Did anyone else receive a survey from J.D. Power's? I received mine yesterday via e-mail. I blasted Lexus for locking us out while the car is moving.

Craig

 

Its funny but my wife doesn't care a wit about a car's performance, features or reliability, all she cares about is its appearance (inside and out). She gets these surveys and invitations to focus groups all the time. I'm the car enthusiast and they never ask my opinion. What's wrong with this picture?

 

The lock-out is the biggest issue I have with lexus's nav system as well. I used to have a honda accord (yea, I know - don't even start) with the built-in Nav system, and it allowed me to actually use it - which was nice.

I bought my wife a RX400h, and because of the lock-out, it makes the Nav system virtually useless. I'm hoping I can get used to the lock-out on my 600hL when it gets here, but I know that's going to annoy me more than anything else on the car.

- Darryl

 

There's still a great deal you can do while the car is moving, not only on the navigation screen, but on audio, and climate as well. Even on nav you can still enter predefined destinations while moving, as well as many other functions (changing route conditions, etc.)

It's about the same lockout level as my '03 LS430 was.

My BMW had no such lockout, and I'll admit it was nice to be able to enter an address while I was driving, but I also have to admit that as I was twiddling with the iDrive entering the address, I was thinking to myself, "I really shouldn't be doing this".

As much as I don't like being "Nannied", IMHO, the occasional time that I have to pull over to enter a destination is slightly annoying, but, as I said, not a big issue. I think Lexus has made a conscientious effort to balance safety and convenience in their choice of what is and isn't allowed while moving.

HBH

 

As much as I don't like being "Nannied", IMHO, the occasional time that I have to pull over to enter a destination is slightly annoying, but, as I said, not a big issue. I think Lexus has made a conscientious effort to balance safety and convenience in their choice of what is and isn't allowed while moving.

BINGO!

 

I think they could have allowed for a little more control without affecting safety. For example, they allow us to use a list of quick dial numbers on 3 screens. What's different in showing one screen of "nearest" places? When I need gas, I don't want my choice to be limited one nearest gas station. First of all I may prefer a particular kind of gas. And secondly, the nearest gas station could be 3 miles behind me and the second nearest could be 4 miles in front of me. Which one would you choose?

And I just laugh at things like "nearest restaurant". Would you ever need to go to the nearest food establishment, not knowing or caring what kind of food it is?

Face it, the system is crippled beyond being useful. Whoever designed it is probably driving an Acura himself

 

The fact that they disallow certain functions while moving is evidence that they’re trying to (a) “protect” their customers from their own folly (ie nannying us) and (b) provide evidence of same in the event of an accident and resultant lawsuit. In this respect, it's the same as the annoying "I Agree" screen and isn’t much different than artificially limiting the top speed of the car.

The fact that they allow so many functions while moving is evidence that they realize that locking everything out would make too many customers balk and that a compromise was necessary.

Frankly, if they were trying to limit their legal responsibility by disallowing functionality, then they’ve defeated their own efforts (thankfully) by allowing not only some functionality, but so much functionality.

As in all things, this comes down to individual preference. They’ve tried to strike a compromise, and while I’d have preferred that they not have even tried, IMHO, the compromise they did arrive at is reasonable.

As a volunteer driver, I use the navigation system a great deal and find it extremely useful, despite of it’s reduced functionality while moving. The BMW I drove for 2 years had a completely unrestricted navigation system and even so, in most ways, the Lexus navigation system is better than the BMW system, mostly because of the touchscreen vs iDrive.

HBH

 

Would you ever need to go to the nearest food establishment, not knowing or caring what kind of food it is?

I agree, but actually I do have a friend where that really does apply!