We bought a (non-peugeot) car with a physical dial in the end.
The last 'owned' car that I drove was my wife's quite-high-end Audi. It had a digital dashboard, which was OK and looked extremely cool... until those moments when it froze mid-drive, requiring an engine off/on cycle to recover. Which was really lovely on the highway, cruising along at an unknown speed... (Another charming feature of this car was that the AC would sometimes decide that going into full-blast, no-you-can't-turn-this-off, full-heat mode was a really great idea. This only took, like, five software updates and 18 months to be resolved. The issue where you couldn't cancel the keyfob-based seat personalization was never fixed, so whenever I (6'5") grabbed my wife's (5'2" on a warm day) car keys by mistake, there was lots of grinding of seat motors, trying to drive my knees and head into the car interior, while ignoring my desperate inputs to the 'move the seat back and down please' controls. Comfort feature indeed!)
Later Toyotas I’ve rented have full color screens. They work okay.
you DO NOT need a speedometer or any dash display at all to safely pull a car to the side of the road and stop. Therefore they should not be mandated under safety regulation, if you have a car with a digital display and it fails you pull your car to the side of the road, put on your hazards and call for a tow to the mechanic
Just like in a airplane if it has a problem you find the closest safe landing spot, put the plan down, and call for a mechanic.
If you do not have a feeling for the safety under which you are operating, then perhaps you should not be driving in the first place? Which I believe that is the underlying problem here, We are too lax with whom we issue driving licenses too.
Oh but it does! A blind corner will kill drivers going by feel alone, who don't have experience on that particular stretch of road. Feel alone doesn't inform you that you're in a school zone (until catastrophically too late). Remember, the driver isn't just a hazard to themselves, they're a hazard to everybody in their path.
How do you propose to limit licensing to experienced drivers in such a way that inexperienced drivers are capable of gaining the experience necessary to drive?
What exactly does not have to do with a speedometer? that is about road signs.
Knowing exactly what speed you are going has no bearing on your ability to navigate a blind corner. I am very confused by this statement
Based on visual cues alone you should know with in 10MPH how fast you are going anyway, if you can not tell how fast you are traveling generally with out looking at the speedometer you should not be driving
>How do you propose to limit licensing to experienced drivers in such a way that inexperienced drivers are capable of gaining the experience necessary to drive?
Well it seems to be popular in this thread to make flying a plan an analog for driving so how about simulators like they do for pilots, longer training, more time having to drive with an experienced driver. There are lots of things that could be done
How do you know your speed without a speedometer?
Your insistence that driving is just like flying and that cars only need to stop is a bit ludicrous. Your endurance on this thread alone is impressive. That's not a good thing, but thanks for all the chuckles.
You do if there isn't a good place to stop and you need (or would rather) keep driving for awhile first, say in the middle of an obnoxious construction zone with no shoulder, or on a mountain pass with no shoulder, or in a sketchy area in the middle of the night (summoning a tow truck can literally take hours depending on where you are), etc.
You're perfectly find driving without a speedometer, till out of the construction zone.
I had a car with a busted one for a decade, and you know what I did? I drove with the flow of traffic.
Really, a dash display is not a safety feature.
Still do not need a speedometer, you should be able to judge you speed with in 5-10mph by visual alone, if you can not you probably should not be driving in the first place.
Our 2013 Prius just had the center-dash unit crash likely due to the audio sub-system. And it would have burned but for a fuse blowing (replacing the fuse lead to smoking.) This took out the rear camera display along with climate controls, audio, ...
Fortunately someone at the Toyota shop we patronize had just replaced their same model year working unit with an iPad (hence learned that's a thing in the US even if illegal in the UK.) So what was going to be a ~$2,000 USD rebuilt unit (~$5,000 OEM new but a guy in town rebuilds them because there is apparently enough demand) was going to be less expensive.
Unfortunately, our Prius's unit seems to be unique to a particular finish/package for the model. And this particular unit type (a JBL variant) has connectors different from all other Toyota center console units.
Gist of the situation: failure of what is likely the audio section of the integrated center-dash unit took out rear camera, climate controls, audio, etc. with high price tag to repair when simple loss of audio unit would have been ignored.
We're way past that. All (to a rounding error) modern analogue dials are also controlled by software via the ECU. This has been true for decades now.
Few cars even have a mechanical throttle linkage anymore.
Even "analog" gauges have been software driven for a long time now. My simracing seat setup has a gauge cluster out of a mid-2000s VW Passat that runs entirely on CAN.
If it does a gauge sweep when you turn it in you can be pretty certain it's software controlled, even if it has physical dials. This obviously hasn't been a major problem, so software control is not the issue here, bad quality software control is.
So, wtf did you put up with all that (presuming it wasnt a company car)? And, even then, you should have a trail of paperwork a mile/ kilometre long to audi - publish all that.
I think digital dials and things like that are excellent and aren't a problem. These have been around for around 10 years now. They have clear benefits such as having navigation info up front, music info, customizable dials, speed as a number, etc.
Peugeot has always had shitty technology in their cars, they are a budget brand trying to be a premium brand.
However, I haven't looked to see if this is continues with the more recent models/focus line alternatives.
However, we've owned several Fords in the past 30 years (Sierra, Mondeo, and Fiesta) and they all have had a few reliability issues, mostly electric. I'm not sure I would buy another Ford today. I hope you have better luck. But I must say that in terms of driving comfort and driver experience, they've all been great.