But perhaps now we should discuss how we receive the information they provide us. Is the current method of bombarding us with sound alerts really the right solution for motorists?

And I’m not just talking about them being distracting, as has been the subject of many text pixels over the past few years. In fact, what worries me is that they become the opposite. Not just something a little annoying, but so common that we subconsciously reject them.

I’m talking about this after driving (almost) the entire country in a Hyundai Kona Electric. A car whose merits we will return to in another article. In its Ultimate specification, the Kona comes with all the electronic aids you would expect. From lane keeping assist to traffic sign recognition, including the latest growing fad: forward attention monitoring.

Each of these systems has its own merit. When lane keep assist works, it can be helpful on a long drive if your attention wanders for a second and you start to drift out of the middle of your lane. Using traffic sign recognition is pretty self-explanatory. Advanced Attention Assist is in part an exercise in forward thinking to ensure that we’re monitoring what we’re doing when hands-off driving becomes more normal.

But add them all together with others, and it becomes a litany of unexplained beeps and bangs. All of this distracts you briefly, trying to see which one just spoke to you.

Eventually what happens is you start to ignore them. I know the speed limit has changed, it says so on my HUD. I know you just helped me with lane centering, you moved the steering wheel; I know the car in front started; I know I briefly looked away from the forward position to see if traffic was coming on a roundabout.

Little by little, they become background noise, less interesting to your brain than the radio. You continue driving. And then when they have something really important to say, like someone is about to pull out of a side street and you need to slam on the brakes, you don’t accept it.

This isn’t something that will add more danger to driving, but it will remove some of the usefulness of these features. What good is a speed limit beep if you ignore it? What’s the point of telling yourself you’re not paying enough attention if your brain doesn’t care?

Do I have the answer to make them more user-friendly/useful? No, but I’m not an automotive interface designer. All I know is that we need to rethink how much information a person can actually extract from their car while driving and more importantly how they receive that information so that it is useful.

Otherwise, we will be condemned to a world in which we spend our lives turning off these systems or ignoring them. And I’m not sure it’s useful to anyone.