Tesla Investigated by U.S. Government for Allowing Owners to Play Video Games While Driving

[DrezKill]

...seeing that I live in a part of the world where I have no choice but to occasionally drive in the snow, I would never opt for RWD in a daily driver.

I spent over two decades driving a RWD car with no ABS and no traction or stability control in the rain and snow. I've gotten really good at it, but it's still a real pain in the ***. I love AWD mainly for the improved traction in all conditions, the performance, and cuz I was big into rally racing, but honestly it is very, very good for ALL everyday driving conditions. And in the snow, it is f*cking awesome. My parents have a Taurus SHO with AWD, so it's not even an awesome AWD system like you find in Audis, GT-Rs, Lancer Evos, and WRX STis, and it's still fantastic. I love AWD so much. Definitely the best choice for an everyday driver.

I bought Far Cry 3 on steam a few years back, and it force installed Origin and wanted me to create an Origin account. I said absolutely no way and requested a Steam refund.

I think you mean Ubisoft uPlay (which I think is now called Ubisoft Connect), but I know what you mean. It's the same case with uPlay and Origin, and a few other launchers. If you buy a game on Steam, it should only use Steam, but that's not how they roll. I was perfectly willing to pay for FC3 but they wanted to be @ssholes, so the only way I got to play the game was to use a community demo.

Another thing I really prefer about older cars is having phyical buttons for everything I can reach out and touch without taking my eyes off the road. Putting a touch screen in a car was the dumbest thing I ever heard of.

Exactly like I ranted about above, and in the older post I linked to. You're preaching to the choir here. It really is one of the absolute dumbest f*cking things I have ever heard of.

 

[Zarathustra]

I think you mean Ubisoft uPlay (which I think is now called Ubisoft Connect), but I know what you mean. It's the same case with uPlay and Origin, and a few other launchers. If you buy a game on Steam, it should only use Steam, but that's not how they roll. I was perfectly willing to pay for FC3 but they wanted to be @ssholes,

Yeah, you are right. Sorry. I get them confused. Origin, Uplay, Ubisoft Play, etc. I can't keep track of which is which. They are all unwanted.

so the only way I got to play the game was to use a community demo.

I like that term "community demo".

I'm going to start using that!

I have done the same. At first I was just pissed, and decided I was going to abandon the Far Cry series as a result, but I am a sucker for open world single player games. Over time I rationalized that why should I miss out because they are the ones that suck? and I played me some community demos as well.

Then I did the same thing with a couple of titles that launched as Epic Store exclusives. (Metro Exodus and The Outer Worlds) I bought them as soon as they launched on Steam though to make a point, that it was the principle of not being coerced to use storefronts, install clients and create accounts that I don't want, not about the free game.

At this point I already have the right to redeem a free copy of Far Cry 6 that came with a GPU that I bought, but guess what? It requires a ubisoft client and account as well, so I am just putting that one off until the "Community Demo" becomes available as well.

(Speaking of which, this one sure is taking a long time. I had become used to Denuvo being broken within days of launch. I guess Ubisoft got their money's worth this time around, huh? No worries. I am a patient person. I'll get around to it whenever the community demo is out. I have quite the backlog of things I've bought on sale over the years...)

 

[MadMummy76]

I have come to really like AWD for winter driving. I would be OK with FWD, but seeing that I live in a part of the world where I have no choice but to occasionally drive in the snow, I would never opt for RWD in a daily driver.

If my choice was only RWD vs AWD I'd go for AWD too, reluctantly.

Here we usually get more than 2 days of snow a year, but not much more. I don't like to ever be dependent on weather to get anywhere I want to go. I will buy the equipment to get me where I want to go when I want to go there no matter what is going on outside. I have zero tolerance for ever letting conditions stop me from doing anything I need or want to do. I even put dedicated winter tires on my car, an anomaly around here.

I have dedicated winter tyres too, which I didn't even put on last winter, or this one either yet. Since I'm driving so little with quarantine and work from home.

That's fair. But really, driving in traffic doesn't bother me much. Don't get me wrong. I hate the waste of time, but if I'm going to be stuck there anyway, I think I'd rather be driving.

With current restrictions on self driving I agree. I'd want either completely hands off, or none at all. If I still have to look at the road and hold the wheel, then it's pointless.

The radar assisted cruise control is convenient, but it too is annoying. The **** thing refuses to coast down to speed. You set the distance to the car ahead of you, and as soon as it get slower than you set it, the thing starts riding the brakes instead of consuming some space and coasting down to speed like a human driver would. I have never gone through brakes this fast in my life. So, most of the time I just don't use that either.

Strange that volvo would have such a bad system. The one I've used was a Toyota and it coasted just fine. It was possibly more efficient than I could've been in full control, since it detected speed differences much faster than I could. And slightly feathering the accelerator would prevent it from slamming on the brakes, when someone suddenly merged in front of me. And this would not disable the system. It was very convenient after I learned how to work with the system instead of against it.

I'd mostly agree, but there are a lot of really bad old highways around here with REALLY short onramps. And unlike most places in Europe where the car on the onramp has the right of way, and the cars in the rightmost lane must let you in, here in the U.S. it is the other way around. Those on the on ramp must yield for traffic on the highway.

The cars on the onramp does not have the right of way in Europe, IDK where you got that information. It's another thing that there are some polite drivers in europe who will let you merge. But if nobody is willing to give you room it doesn't matter how fast your car is. I have a car that is 30 years old and had 75hp when new. (probably about 60 now with the worn out engine) And I don't have a problem merging when I drive that.

It also doesn't help that everyone tailgates here. Literally near 0% of the population leaves a safe following distance to the next car on the highway.

That's exactly the same here, and worse you can't even leave a safe following distance in front of you because there'll always be some wiseguy who then overtakes you on the right to go into the safety gap you leave in front of you.

If you don't have the ability to get up to speed, and get up to speed very fast, it could be outright dangerous, or you could wind up spending a very long time trying to merge on to a highway, with drivers behind you getting very frustrated.

I think it is a huge stretch to claim that you can't get up to speed unless your car can do 0-60 in 6s. You already get to the ramp with some speed it's not as if you are starting from a standstill.

My old 168hp NA base model Volvo v70 Wagon is the slowest car I've ever owned in that regard, at about 9 seconds. I usually don't drive it on the highway though. I do that in the S90.

As an european It is laughable to me that Americans would consider that a slow car. The fastest car I've ever owned had 136hp, and it was total overkill for commuting, I had to temper my inner boyracer if I didn't want to get into trouble.

I don't trust them. At all. I'm the "Engineer" from that meme about connected devices:

View attachment 1366

I don't use any so called "smart" devices, ever. Whenever I get a new phone or computer, I go through it and disable every single feature that has anything at all to do with syncing or cloud capability, and set all security features to their least permissive, regardless of what features I lose. I also always completely disable any "assistant" features of any device I own.

I don't trust the cloud either. I just want my devices to connect to each other without a 3rd party intermediary. It's such a huge convenience. I've set up my own FTP server, and my phone syncs pictures to that. My digital camera uses wifi to connect to my computer so I Don't have to use a card reader to copy videos and photos from it. I find this a huge advantage, and makes me much happier to snap photos. Before I had this I'd often forget about the photos I've taken, because I just couldn't be bothered to go through having to connect through a cable, or worse having to take out the memory card.

I find it particularly bothersome that my car has a GPS and a second non-removable "always on" simcard that sends god knows what back to the manufacturer. I almost tried to return the car when I found out.

My newest car is from 2003, what GPS?

I want absolutely none of that in my vehicles, or anywhere else in my life either for that matter.

I am a huge tech enthusiast, but I have absolutely zero tolerance for things that dial home without my explicit permission. I expect every device to never use the network unless I explicitly tell it to, and I am unwilling to ever compromise on this.

I agree, my connected devices only connect when I tell them too, I wouldn't have it any other way. In fact I was outraged when my phone simply told me that it made a copy of my phone's contents on the cloud. WHO gave you permission to do that? I immediately disabled the feature and deleted everything. This crap should be strictly opt in. And that goes for a car's phone home feature too.

If that means I have to stay in the 90's, I am perfectly happy with that. I was happy in the 90's, and if I am honest, there is absolutely nothing new tech wise since then I really feel I need. I run my own servers and I am happy with them.

You don't have to be stuck in the 90s to avoid the cloud.

Heck, I've even had a policy of "no new accounts" for the last 5-10 years. If something (software or hardware) requires me to tie it to the internet, and create a username and password, I simply refuse. I bought Far Cry 3 on steam a few years back, and it force installed Origin and wanted me to create an Origin account. I said absolutely no way and requested a Steam refund. I still run Windows in a local account only, and do not have and do not want a Microsoft account. If they ever force me to create one, that will be the day I wipe my Windows partition off of my drive.

I'm with you on that. If they ever want to force microsoft account for local login, well the last version of windows before that will be the last one I Ever use.

I want to be connected, but I want to be in manual control of everything that connects at all times with nothing ever going on behind my back.

I wouldn't have it any other way. I sometimes feel like playing whack a mole with all the crap nowadays. onedrive, ms account, firefox account, google account, it all wants to be connected, when I want my computer my car, my phone, my everything to be separate universes. Unless I want to transfer one file between the two and nothing else.

My S90 has a screen based instrument cluster behind the steering wheel. I thought I would hate it, but it hasn't wound up bothering me much. At this point I am mostly indifferent. (If it ever broke and I had to pay a ton of money to replace it, that would instantly be a different story though)

My problem with that is if it fails you loose all instruments. So you better hope it doesn't. I want dedicated gauges for everything. this would not necessarily be a deal breaker, just a preference.

Another thing I really prefer about older cars is having phyical buttons for everything I can reach out and touch without taking my eyes off the road. Putting a touch screen in a car was the dumbest thing I ever heard of.

My radio / entertainment system has a touch screen and I couldn't agree more. You are forced to take off your eyes from the road to do anything. Whoever decided to move essential functions in a car to a touch screen should be dangled from the roof of a tall building. This is a case where the NTSB needs to step in and ban that ****.

If we could have a complete ban on any and all data collection, with severe financiual consequences for the violators that are actually enforced (not like that weaksauce GDPR in Europe) I would maybe change my mind about all of this, but I am not holding my breath. There are too many of these god awful silicon valley ****holes whose entire business model depends on it, and they won't let it go without a political fight to the death.

So it seems we are stuck with this big brother nonsense.

I don't mind some data collection because it can be a great tool for improving products by monitoring user preferences and behaviours. But it all should be strictly opt-in. I decide what I want to share, and when. I view data collection as if I was filling in an anonymous survey.

 

[Brian_B]

I don't trust the cloud either. I just want my devices to connect to each other without a 3rd party intermediary. It's such a huge convenience

I agree with you here. I could utterly live without an entertainment/navigation system in a car, and would be happy if it just had a dock for me to (safely) use my phone for those things.

I hate the touchscreen in a car. At night it's too bright and distracts me, and in my wife's ford you can turn it "off" only if you dig through about 6 levels of submenus -- which doesn't really turn off the screen, it just sets it to black and the backlight still bleeds through some. I hated that I had to turn in my '11 F-150 work truck, which still had all the physical buttons and dials for everything, for one with a stupid 5" LCD screen. It isn't touch, which is nice, and it isn't big enough to be terribly distracting, but it just has four ambiguous buttons to the side that change depending on what the screen displays.

 

[Dogsofjune]

Pacer, I'm telling you.....

 

[Zarathustra]

The cars on the onramp does not have the right of way in Europe, IDK where you got that information. It's another thing that there are some polite drivers in europe who will let you merge. But if nobody is willing to give you room it doesn't matter how fast your car is.

Well, I can't speak for eastern Europe as I have never driven there, but that was definitely the law in Sweden when I lived there for 16 years, and as I recall that is the case in Germany and in the UK as well. That travelers already on the highway are required to move over to let drivers merging from an onramp in, if traffic conditions allow doing so safely.

That's exactly the same here, and worse you can't even leave a safe following distance in front of you because there'll always be some wiseguy who then overtakes you on the right to go into the safety gap you leave in front of you.

Again, that must be a Eastern European thing. Almost all of my European driving experience has been in Scandinavia, but compared to driving there, the U.S. seemed highly disorderly, irresponsible and lawless. Swedes are generally habitual speeders (but no more than 30km/h over the limit as that at least used to be the cutoff for automatic license suspension) but everything else they generally do by the book. 2-3 second following distance, pass on the left and then immediately move back over to the right, never ever never pass on the right, always use turning signals, etc. etc.

But then again, Scandinavians are generally known for their orderliness, so maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.

My recollection of driving in Germany 25 years ago was similar.

Southern Europe was worse (I never drove there but was a passenger) but not as bad as the U.S.

Brazil is even worse than the U.S. Any driving there is a white knuckle experience.

Judging from dashcam videos I have seen from Russia, it sounds like maybe eastern Europe is along the lines of what it is like in Brazil.

I have never seen anything as bad in person as the videos I have seen from India and China though. If I had to go there, I'd probably try to avoid roads in general as much as possible. It looks absolutely horrifying.

 

[MadMummy76]

Well, I can't speak for eastern Europe as I have never driven there, but that was definitely the law in Sweden when I lived there for 16 years, and as I recall that is the case in Germany and in the UK as well. That travelers already on the highway are required to move over to let drivers merging from an onramp in, if traffic conditions allow doing so safely.

I do it too every time the left lane is clear, but I've never heard it being a rule, it is a courtesy. Unfortunately there are plenty of people who will not move over, even if there is nobody else in sight. I've never been to sweden, but almost everywhere mainland europe between france and turkey,

Again, that must be a Eastern European thing. Almost all of my European driving experience has been in Scandinavia, but compared to driving there, the U.S. seemed highly disorderly, irresponsible and lawless. Swedes are generally habitual speeders (but no more than 30km/h over the limit as that at least used to be the cutoff for automatic license suspension) but everything else they generally do by the book. 2-3 second following distance, pass on the left and then immediately move back over to the right, never ever never pass on the right, always use turning signals, etc. etc.

There is no clear difference between eastern europe and say germany. Now Turkey is entirely another thing. It seems like pure chaos. more like the far east than europe.

But then again, Scandinavians are generally known for their orderliness, so maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.

It's not that everybody is disorderly here, the majority does the right thing, but there is always that one guy who sees everyone else following the rules as their opportunity.

Southern Europe was worse (I never drove there but was a passenger) but not as bad as the U.S.

Which part? Greece, Italy, Spain? Italy is pretty weird, half the people seem to be asleep behind the wheel, while the other half going 2 times the speed limit.

Judging from dashcam videos I have seen from Russia, it sounds like maybe eastern Europe is along the lines of what it is like in Brazil.

Russia is huge, and the dashcam videos can be from many places. Besides the dashcam videos on youtube are a compilation of bad examples you can't judge driving standards by that.

I have never seen anything as bad in person as the videos I have seen from India and China though. If I had to go there, I'd probably try to avoid roads in general as much as possible. It looks absolutely horrifying.

I've been to Vietnam, people there haven't even mastered basic controls of cars. Granted cars have a huge tax there so very few people can afford them, but they definitely can't drive. The habit seems to be to ignore the throttle just use the clutch and put the car in a higher gear. So they'd always be at idle throttle and never go above 30kph.

 

[Nanobot]

Don’t a lot of these evs have software that phones home? Any mics on board? Cameras of interior? Just wondering how much more data is being collected about us and going to countries we prefer would not have that data. (Volvo/Polestar = China)

 

[Zarathustra]

Don’t a lot of these evs have software that phones home? Any mics on board? Cameras of interior? Just wondering how much more data is being collected about us and going to countries we prefer would not have that data. (Volvo/Polestar = China)

Supposedly Volvo is still entirely designed in Sweden, with the company maintained as an independent subsidiary, but the truth is you never know what deals are going on in the background. There was some news a while back that Geely was pushing to merge Volvo into the company and keep it just as a brand, but there was a lot of protest at the time, and it has been silent since then.

There were also rumors of a proposed management buyout to bring Volvo independent, but that has been quiet for a while as well.

Who knows with these things.

 

[Grimlakin]

Can you imagine the **** storm if one of these billion dollar companies started their legal teams on investigation the US government for political over reach and enforcing rules and laws previously deemed unconstitutional? Someone with the financial power to stand tow to toe with the federal government on legal issues and battles. Would be interesting to see.

 

[Zarathustra]

Can you imagine the **** storm if one of these billion dollar companies started their legal teams on investigation the US government for political over reach and enforcing rules and laws previously deemed unconstitutional? Someone with the financial power to stand tow to toe with the federal government on legal issues and battles. Would be interesting to see.

Hmm.

Operating a motor vehicle has a long precedent of being a privilege, not a right, so state and federal governments have pretty firm ground to stand on when it comes to regulating it and putting in place conditions for doing so (requiring a license, wearing a seat belt/helmet, obeying speed limits and other traffic laws etc.)

It's a very different case than - say - firearms or something like that, where the 2nd amendment has been interpreted to define a right.

I don't think anyone challenging these automotive safety laws has much of a case, honestly. That and the interstate commerce clause gives congress pretty wide powers to regulate products sold across state lines, which most definitely includes cars.

 

[Brian_B]

Operating a motor vehicle has a long precedent of being a privilege, not a right, so state and federal governments have pretty firm ground to stand on when it comes to regulating it and putting in place conditions for doing so (requiring a license, wearing a seat belt/helmet, obeying speed limits and other traffic laws etc.)

Yup. It's not the driving in and of itself that's a privilege, it's driving on public roads.

If you want to drive on government provided roads, you play by government rules.

You are perfectly entitled to drive on private land in any manner you chose, with as many or little safety features as you want.

 

[Grimlakin]

Hmm.

Operating a motor vehicle has a long precedent of being a privilege, not a right, so state and federal governments have pretty firm ground to stand on when it comes to regulating it and putting in place conditions for doing so (requiring a license, wearing a seat belt/helmet, obeying speed limits and other traffic laws etc.)

It's a very different case than - say - firearms or something like that, where the 2nd amendment has been interpreted to define a right.

I don't think anyone challenging these automotive safety laws has much of a case, honestly. That and the interstate commerce clause gives congress pretty wide powers to regulate products sold across state lines, which most definitely includes cars.

Oh sorry I wasn't meaning vehicle laws in specific. I was meaning just literally everything. Go on a hunt for any laws that should be un constitutional and start opening cases to get them cleaned up.

It would be great for the average citizen and hell on earth for the federal and state courts.