I regularly drive newer Vauxhalls at work...... and the latest batch have indicators that seem to have minds of their own.
If you indicate left...in good time.... to give someone else a chance to pull out.......inevitably by the time you get there the damned things have turned themselves off
similarly, when you want to go the whole way around the roundabout and indicate early...... halfway around they're turned off again
also is it just me that thinks the Astra indicator lenses are useless and you can hardly see them flashing because they are so opaque
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I was loaned a 06 plate Astra for a week, 5 minutes playing with the strange Vauxhall stalk controls & they where then second nature.
Slight movement of the stalk will get just 3 flashes, Full movement will stick the indicator on.
Wiper stalk was a bit more odd to use though, Flick up to go through the settings & flick down to turn them back off again.
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They may work OK for some but, why did they bother with this?
What is it exactly about the conventional approach that needed improvement?
Hold the stalk without clicking it to get as many flashes as you want, click it to switch them on until you switch them off again.
If Vauxhall wanted to improve anything about their indicator implementation, they could start with making the click louder. Some models are pathetic in this regard.
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if you lot are willing to accept that i'm car mad, have at least some intelligence, am nosy, pernickety & pedantic.... and hadn't got my head around the Vauxhall indicators...
what hope is there for the average Joe who has no interest in cars at all........ and merely wishes an efficient means of transport from A to B
methinks they've made them too complicated
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Wiper stalk was a bit more odd to use though, Flick up to go through the settings & flick down to turn them back off again.
The wiper stalk is similar to the indicator stalk. Each time you tap (flick) the stalk, you activate intermitant, then speed one, then speed two. But if you wantto put the wipers straight on to speed one, or turn them off completely you press the stalk harder.
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I imagine Vauxhall have done this becuase it is cheaper to make switches that just have single push button contact, relying on a control unti somewhere to drive the indicators / wipers, than the much more complex old style switches with multiple positions. So it's an improvement form a bean counting point of view :-/
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Nah, I reckon it's actually more expensive.
It's a Marmite feature: either you love it or hate it.
I happen to love it, I really don't like driving cars with old fashioned style stalks that click from position to position, seems old hat now I'm used to the Vectra.
To me it seems intuitive - touch softly to change lane etc, touch firmly to indicate etc, push hard to activate full/fast wipers in one touch, push hard to deactivate in one touch.
Also, with the wipers, because they don't move, the car is able to turn the wipers off (and returns them to the bottom of the screen) for you when the ignition is switched off - you can't do that with old fashioned stalks, they'd always turn back on when you restart the car because the stalk would be still turned on. (often smearing the screen etc).
That, in itself makes the Vauxhall system brilliant for me. :)
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Bring back the early Citroen CX non-self-cancelling indicators with wipers, lights etc. all within a finger's reach without taking your hands off the wheel.
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After all the fun and games I had with my 55 Focus, I handed it back to the dealer who were superb in the way they handled the whole episode.
Anyway , I now have a 5 month 06 reg Astra sxi. The indicators are similar to the ones I had on the 53 Vectra a while back - similar but not exactly the same.
Having had experience of the Vectra set up, I can only say they were infuriating - especially because they cancelled just when you didn't want them to! e.g. going around a roundabout.
Things have obviously moved on in the last couple of years with this system - the set up on my Astra is superb. As above its one touch for three flashes and a firm shove to lock them down - on the Astra you can feel it when it locks,something I didn't notice the Vectra doing.
I really like it and wouldn't want to go back to the old set up.
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