Subaru cars

Raised as a usability problem by 26 people on Hacker News over 11 years (2016–2026), in 25 threads.

People raised many different problems with Subaru cars, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 27 complaints

Brakes hard during lane changes when the car is clear; cruise turns off after stopping and nags about hands on wheel2026-10-21
Auto-steering weaves between lane markings instead of holding steady, so the commenter never uses it2026-10-21
Constantly beeps when lanes aren't detected, even when it isn't steering2026-10-20
Eye and hand warnings trigger falsely, e.g. from sunglasses, mirror checks, light steering input2026-02-09
Climate adjustments moved to touchscreen, forcing drivers to fiddle with it while driving2025-12-04
Commenter found the Outback's headlights confusing, having skipped several car generations2025-11-18
Defrost and window buttons ignore presses until the car has run long enough2025-03-11
New Subaru models have terrible interfaces that spoil the driving experience2025-01-23
Can't change the clock time unless the car is in park2024-08-31
Alert beeps inaccurately and cannot be turned off2024-03-13
Too many buttons and separate settings menus on each screen2023-12-19
Fist gestures falsely trigger and change cabin temperature; cannot be turned off2023-11-01
Knob lags on startup and misreads fast turns, so volume jumps too high2023-04-27
Controls sit lower than the screen, so driver must glance to find buttons2023-04-27
Setting airflow to face and outside air requires many button presses while driving2023-01-10
Brakes too sensitively and suddenly during low-speed reversing and coasting, surprising the driver2022-11-15
Radio starts playing static at a volume the driver didn't choose on every startup2022-05-25
Volume knob ignores input after starting and shifting to reverse, then applies queued inputs late2022-01-31
Constantly flashes and beeps when driver glances at intersections or over shoulder2021-11-11
Constant false-positive alerts, and the feature turns itself back on at every start2021-11-11
Too many cryptic, unlabeled physical buttons, hard to figure out while driving2021-04-30
Too many false positive warnings, so the user would disable it2021-03-09
Must adjust settings every start to stop it disobeying steering input, false alarms2019-07-03
Flat indistinct buttons force eyes off road and multiple taps to adjust airflow2019-06-17
Stop-start resets each time the car is restarted, so the workaround has to be repeated2018-05-22
Climate buttons require taking eyes off the road; unclear Auto button2018-02-25
Brakes suddenly at automated car wash, requiring manual disabling beforehand2016-03-14