Top 10 ubiquitous car features rated

We might not yet be floating around in the transparent, bubble-roofed vehicles predicted by 1950s futurists, but 21st century car design is nevertheless heading inexorably towards a brave new world.

With EVs gathering pace and self-driving capabilities just around the corner, there’s little question that the ubiquitous automobile is changing. It’s a car alright, but not as we know it.

And while we are just coming to grips with clever new active safety technology like automated braking and steering, there’s plenty of other less high-profile stuff going on behind the wheel that makes driving a lot different to what it was a mere decade or so ago.

Some functions have become so familiar as to be barely noticed, often operating intuitively and with a degree of independence somewhere outside the driver’s consciousness.

What follows is a by no means comprehensive list of 10 functions – some relatively new and others that can be traced back decades – that are literally taken for granted yet have irrevocably altered the way we approach driving a car.

Some are great, some are good and some are questionable, but most of us could barely imagine living without them.

Far from being new technology – some Cadillacs used them in the 1950s – self-dipping headlights can create more problems than they fix.

Big advances have been made in pursuit of the Holy Grail of totally eliminating the potential to blind oncoming drivers at night, such as the wonderfully clever concept of active high-beam shadowing tech that directs the light in every direction other than the oncoming car via a strategically-placed, separately-switchable matrix of LEDs

But the business of activating the process at precisely the right moment has not yet been perfected.

Personally, I love the concept but its reliability is questionable in many new models today. I’ve been flashed by too many blinded, oncoming drivers to trust it completely.

Verdict: Jury’s still out

Any car-maker daring to present with a manual, pull-up handbrake or, even worse, a foot-operated parking brake, is likely to score an instant down-tick with any new-model reviewer.

Usually operated by a pull-up switch on the centre console, electric parking brakes are definitely the go.

Although the introduction of switchable electric parking brakes came with indignant protests lamenting the impossibility of performing hand-brake turns, the one-push, one-pull systems – particularly those that activate automatically when the transmission is moved to the Park position and disengage once Drive is selected – are, I think, inherently safer and less prone to being inadequately applied.

Once again I’ve encountered many cars that have rolled out of parking spaces because the pull-up handbrake hasn’t been applied with enough force.

Verdict: Pass

Once it was necessary to not only open the car and start the engine with the same key, but also to do a check, from inside or outside, to make sure all doors were locked once leaving it.

Today it’s rare to find a car that requires contact with a physical key: Locking or unlocking all doors and starting the car can all be done without the keys leaving the security of your pocket/handbag.

This means there’s less chance too of dropping the keys into the almost-inaccessible space between the front seat and centre console. And, in the case of tailgates that open with a wave of the foot, it’s easier to access the boot when you’re carrying an armful of shopping.

The only real problem is forgetting you’ve still got the keys in your pocket/handbag when handing the car over to another driver. There’s the distinct probability of the driver heading off as unaware as you are that an embarrassing moment is inevitable when the car arrives, keyless, at its destination.

Verdict: Pass, with caveats

This is a technology that some have mastered, others only partly.

While smart cruise control is clearly a good thing in freeway-type conditions, helping keep a safe distance between you and the car travelling in front, it becomes less effective on winding, single-lane roads where the target vehicle is moving in and out of range.

A fully-engineered system that employs radar – and sometimes also lidar and the stereo cameras that allow autonomous emergency braking (AEB) systems to detect pedestrians and cyclists both day and night – to accurately detect and avoid what’s going on ahead of you, is comforting to have on the open road.

The best adaptive cruise systems also work in stop-start traffic conditions, whether it’s in the city or on a grid-locked freeway, and some cars even have a drive-away reminder that tells when the car in front has moved off, saving you from embarrassment and bringing a new level of driving convenience and peace of mind.

And so there’s one driver-habit that is induced by any distance-control system – particularly the super-effective ones – and that is the tendency to encourage some driver inattention.

The knowledge that the car itself is keeping an eye out for you is an invitation to relax, to a degree, your own awareness of what’s happening on the road around you.

Verdict: Pass, with caveats

Side mirrors capable of demisting themselves represent a seemingly simple and relatively inexpensive technology that all cars should be fitted with.

Obviously more useful in cold climates, heated side mirrors help quickly clear rear vision to supplement the view through often still partly-fogged windows. And they work even better on cold mornings if the driver has the presence of mind to start the engine some time before driving off to give the car’s whole demisting system a chance to do its job.

Verdict: Pass

Multi-position ‘memory’ seats, once, again, are hardly new but it’s good to see an increasing number of car-makers, at just about all levels of the market, adopting or at least offering them.

Personally I think the higher the number of pre-selected settings, the better, but even two are better than none.

Obviously in a car driven by more than one person, it’s desirable to have memory settings on the driver’s seat, but it’s a nice gesture for passenger-side occupants to have a pre-selected choice of positions too.

Particularly valuable here are pre-selected adjustments that include not just the front seats, but also the external mirrors. And, in those cars with an electrically-adjusted steering wheel, that too.

Verdict: Pass

Once largely the province of luxury-level cars, climate-control air-conditioning today sneaks in at the most basic levels.

Depending on the capability of the system in generating a sufficient volume of heated or cooled air, and the provision of adequate venting so all passengers benefit, climate control in my experience works best when left to its own devices. Set and forget is the creed.

And, to avoid disagreement on what’s too hot or too cold, it’s pretty nice to have a multi-zone system that enables some degree of personal comfort, at least for front-seat passengers.

Increasingly, many big SUVs also extend that convenience to rear occupants via three- or four-zone climate control systems.

Verdict: Pass

If our experience with a number of cars unexpectedly featuring tyre-pressure monitoring is anything to go by, it’s a wonder more cars don’t have it. In its most basic form it’s a safety-related feature that can’t be all that expensive to factor in.

Some systems work by measuring the rotation of individual wheels so that any pressure discrepancy can be easily identified, putting the blame onto a specific wheel. Other systems use direct measuring of the pressure in individual tyres. The driver only needs to remember to look at the readout.

A nice pre-emptive way of measuring how your car is set up before venturing onto the road.

Verdict: Pass

Tyres that will carry you the distance to a repair shop in the case of a flat are ostensibly a good thing to have.

Picturing a loved one experiencing a flat tyre on a dark, wet and lonely night is made less disturbing when you know the car can continue driving home without any need to stop, at least in most cases.

The downsides are the expense of replacing the damaged tyre and the tendency to compromise the car’s ride comfort because of the composition of the sidewalls, plus a tendency to wear out faster than conventional tyres.

A tricky one, although personally I like the idea of a full-size spare wheel that can usually be swapped over at the roadside. But maybe that’s just me.

Verdict: Yes, with caveats

Maybe there are plenty of motorists who haven’t had the experience, but there are also plenty who’ve been caught out: There you are, at the wheel of a car you’ve never driven before, about to pull out and overtake a slower-moving vehicle in your lane on the freeway.

Conscientiously planning to signal your intentions, you flick the lever on the right-hand side of the steering column.

What follows next is a common experience: Rather than activating your (unfamiliar) car’s right-side indicator lights, you end up giving the windscreen wipers a dry, irrelevant sweep. Yep, you’ve mistaken the wiper controls for the indicator lever.

How a driver coming up from behind interprets this you’ll probably never know. But what you can be almost sure of is that he or she – if they even notice your action – won’t see it as an intention of moving to the right.

Which raises a seemingly simple question: Why isn’t there a design rule stipulating that indicator stalks all be on the right side?

Verdict: Fail