Quote:
Originally Posted by bmwspice
Why is it nice? Don't you know when it's cold outside? It's the same exact sound that tells you you need to go in for service, you have a fault (eg, check engine) or you have to go buy fuel. And again, I KNEW it was cold outside bc we all evolved to sense temperature. We understand the prevailing climates we live in. We can look up the forecast for where we're headed. We have weather apps, TV news, temp displays on our dash, etc.
Seriously, I have never (and I do literally mean never) gotten in a car without knowing what kind of weather conditions I might encounter along the way. I've been driving for 35 years and I've lived in Colorado, near Tahoe, and in TX. I mention TX because those people are not snow/ice pros but I was there during their 2 biggest snow/ice storms in the last 40 years. Recently, I called off a trip to LA bc we had huge rain storms and I knew in early Jan that would mean snow/ice over the Grapevine. I could have taken 101 instead of the 5 but that would have added hours to the trip and every one of those hours would have been in a downpour.
Point being, who the heck is just getting in their car and waiting for a chime to tell them what's happening? Let's say it was a trip I couldn't cancel. I still knew before the trip began what I would probably see along the way.
I'm googling for a way to disable it and found a lot of BMW guys saying it's been around for a long time. On a forum I don't have an account on, one guy said "they've been on cars for 25 years." Well, not all cars. This is my first to have it. Then I started to wonder if maybe my cars did have it and it just wasn't cold enough to trigger it while I owned them. I didn't check every car I've owned during that time but Porsches and Audis are also German, expensive, luxury. I've owned 3 new Porsches and 1 Audi since 2000. I found a post where a BMW owner is complaining about how he switched to Porsche and can't believe his expensive high tech car doesn't have the warning. I also found a tech article on Audi that says they have a snowflake symbol when the temp is low but no mention of a ding. I certainly don't remember my Audi ever dinging and I definitely drove that car in many snow storms.
FWIW, I hate alerts. I keep texts and emails on silent. I'll see my messages the next time I'm interested in looking at my phone.
|
If you know how to code, I posted a solution on reply #24 despite being told it can't be done at all. Has been a real blessing once I got it switched off for when the car starts. It still goes off while driving, but to me it was more important to disable the chime when starting the car, because that's usually when faults occur most of the time. I even forgot it was a thing.
Since you're asking; Not to go on about beating a dead horse here, but some people just think because it works for them, it should work for everyone regardless if they live in an area where the alert can pop up five times an hour when temperature changes around +3 celsius. Instead of having an open mind and trying to understand that people come from all kind of different scenarios and conditions, I suppose it's easier to ridicule them and make pointless remarks.
The feature is akin to your passenger going "BONG!" on your ear every half an hour for no reason. Great feature. The chime actually makes you look what's wrong, taking your eyes off the road especially if you don't have HUD. The feature would make sense if you lived somewhere where it snowed once every 10 years and you had no idea how cold weather worked. Even then, it should be an option in iDrive that you can turn off and on. It would still make sense if it chimed a few times during some odd months per winter, for those few times it would be a good reason to warn the driver if it's a rare occurrence in their area or country. This is completely dependant on where you live. Northern countries are the last place where a chime like this would need to exist, but people can be very close minded about other countries conditions, or just not educated enough.
The temperature warning is a needless distraction to everyone who has completed driving school and learned about different conditions on the road and how it might affect the journey. This is in the same vain as saying the cold/warm manual air adjuster override has been on the dash forever. Yes it has, and why the hell has it? It creates more problems for users than it solves.