What Are The Most Useless Car Technologies Out There?

Diagre with this. I like hitting the stalk once and am done with it. My Audis blick 3 times

It doesn't take anywhere near 7-10 flashes to change lanes, you should be paying attention and know if the spot is clear...3 flashes is more than enough warning

senorgato

Only people over 70 years old need such a long signal-maneuver time gap.

3-5 seconds is usually more than enough, and from experience, most vehicles have signals that flash every 1 second.

Disagree. The 3-blink is a quick function that eliminates the need to keep the blinker stalk up while when trying to change lanes. You hit it up once, look, then change lane. Very annoying to see people (to even bother to) put their blinker on for a lane-change & take forever to just move over - even when traffic has conveniently slowed down to allow them to get over. Not really that complicated.

But I guess a lot of people get a bit "jittery" when they have to interact with other traffic on the road. Go back to driver's ed.

Should be 5 blinks. With three blinks, the turn signal goes off, and the other drivers will likely assume you changed your mind and go to pass you and bam wreck! The whole point of the blinker is to alert others of your intentions. it takes 2-3 blinks to properly make sure you are clear, by the time you go to change lanes the blinker is off and someone blows the horn because you pissed them off by cutting them off because your blinker blinked 3 times and stopped, causing them to think you changed your mind about changing lanes. by the time you go to actually change lanes the blinker is off, and the person to your right or left no longer yields for you to get over, and proceeds to pass you when suddenly you are changing lanes and cutting them off.

3 on BMWs and 4 on Mbs
I am not sure about any other brands...

tire pressure sensors that always break and give false alarms, and require you replace batteries @ $120 a pop.

I"ve always checked my tire pressure before without a problem, and these darn things never even work right.

Mixed here. I like tire pressure monitors. I had an FX45 with them & they worked great. They just didn't indicated which tire so I can be mindful while driving. But it's was nice to have the tire pressure monitored constantly - I once drove over some road debris & didn't notice anything weird. But a few minutes afterward the tire pressure system alarms started going off indicating that one tire had lost almost all pressure. Fortunately, the tire held until I could get home; then the tire cooled & when completely flat in a few minutes.

Easy - push button start. Two steps instead of one.

How is it 2 steps...push button = 1 step

Most newer push-button start systems require you to: (1) press the brake, then (2) press the button. Hence a 2-step process. This seems to be a safety precaution mostly to prevent the driver from starting the car & immediately shooting off if the car isn't in Park gear - but I think most current cars won't start if the gear isn't in Park.

Like in the Honda S2000 where you had to put the key in the ignition and then push the start button.

I do not like that "Heads-Up" display option that comes on some cars. It's positioned by the front windshield and makes the entire dash out of sync. It's also a distraction and annoying (rode in a car with it displaying). Don't want to pay the extra money for it.

Radar/Laser guided cruise control.

This is an interesting one too. My FX45 had the auto adjusting cruise control system. It worked great if you really knew how to use it. The auto cruise is useless in dense traffic as it would have to rev & brake too often - besides, the driver should be able to tell when it's best to use it. On long trips with sparse traffic, it was great. I could drive for 3-4 hours and not have to tap the brake or gas as the system did an excellent job in controlling speed.

Automatic parking is BS.

On my 335i
The good...
1) Love the rain sensing wipers-- in the very rare situation when it's not sensing properly, you can always control in manually or just put it on a continuous setting.
2) Use my 3-blink signals all the time. I do sometimes hit it twice or push the stalk to continuous if condition require an longer signal.
3) Being able to send a Google Map destination from the web directly to the car and being able to navigate to it without entering the location. If it happens to be a business, the phone number will also transfer allowing you call call to say you're running a few minutes later for a dinner reservation.

The bad...
1) Auto dimming rear and side mirrors--- no control to turn this off-- sometimes at dusk/dawn can make it very hard to see other vehicles depending on lighting conditions.
2) The tire pressure monitor does still you which tire, a huge upgrade compared with my E46 M3, but it still will not tell you the actual pressure.. A feature which you can find on many other vehicles

Blind spot warning and other proximity systems that are designed as driving aids (parking aids like back up cams are good) are the worst features in modern cars. They will cause people to rely too heavily on the car's system and forget how to drive. They also pollute the spectrum with unnecessary radar and laser waves that drive radar/lidar detectors crazy. My new challenge when driving is to find the nearby Audi, BMW, Mercedes or Acura that's causing me to pick up 4-5 K-band radar sources on my Valentine One. Laser false alarms are usually caused by an Infiniti passing the other direction or directly behind me.