
I appreciate that as cars progress more and more safety devices are fitted and it makes sense to make sure these work. It is inevitable some cars will have more than others but that is the way it is. Possibly if you have an older car you could ask for a discount because the garage has less to do.
 
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This post is prompted by the one started by Jcloughie about selling his Volvo which then went on about Blind Spot Indicator systems.

More on more we see supposedly Driver Assistance Aids being added to cars and I can't help wondering if there is a positive benefit to some of these or is it a marketing gimic but more worryingly does it take away skills of the driver. Suddenly these aids stop working and people who have relied on them may make mistakes.

Not only that, these Aids are now being included in MOT checks, possibly because people are relying on them. I always thought that the MOT was a roadworthiness test - wheels wouldn't fall off; brakes stopped you; bits of the car didn't fall apart sort of thing. Now though if some of these driving aids don't work they can be a cause of MOT failure.

Last year my old car had an airbag warning light come on. Despite cars not having Airbags for many years this would have been an MOT failure.

Last week a friend bought a Volvo 60XC. Went to get it MOT'd but it failed because the wing mirror signal repeater lamp didn't work.

Just a couple of days ago I had a stone go through the tread of my tyre. Not only caused an air leak but some of it broke off inside and damaged the TPMS sensor. Being in desperate need to get it fixed I could only get a budget tyre and a normal valve fitted. So running with one TPMS sensor dead would be an MOT failure.

None of the above stopped the cars from being road worthy.

When I changed my car last year I tried as best I could to get one with a minimum number of 'must have features' that can go wrong and cost a fortune to get fixed. I want to be in control.

Don't get me started on cars with Autopilots and Autonomous Driver features. :)
The first thing my daughter did when having her new Corolla last year was turn off whatever she could as it seemed an endless series of bleeps particularly when in car parks. Then she turned back on those she wanted. Both her and the two grandchildren turn their phones to Focus which automatically can sense if they are driving and which are set to no messages, emails, callls etc. and which relays a message to the sender/caller.
 
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My new MG is full of gimmicks, some more useful than others. One automates the handbrake. The idea seems to be, that if in stop-start traffic, the rolling when stopped would be eliminated.

I tried to park in Tesco yesterday. I had the auto-hold turned on. It was not possible to creep forward or backward to position the car as it lurched as the brake released.

As soon as I cancelled the auto-hold, all went well.

I can not see this feature being useful at all. Though it may work better on a manual car. It could be that it will work OK in traffic, it is supposed to save holding the brake. Time will tell. But not good for the Tesco car park!

John
 
Nov 11, 2009
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My new MG is full of gimmicks, some more useful than others. One automates the handbrake. The idea seems to be, that if in stop-start traffic, the rolling when stopped would be eliminated.

I tried to park in Tesco yesterday. I had the auto-hold turned on. It was not possible to creep forward or backward to position the car as it lurched as the brake released.

As soon as I cancelled the auto-hold, all went well.

I can not see this feature being useful at all. Though it may work better on a manual car. It could be that it will work OK in traffic, it is supposed to save holding the brake. Time will tell. But not good for the Tesco car park!

John
Mine has autohold plus electric handbrake. Both are conveniently located just by my left hand. It felt very strange when coming to a stop in traffic for autohold to engage. I’ve always been a “ put into neutral, handbrake on” But now I’ve got used to it and stop start too, as being DCT I’m keen not to have the gearbox clutches running if I can help it. Even with autohold switched off very slow manoeuvres aren’t as smooth/gentle as in a conventional auto/ cvt or a manual gearbox, and being an electric handbrake it is either on or off unlike a conventional handbrake where you can use it to balance the movement when manoeuvring. I’ve just had to adapt my driving style, which I had to with a DSG Superb, but that did have a conventional handbrake. Suffice to say my wife hasn't driven it yet and sticks to her manual Rio. “I will drive it in an emergency” she maintains. I ask her if she would be happy if BA took that line with aircrew 😂

PS my autohold works by locking pressure to the brake line. Handbrake uses servo motors.
 

Sam Vimes

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Qashqai J11.

The Auto Hold feature and Hill Start assist are two of the features I most like but it is a manual car.

The Electronic Handbrake is ok but then there's no choice but to use it.

The Traffic Sign (Speed) recognition is pretty handy but will sometimes read the sign on the back of a lorry.

The Forward Intelligent Emergency Braking is ok but I always beat it to the brake. Sometimes it throws a fit and issues a warning for no apparent reason. Seems linked to low sun angles and chevron signs on bends.

One standard feature that's not great is the indicator click...I can barely hear it. Parking sensor beeps not overly loud either.
 
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...... my 22 year old Nissan Terrano just passed it's MOT with no advisories and 167000 miles on the clock. Owned it from new and owes me nothing.
It has virtually no gizmos at all!
Going to replace it this year almost certainly with a 2014 ish Sorento auto diesel.
Newer 4x4 towcars are too dear.....can't justify the expense for a dedicated tow car.
They all seem to not have a spare wheel which is a deal breaker for me.
 
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...... my 22 year old Nissan Terrano just passed it's MOT with no advisories and 167000 miles on the clock. Owned it from new and owes me nothing.
It has virtually no gizmos at all!
Going to replace it this year almost certainly with a 2014 ish Sorento auto diesel.
Newer 4x4 towcars are too dear.....can't justify the expense for a dedicated tow car.
They all seem to not have a spare wheel which is a deal breaker for me.

I have modified both our Kias to have a space saver spare wheel and sold the goo kits.

One gizmo that one of ours has is to have the rear view camera on 100%. who wants a rear camera view on continuously on a. 10.25 inch screen ? Every time I delve into the infotainment menu settings I discover another gizmo.......sounds of the Rainforest, or Pebbles on a beach amongst the latest goodies to keep me calm. Prefer Status Quo which I can still hear, much to my passengers chagrin.
 
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Mine has autohold plus electric handbrake. Both are conveniently located just by my left hand. It felt very strange when coming to a stop in traffic for autohold to engage. I’ve always been a “ put into neutral, handbrake on” But now I’ve got used to it and stop start too, as being DCT I’m keen not to have the gearbox clutches running if I can help it. Even with autohold switched off very slow manoeuvres aren’t as smooth/gentle as in a conventional auto/ cvt or a manual gearbox, and being an electric handbrake it is either on or off unlike a conventional handbrake where you can use it to balance the movement when manoeuvring. I’ve just had to adapt my driving style, which I had to with a DSG Superb, but that did have a conventional handbrake. Suffice to say my wife hasn't driven it yet and sticks to her manual Rio. “I will drive it in an emergency” she maintains. I ask her if she would be happy if BA took that line with aircrew 😂

PS my autohold works by locking pressure to the brake line. Handbrake uses servo motors.

Interesting.

My switches are placed like yours. I suspect the operation of locking pressure in the brake lines might be the same. I will perciveer with it, but cancel it when trying to do close manovering.

I suspect that the autohold will not keep the brake lights on makeing life better for those following.

People might have unrealistic expectations. My MG does not have ‘lane assist’. But I was reading someones complaint about theirs. They tested it by allowing the car to drift out of lane. The car warned him (I think it nudges the steering wheel). But his expectation was that it should have guided him back to the middle of the lane he was in.

John
 
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Interesting.

My switches are placed like yours. I suspect the operation of locking pressure in the brake lines might be the same. I will perciveer with it, but cancel it when trying to do close manovering.

I suspect that the autohold will not keep the brake lights on makeing life better for those following.

People might have unrealistic expectations. My MG does not have ‘lane assist’. But I was reading someones complaint about theirs. They tested it by allowing the car to drift out of lane. The car warned him (I think it nudges the steering wheel). But his expectation was that it should have guided him back to the middle of the lane he was in.

John

Not certain if my auto hold switches brake lights off, must check, be nice it it did. WRT Lane Assist, mine comes on by default, and gets switched of as part of my pre start checks, along with the front parking sensors that scream at me because I park the car close to the house wall.
 
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The auto hold on my SantaFe puts the brake lights ON, The car failed to MOT two years ago for a left hand mirror repeater, dealers price was over £150 plus labour, I got a new one for £38.95 from eBay. It took me two hours to replace it,
Soon to replace my rear discs and pads, and the manual states for bedding in new parking brake shoes, to drive at 25 kph and a apply the electric hand brake until the car stops. I will do that near to the house in case something gets stuck on.
 
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The auto hold on my SantaFe puts the brake lights ON, The car failed to MOT two years ago for a left hand mirror repeater, dealers price was over £150 plus labour, I got a new one for £38.95 from eBay. It took me two hours to replace it,
Soon to replace my rear discs and pads, and the manual states for bedding in new parking brake shoes, to drive at 25 kph and a apply the electric hand brake until the car stops. I will do that near to the house in case something gets stuck on.
Crikey wouldn't be too keen on that procedure as mine seems to come in with real bite. Interesting to hear how it goes.
 
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This post is prompted by the one started by Jcloughie about selling his Volvo which then went on about Blind Spot Indicator systems.

More on more we see supposedly Driver Assistance Aids being added to cars and I can't help wondering if there is a positive benefit to some of these or is it a marketing gimic but more worryingly does it take away skills of the driver. Suddenly these aids stop working and people who have relied on them may make mistakes.

Not only that, these Aids are now being included in MOT checks, possibly because people are relying on them. I always thought that the MOT was a roadworthiness test - wheels wouldn't fall off; brakes stopped you; bits of the car didn't fall apart sort of thing. Now though if some of these driving aids don't work they can be a cause of MOT failure.

Last year my old car had an airbag warning light come on. Despite cars not having Airbags for many years this would have been an MOT failure.

Last week a friend bought a Volvo 60XC. Went to get it MOT'd but it failed because the wing mirror signal repeater lamp didn't work.

Just a couple of days ago I had a stone go through the tread of my tyre. Not only caused an air leak but some of it broke off inside and damaged the TPMS sensor. Being in desperate need to get it fixed I could only get a budget tyre and a normal valve fitted. So running with one TPMS sensor dead would be an MOT failure.

None of the above stopped the cars from being road worthy.

When I changed my car last year I tried as best I could to get one with a minimum number of 'must have features' that can go wrong and cost a fortune to get fixed. I want to be in control.

Don't get me started on cars with Autopilots and Autonomous Driver features. :)

Not sure about this, but we have a sensor on the spare however the pressure does not show up on the TPMS reading. If the spare tyre does lose pressure, then the you are alerted through a warning symbol on the dashboard. If we the sensor on one of the road tyres failed, I think we may be able to move the one off the spare onto the running tyre and the MOT inspector would be none the wiser.

Like you I want to be in control of my vehicle and not the other way around. One of the reasons we rejected our 2011 Mondeo as the driver had to adapt to the Powershift gearbox and not the other way around.

The one thing I do use frequently is the cruise control especially in 30mph zones as having been caught many years ago I do need a repeat. I was 1mph over the threshold, but 6mph over the limit and I was towing at the time. Very naughty I admit.

However back to the cruise control. On my previous Jeep if I had the cruise control set to 70mph on the motorway and came up behind a vehicle travelling at a lower speed, the vehicle would automatically brake. If I turned on the indicator to pull out to my right, the car would automatically accelerate. I did find this a bit unnerving although I did like the idea of the vehicle braking automatically.

We do not have that facility on the current Jeep and I did miss in initially, but have adjusted my driving style to compensate. I do not miss the warning buzzer for the blind spot every time a vehicle comes up on my right.

Too many safety devices could possibly make a driver lazy as they are relying on a computer to notify them of anything untoward about to happen. As an advanced driver we taught to observe the road, other road users, the roadside, weather conditions etc at all times and to take them into account.

At the time when do the training we had to do a running commentary when travelling at 50-60mph on an emergency call through a town. I don't think that is now done on an advanced. The other thing is that we had to know the equivalent of the Highway code off my heart and be able to cope it word for word in a written exam.
 
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My new MG is full of gimmicks, some more useful than others. One automates the handbrake. The idea seems to be, that if in stop-start traffic, the rolling when stopped would be eliminated.

I tried to park in Tesco yesterday. I had the auto-hold turned on. It was not possible to creep forward or backward to position the car as it lurched as the brake released.

As soon as I cancelled the auto-hold, all went well.

I can not see this feature being useful at all. Though it may work better on a manual car. It could be that it will work OK in traffic, it is supposed to save holding the brake. Time will tell. But not good for the Tesco car park!

John

Not quite the same, but our latest Jeep had an auto-brake when reversing which i did not know about. If when reversing if it senses something to close, it automatically brakes scaring the pants off you as you think you have hit something. Took awhile of digging through various menus to disable it.
 
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If a car is stopped and on "auto hold" the brake lights remain illuminated.

I have auto hold on my Mazda, but you have to switch it on everytime you start up it defaults to off. I have an auto box (proper one not DSG or similarl) For manoeuvering I just need to release the brake pressure and the car will "creep" (even on a gradiant) so distance can be controlled very closely.

I was introduced to the very latest in car safety feature the other day. It has two highly senstive full colour optical sensors linked to an extremely powerful on board processor that can calculate time and distance for other vehicles virtually instantaneously. It can also "predict" the movement of other vehicles, and even pedestrians, in real time.

Its acronym is U.Y.F.E.






Use
Your
Flaming
Eyes

;););););)
 
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The Touareg is a torque converter auto. The electric handbrake has auto and manual settings but does not operate when driving. Auto hold , the other “switch” in auto mode is brilliant. Holds the foot brake hydraulics on, brake lights stay on . The gentlest touch of the throttle releases the auto hold.
John as yours is so new maybe it needs to bed down? Flooring the throttle can beat mine resulting in a slight snatch. Just experiment and I get used to it.
I do have the BLIS , now I’ve looked it up. It can be annoying on narrow lanes when the front n/s is too close to the hedge🙃
 
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Bill
my son tows with his 2013 2.2 Sorie KX 4. .A truly wonderful fully loaded piece of kit with Kia unbreakable engineering. If you can try and go for the KX 3 or KX 4 versions which have all the whistles and bells you can dream of. Arm chair driving too. Don’t forget the Santa Fe is the same vehicle near enough, running gear, and shouldn’t be dismissed.
 
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...... my 22 year old Nissan Terrano just passed it's MOT with no advisories and 167000 miles on the clock. Owned it from new and owes me nothing.
It has virtually no gizmos at all!
Going to replace it this year almost certainly with a 2014 ish Sorento auto diesel.
Newer 4x4 towcars are too dear.....can't justify the expense for a dedicated tow car.
They all seem to not have a spare wheel which is a deal breaker for me.
Many of the 2009-on Sorento's and their Santa Fe siblings lost their spare wheel to thieves, often not discovered until it was needed.
 
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Alan...I've done a lot of research.
KX3 is the no 1 contender.

Roger... I now about this.
I will most likely fit a lock chain.
Don't think they are such a target now with cars at 8/9 years old.
 
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The Touareg is a torque converter auto. The electric handbrake has auto and manual settings but does not operate when driving. Auto hold , the other “switch” in auto mode is brilliant. Holds the foot brake hydraulics on, brake lights stay on . The gentlest touch of the throttle releases the auto hold.
John as yours is so new maybe it needs to bed down? Flooring the throttle can beat mine resulting in a slight snatch. Just experiment and I get used to it.
I do have the BLIS , now I’ve looked it up. It can be annoying on narrow lanes when the front n/s is too close to the hedge🙃

Yes the lurching might be due to newness. If it is turned on, no matter how slow I use the accelerator. There is a slight lurch as the brakes release. This would not be an issue in stop start traffic. But trying to manover close to a parked cars is a no-no. But not a problem, I now know I need to turn it off to do such things.

My Volvo had a Tourque converter. Gear changes were superb. The MG is, I thnk, DSG. But still seems smooth with gear changes.

John
 

Parksy

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Bill
my son tows with his 2013 2.2 Sorie KX 4. .A truly wonderful fully loaded piece of kit with Kia unbreakable engineering. If you can try and go for the KX 3 or KX 4 versions which have all the whistles and bells you can dream of. Arm chair driving too. Don’t forget the Santa Fe is the same vehicle near enough, running gear, and shouldn’t be dismissed.
I've bought a Sorento KX3 for towing, it's 9 years old but with relatively low mileage and a f.s.h.
it drives like a new car compared to my old Mk1 Sorento.
As Dustydog mentioned, it has the bells and whistles including my favourite feature, a heated steering wheel which is sheer bliss on these cold days.
I haven't actually towed our caravan with it yet, but I don’t forsee any problems when I hitch up and go away when spring arrives.
With the back row of the 7 seater folded flat the boot load space is massive.
We're off to Cornwall in the morning, no caravan this time because we're going to the funeral of an elderly relative and treating ourselves to a hotel for a couple of nights.
It should be a pleasant drive down and back in the Sorento, very comfortable with cruise control and the steering in sport mode to stiffen it up for the motorway and A30.
 
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