It was just this afternoon that I had picked up a new Mitsubishi Triton utility.
Within minutes I was trying to work out how to turn off the annoying “keep your eyes on the road” warnings and accompanying beeps.
After you have suffered through a few of these things (quite a few actually), you tend to develop an extremely low tolerance for them — after all we did without them once upon a time?
Later that night I discovered Mitsubishi had already voluntarily begun rolling out an update to “enhance” the driver monitoring system in Triton.
The new DMS software continues to support driver safety while reducing operational sensitivity to certain natural movements, it said.
The minimum speed threshold had also been raised.
That figures. It was going berserk as I looked left and right trying to find a parking space — in a carpark!
I once had a car slam on the brakes as I entered a tunnel for absolutely no reason.
It scared the crap out of me (and the driver behind me).
Citing the case of Triton, ANCAP revealed it had embarked on a new research project designed to shine a light on real-world driver experience and usability of lane support systems.
This additional layer of examination looks beyond a vehicle’s ability to intervene and prevent unintentional side-swipe, head-on, or run-off-road crash as determined through ANCAP’s official star rating assessments.
Instead, it focuses on the sophistication and integration quality of lane support systems (LSS) from a range of vehicle brands and models.
A pilot group of vehicles had been assembled and put through their paces against a baseline ‘positive reference’ vehicle, with early insights showing clear room for improvement.
“This research project is a proactive step ANCAP has taken to help vehicle manufacturers improve the functionality, calibration and integration of their active safety systems,” ANCAP’s Carla Hoorweg said.
“Good system design and properly tuned systems are critical to consumer acceptance, and the aspects we’ve examined with this research are those that manufacturers should already be factoring into their systems,” she said.
“The pilot group of vehicle models we’ve assessed has been assembled from direct consumer feedback, where a specific list of models were identified as offering a fairly rudimentary response.
“Unfortunately the behaviour of these vehicles is having consumers question the benefits of these systems, and in some cases, turn them off.
“What we don’t want to see is these systems being badged as ‘annoying’ and switched off,” she said.
The results of this pilot project will be shared with manufacturers and used to refine to ANCAP’s upcoming 2026-2028 test protocols and criteria.
Additional vehicle models will be examined against the same research criteria over the course of the year, with full results to be released once the broad program of work is complete.
Manufacturers, you have been warned.
Carla Hoorweg
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