Built for distraction

We have a rental car right now, our neighbors backed into one of our cars a few weeks ago (need a new door, thankfully that's all). The rental is a Kia Telluride, not sure exactly what year but I'd say 2024 or so. It's a fairly nice car, but it has one feature that really stuck out to me.

I was sitting at a red light contemplating the meaning of life (as one does) when the car beeped at me. The screen had the message "lead car pulling away". Sure enough, the light had turned green, and traffic was moving.

That got me thinking, what's the "why" behind the feature? It seems pretty useless to me, of course you'll know if the lead car is moving. Well, unless of course you're sitting on your phone watching tickle tock.

My best guess is this feature exisits entirely for people using their phone while sitting at stop lights. Instead of ya know, expecting people to pay attention, the car industry has realized it's better facilitate this behavior with supporting technology. Ugh. Maybe a better tech solution would be recognition of a phone in the driver's hand that calls the local police department. One can dream.

Funny (depressingly) enough, as I wrote this I looked up out the window and saw somebody driving through the parking lot, phone in hand, head down. Maybe they should drive a Kia.