I just bought a brand new Mazda3 (2024 model year) and picked it up on Monday. I am able to disable all of the features you're mentioning on this car, and I can also choose whether alerts are only visual in the HUD or if they are visual + audible.
The only thing I can't disable is the ding when you start the car without first having your driver's seatbelt buckled, which does annoy the shit out of me because it's a turbo car and I want to give it a few seconds of warm-up before driving to be nicer to it, which I do while getting settled. I always wear a seatbelt, but I buckle it last before I start driving, not first when I first get in the car.
Otherwise it seems pretty great. It was very annoying off the lot, but 20 minutes with the owner's manual in my driveway and I made it tolerable while keeping all the advance technology.
Maybe I'll find additional annoyances over time, this is my first car I've owned with all the new-fangled safety technology designed for normies who can't drive properly.
In EU, the 2024 Mazda3s now have to comply with new directive where they DING every time you go slightly over the speed limit. What they think is a speed limit (which is commonly inaccurate due to bad nav data or bad sign recognition data).
In the US, you can turn the ding or visual indicator off. You can also adjust when the notification happens. I kept it to visual only and set it to alert when I went more than 5MPH over the speed limit, because I want to help keep myself honest.
It's disappointing it's forced to ding in the EU. In the US, there are many roads where you /must/ drive over the speed limit or you become a road obstruction that is actually putting yourself and others at risk. As an example, several Interstate highways have sections that drop to 65MPH through major metros but outside of high-traffic periods, the established speed is 80MPH on these, just as it is on other sections of the same Interstate (where the speed limit is likely 75MPH).
Wait until you find out about the Mazda telemetry / data collection. Disabling it results in a prompt asking to re-enable it every time you start your car.
Imagine if your iPhone asked you to enable some non-default setting every time you unlocked it. As if you had the audacity to change your devices’ behavior!
See whether it is possible to disable via coding (OBD). My Audi can be customized down to "how many dings, including zero", and when they trigger, like "not if you're stopped".
I'm guessing the driver's seatbelt ding is one of the mandatory ones. Thanks to the 99% of terrible drivers in the US and our incompetent regulators, we get enforced mandatory enshittification.
> At the left front designated seating position (driver's position), a warning system that activates a continuous or intermittent audible signal for a period of not less than 4 seconds and not more than 8 seconds and that activates a continuous or flashing warning light visible to the driver for not less than 60 seconds (beginning when the vehicle ignition switch is moved to the “on” or the “start” position) when condition (A) exists simultaneously with condition (B)
...
> (A) The vehicle's ignition switch is moved to the “on” position or to the “start” position.
> (B) The driver's automatic belt is not in use, as determined by the belt latch mechanism not being fastened, ...
If 99% of the drivers in the U.S. are indeed terrible, then anything that makes 100% of the drivers strap into their seatbelt upon entering the vehicle is improving safety. In that case, the regulators would be competent.
Enshittification would be something like selling third-party access to drivers eyeballs in a way that fucks up the infotainment UX, or selling driver data in a scummy way that encourages phishing attacks from within the infotainment screen.
Not sure how it would actually continue from there, but eventually this process of screwing up the end product in the interest of rent-seeking would make it difficult for the person to actually drive from point and to point b, which is the whole purpose the car was designed for. And at that point people would start questioning Kia (or whatever) as an actual vehicle useful for transportation, and the company would then fail.
That would be enshittification. What you describe is just an annoying safety feature.
I think they can optimize the ding to be tolerable. I own Subaru in Canada and it only dings me for seatbelts after I starting moving faster than 20kmph.
Even if the regulations require a ding for any speed, I assume it doesn’t need to ding when in park.
That would have been a significant improvement. But compared to the OPs experience in the link, I am okay with my current level of frustration. This is a small item to be bothered by.
No. But if you ever remove your seatbelt while it's on, it immediately starts dinging, even if you're in park with the parking brake set (which is an electronic parking brake). It typically takes me around 20-30 seconds to get settled before I drive after I get in the car, and for that entire time it dings every 5 seconds until I buckle the seatbelt.
For someone that is obsessive about safety and is a skilled driver, it feels like some type of indictment that my vehicle is insulting me and accusing me of wanting to drive without a seatbelt, which is the furthest thing from the truth.
Part of me thinks it's auto companies both making sure they dot their i's and cross their t's in case they get hauled into court regarding vehicle safety as well as hammering "look, we're safer than other vehicles!" down consumers' throats.
Or my perceived level of competence among the average driver is way off and the general population needs to be coddled.
Sibling commenter- looks like you've been shadowbanned since you came back in 2022. You might want to reach out to the moderators to see if you can get this removed.
The only thing I can't disable is the ding when you start the car without first having your driver's seatbelt buckled, which does annoy the shit out of me because it's a turbo car and I want to give it a few seconds of warm-up before driving to be nicer to it, which I do while getting settled. I always wear a seatbelt, but I buckle it last before I start driving, not first when I first get in the car.
Otherwise it seems pretty great. It was very annoying off the lot, but 20 minutes with the owner's manual in my driveway and I made it tolerable while keeping all the advance technology.
Maybe I'll find additional annoyances over time, this is my first car I've owned with all the new-fangled safety technology designed for normies who can't drive properly.