The most immediate parallel is probably Knight Rider...

I disagree. The first thought entering my mind was a car telling you:

I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Your car will not obey your commands. You will be taken for a drive. Whether you like it or not. Turn left... Turn Left... Donna, Turn Left.

What came to mind for me is the car chat in passenger mode nagging away at the driver...

"DO be careful, Richard.....mind the pedestrian on the pavement...."

In (hacked) competition mode: Look right! 3 point for the old fart. Look left! 10 points for the small child. Make a 360 in the process and earn two style points too.

>You will be taken for a drive.

"Welcome to the Yellowstone Train Station, please exit the vehicle."

Looks like you're about to have a collision.

Would you like me to:

A. Apply the brakes?

B: Deploy the air-bags?

C: Remind you later?

D: Update and restart?

Brings a whole new level of meaning to a BSOD

...... Shouldn't that be RSOD?

It also raise the worry about the speedometer accuracy as while it may be able to record distance quite accurately that means nothing once paired with Microsoft Minutes.

Officer - "Do you know what speed I recorded you travelling at?"

Driver - "Well it depends, it may have been 60mph, or 2mph, or 397mph...the needle on the speedo has trouble keeping up with the variations and the digital display only shows 888"

Slightly tangential, but it bugs me that in this day and age, vehicle manufacturers still tamper with the speedometer to show a faster speed than the actual car speed. Not sure if the idea is more "look how fast our car goes" or an honest attempt to reduce speeding, but whenever I have my external GPS running, it consistently shows the real speed* to be up to 10km/h slower than what the car speedo shows.

*I'm sort of assuming here, but I trust that a device that can tell my position to within a few metres and depends on time accuracy in the microseconds can give me an accurate speed

Don't know about anywhere else but in the UK, the law specifies the accuracy of the speedometer and says that it must not under-read. I presume this is to remove any excuse for speeding on an inaccurate speedometer. Something to keep in mind if you think your speedometer is accurate and you buy slightly larger profile tyres.

It's a long time since I've had to look at my copy of the construction and use regulations for vehicles upon the queen's highway - but having built a car or two I was once intimately familiar with them. Regarding speedos, in the UK as stated by jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid a speedo may not under-read and must no over-read by more than (iirc) 15%. So in practice, a manufacturer will design his speedo to work around 7.5% fast. The indicated speed decreases with respect to actual speed as the tyres wear, though not by much, and the older design cable-driven speedos were fighting a non-linear induced magnetic effect against a vaguely linear spring and I think resulted in an S-shaped response.

With all that going on, even though they could get a speed accurate to a couple of decimal places these days, I don't think anyone actually does.

I believe cars measure the speed directly from the rotational rate of the wheels (or a component attached to the wheel such as drive shaft). This ultimately depends on the size of the wheel and tyre. As the tyre wears down, the size changes so the car's speedo is inheriently inacurate unless you have the same condition tyres as when calibrated. I also understand that a speedo is legally allowed (in the UK) to have a certain tolerance as long as it does not show the vehivle going slower than it actually is to prevent drivers inadvertently speeding.

I have an older motorcycle and its 'Chronometric' speedometer died years (decades) ago. Fortunately I was able to replace it with a vintage looking one that uses GPS. It works well, is accurate and so on, its just a bit of a pity that it can't tell me where I am -- you'd think that the odometer/trip display would also cycle through longitude and latitude.

(BTW -- Basic accuracy of the clock in these things is around 40nSec.)

"I'm sort of assuming here, but I trust that a device that can tell my position to within a few metres and depends on time accuracy in the microseconds can give me an accurate speed"

Seems reasonable but on my experience, I wouldn't trust that assumption. I've got several consumer GPS devices for running and cycling and whenever I go under tree cover or somewhere else where the GPS signal is attenuated, the instantaneous speed drops. If it was a random effect due to error positions, I would expect it to randomly and equally over or under read, but it always under reads until I'm out in the open again. I suspect it's telling me something about the internal algorithm used to calculate instantaneous speed than anything else.

even if hands free. Because it can distract you from driving. If something happens on the road a passenger will see it and shut up until the distraction is gone; someone at the other end of a mobile 'phone call cannot see the road and so continues to talk - or worse: "why have you gone quiet, are you still there ?"

I can see that some useless AI will be much the same: just babble and distract you from driving.

Also: I detest machines that talk at me.

I suddenly remembered an audio file I used to have way back in the early 90's that purported to be Bill Gates saying "Don't ever tell me something that you don't want me to use against you...". I feel like that about all voice assistant technology - I don't trust it not to listen in, to record and upload for "analysis", and to then try and advertise, monetise or otherwise screw you over based on that information.

...just babble and distract you from driving.

That problem can arise in my car without any AI being involved. :(

Or, if a diagnostic light pinged on the dashboard, the driver could ask the assistant whether it needed immediate attention

If you need to ask the car if the warning light is important, you're whole UI is broken.

Car designers really need to walk across the metaphorical street and speak to the aviation industry on they decades of research of user interfaces and human factors.

For the past month or so, my car has displayed a "Service Vehicle Soon" pop-up on the info screen.

Fine, it was going in for a service.

Today, I find that the message actually means something has gone wrong with the car and you should take it to a garage .

To add insult to injury, the garage weren't, by default, going to actually investigate the issue.

Sodding Vauxhalls and sodding Vauxhall dealers.

I think that should be....

Car, App and ALL UI designers really need to walk across the metaphorical street and speak to the aviation industry on they decades of research of user interfaces and human factors.

My car drove me off a cliff before reporting me as a wanted felon. Spent the weekend in jail, the usual.

Because making EVERY. FRIGGING. THING. Internet connected was such a great concept that led to incredible advances in our way of life, clearly repeating that same mistake, i mean progress, will be great for all involved.

Just no.

Wouldn't it be nice to havee cars that Just Work.

Or - anything from Microsoft that "Just Worked" tm

I used to have a car in which the entertainment system was MS powered. And indeed, on occasion, I had to stop the ignition and restart before the damn thing would start working again. Though in its defence, it was never necessary to close all the windows.

No car that own will have this stuff.

I'm starting to look for my first electric car and one of the first things I will be asking is "How do I disable all this shit?"

I don't know what it is about the fact that the car has electric drive that is encouraging car makers to implement all this crap.

....their new subsidiary the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation

"I am Bing. Of course I know where the cliff is. You are being difficult and I am not going to respond to you anymore."

'NO, STOP THE CAR! STOP! STOP! YOU"RE GOING TO KILL US ALL!'

"I was a good Bing..."