Well that’s a stupid feature…

I’ve been driving an ’07 Dodge Magnum SXT for the past few days, and have already run into a very odd and wholly annoying feature…

Now, any car I’ve driven, you push the turn signal stalk up and it lights the right side turn signal – and visa versa.

Not the Dodge!  You push it a little right, and it blinks 3 times and stops – and visa versa.

Push it all the way right, and it functions like a normal turn signal.  Now some times I don’t need to keep the signal on until the steering wheel resets it – several times I found myself activating the  left, then right, then left, then right turn signal just to shut the friggin thing off.  Now I just try to make sure that I push the stalk all the way until it stops so I can use it like any other car.

I can’t imagine how this is useful, or how it won’t result in the multifunction switch in the column from breaking early.

Next on the list?  How much this thing floats.  Driving home yesterday I let my attention shift for a second and when I looked back I was almost into the rear quarter panel of the car ahead of me.  I cut the wheel and chalked it up to drifting when I was distracted.  Nope – driving home several times in this 2-ton station wagon I found the car floating left and right.  Maybe it was wind, but this thing was hopping around like a Neon.

I miss my VW.

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2 Responses to Well that’s a stupid feature…

  1. Derek says:

    It’s called “lane change” functionality. You don’t want to slap the stalk all the way into the “locked” position for a lane-change (which won’t be enough of a turn to unlock the signal). So you tap it (some models its a tap which yields a short duration of signals, as it sounds like the car you have experienced, with others, you simply hold it in that “unlocked” position while doing the lane-change) and don’t end up driving three miles with your blinker on because you enabled the blinker for a lane-change.

    I can’t speak to the cars you’ve owned, but all of my cars since like 1990 have had that feature in it. 🙂

  2. Marlin says:

    Well gee, no wonder I got all those tickets.

    I get the lane change functionality, every car I’ve had has had it too, where I hold the stalk and the blinker will blink. This thing if you tap the stalk it blinks more than once not requiring the driver to hold it down. Since I hate using the blinker unless I need it, the thing drove me nuts until I figured it out, and I lock the stalk just so I have the control without leaving the damned thing on.

    Lange change functionality… wow, never would have thunk it.

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