Drove to the next town earlier, during the journey my Picanto threw up a message "Consider taking a break" with an icon of a cup of coffee.
Is this just a gratuitous insult?
Insolent Cars
Feb 19, 2026
Last reply: 4 months ago
28 Replies
Getting to be par for the course. Mine tells me to keep my hands on the wheel when as far as I can tell they never left it.
nib
Mine tells me to look forwards
Costa coffee locations programmed into your Sat Nav and selected as places of interest?
Do these messages actually improve safety or do the exact opposite by distracting the driver?
I think some car systems detect excessive wandering of steering.
I thought you were going to give us a tale about some people not realising the tide was coming in at Keyhaven.
GH
But are they programmed with the locations of the potholes you're avoiding?
It did that because you had been driving 20mph under the speed limit
Now apply that question to all the road furniture
But overlook the presence of potholes and/or large puddles.
Adrian
I have seen (summaries of) reports that indicate too many road signs or roadside signs of all types when installed fairly close together are more of a safety hindrance than a help. The same reports indicated that at night pedestrian crossings beacons were harder to see with badly placed street lighting giving a shorter reaction time margin.
The opposite, sometimes it expects you to read a couple of sentences of explanation on the dashboard when trying to adjust the speed-limiter/cruise-control/radar-adaptive-cruise settings, and it doesn't like what you're trying to do!
My Ford Puma does it when I've only been driving for a few minutes, but not every time.
Apparently if you drop a covering over the camera that looks at your face, that converts the warning from "consider taking a break" to "driver attention monitor disabled" warning :-)
# Around 1:38
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Another possibility is to disable "lane keeping assist" so the car isn't looking at the lane markers so much.
Paul
Or perhaps the concept of "the rolling English road" is unfamilair to the designers?
Mine tells me I should check my mirrors more often. WTH thought all this s*it up?
If it's smart enough to do that, it should also be checking rearwards for you.
Sum kunt with too much time on his hands.
Or maybe an advert of some kind? :-)
#Paul
VW /Audi did the opposite to instruct the ECU to cheat the emissions when no steering-wheel movement was detected :-(
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