Why is it that if I have the car in reverse I cannot open the storage compartment behind the head unit? And why is it that I can when I have it in 1st and the front cameras are on? Makes no sense!

Additionally, if I get in my car and for some reason the bluetooth from my cell fails to connects... Now I'm driving... What can I do to get my cell phone to connect with bluetooth? Lift up the phone and fiddle with the bluetooth connection?!? Isn't that what I'm not supposed to do, in some states by law?

And why is it that I cannot go into Settings and then Bluetooth because the car is moving but I can go into Settings and many of the other settings without issue while moving in the car? Is it just because it's supposedly a cell phone and interacting with a cell phone is bad, bad, bad when all I really want to do is go into the Bluetooth settings and hit Connect to my cell phone because that's the only way to get the car's Bluetooth to recognize the cell phone if it did not initially connect aside from pulling of the road to set this.

It's just asinine! I wonder if it's just stupid engineers at GM or stupid politicians writing regulations...

Can't wait until Android Auto arrives!

 

* The LCD panel/storage compartment doesn't go down in reverse because they assume that it should be used to help one back up. Personally, I think we can make that decision on our own on if we want the LCD up or not when going into reverse.
* Some guesses on why when coming out of reverse and then going into first the camera comes if there was the event that you went in reverse to then go forward into a parking space or it is because it might be faster than getting to the home screen on the LCD panel and finding the camera button. I've just gotten used to it and it doesn't bother me anymore.
* I've never had my BT connection disconnect from my iPhone -- ever. Not sure why that is happening for you.
* I never tried to pair my phone while I was moving in the car because it has never disconnected for me. However, I can imagine where the lawyers made that be disabled for liability reasons. I doubt engineers would put something like that in there to just **** customers off unless there was a safety concern.

 

I agree with you on this - I'm often in the garage entering directions to my destination or just adjusting my seatbelt. Then I think "Yeah let me put my wallet into that secret storage compartment" but I had already put the car in reverse. I see no reason I can't lower the door, put my wallet in there and then raise it and then to continue with my reverse. Indeed if we are talking about the forward cameras that is exactly what I could do right now.

Actually I was not asking about this behavior at all. This behavior just seems right to me. What doesn't seem right is that when the rear camera is on I cannot open the storage compartment but when the front camera is on I can open the storage compartment. Just seems mighty arbitrary to me.

Here's the deal - Do you use any other Bluetooth connection? I ask because I use a Bluetooth headset and I often approach the car already listening to a podcast thru Bluetooth to my headset. When entering the car one needs to "hand off" the Bluetooth connection from the headset to the car. See Passing the Bluetooth Torch for an interesting tale of my past escapades with Bluetooth and transferring Bluetooth connections between a headset and your car.

Granted, this passing of the torch has slightly less problems than the passing of the torch to my previous lease - a 2013 Chevy Camaro. But still, on occasion I find myself heading out and the Bluetooth connection to my cell phone has not been properly established. However the point here is that while some things seems restricted from use if the car is moving, other things are not. And the difference between to the two seems extraordinarily arbitrary.

Correction - I was not trying to pair my phone - it was already paired - I was trying to connect my phone. I agree - I should not be required to ever re-pair my phone. I'm just saying that I find sometimes my phone, for whatever reason, has failed to connect. At this point, driving on the road, what is it I'm expected to do to fix this situation?

Perhaps however it seems extremely arbitrary to the point of absurdity. I mean after all, all I am gonna do it hit Bluetooth then Devices, see my cell phone in the list (the only one mind you) and hit connect. That fixes it - IFF I'm stopped. But if I'm moving I cannot do that.

And I could understand somebody saying that might be a safety concern. But is it no less a safety concern for me to plow several levels deep at times, mind you, into the settings menu but lo! If I hit Bluetooth first then some how it's magically more dangerous?!? Come on! Figuring out how to fix this problem once launched on a route is vastly much more of a security concern. In fact, I often find myself pulling over to the side of the road when something happens like this because IT'S MUCH MORE DIFFICULT TO HANDLE THIS THAN IT NEEDS TO BE which is why I brought this up. There are many settings options I can get to while moving that IMHO are much more distracting than what I was trying to achieve which was simply to click on the button that told the stupid car to seek out Bluetooth connections because if I tried to from the phone - ya know the place they are trying to make illegal to touch while driving - it didn't work. Seriously, this is exactly what I brought such things up! You mean your GM geeks could not forsee such things?!?

 

People die because of thinking like this.

You shouldn't be doing ANYTHING else while the car is moving. Just because they haven't made everything you can possibly do while driving illegal isn't a green light to put on your lipstick at 100mph. Whatever you want to do is not worth risking people's lives, including your own, by taking your attention off the road. If you absolutely must play with your gadgets... pull over!

 

I got no damn lipstick idiot! The issue it is the foolish inconsistency and arbitrariness of any such law you seem to be incapable of fathoming. The point sir is that it is currently it is much more risky to do the things they allow than the things they disallow on arbitrary reasoning - that's the point sir. It currently makes no sense sir. The reasoning is completely backward! That's the point! It puts you more at risk, not less at risk. It's arbitrary and stupid! Plain and simple. Just dumb.

 

That's exactly my scenario! I'm just used it now.

Yes, three total. What I have problems with is when on speaker phone people will hear me as garbled. If I disconnect one (i.e. my Passport) then there isn't the problem. It seems to be an issue with the amount of bandwidth of the BT connection. However, none of them have become disconnected. I also have a BT headset connected to the phone. What smartphone do you have? I have iPhone 6+

I don't have that problem, but I don't know if I would try to get my connection to work while driving. It's probably just me, but I have a $70K car that I am in love with and I'm worried when I even see someone pull up close behind me, so I am pretty **** about not trying to take any chance about hitting something while driving. That's just me though.

Seems like a conversation with the lawyers... I am highly confident that the lawyers had their hand in it for the one thing that had a legal requirement and then didn't think through all the other things that were equally as dangerous because there wasn't something on the books. I agree with you that if they are going to restrict, which I think makes sense when you are moving, that it should be consistent throughout the entire interface. When you can make sense of all the rules and regulations that don't make sense, LMK! I wonder how many other cars that are 2016's have the same limitation?

 

I do get it... you're angry that it's illegal to do something stupid but not illegal to do something even more stupid... but my point is that people shouldn't do stupid things regardless of whether they're illegal or not.

And, the actual reason that one is illegal and the other is not isn't arbitrary at all. It's obvious: lots of people have conclusively died due to idiots using their cellphones, but not enough conclusive evidence of deaths due to using the infotainment system. As soon as a lot of roadway deaths are conclusively linked to a car's infotainment system, people will start lobbying to make them illegal. Count on it.

 

No you don't get it. It's that neither should be prohibited. Stop treating adults as children - it is so childish of you!

Of course it is...

Really? Please cite your peer reviewed sources - i dare you! You won't be able to because you ain't got a point. Mark my words.

You know not from whence you preach brother.

 

I don't find this to be a huge problem or inconvenience.

 

I have the issue with my phone not always handing off to the car when I was connected to another device. The same thing happened in my prior car, but I could run a Tasker script to retry the connection until it worked. Generally on the 2nd or 3rd try. That doesn't work AT ALL on GM's bluetooth.

In general, Chevy's UI for its electronics just sucks. It's inconsistent and unreliable. I've seen worse (Cadillac's comes to mind, along with earlier BMWs), but this one is pretty bad. Try playing music off an iPod or USB stick: you'll love it when it randomly plays a song that's not part of the playlist, artist or album you selected. And when it finds only about 25% of the songs by a specific artist that on on the device.

Why can I only adjust the dash brightness when the car decides it's dark enough to need the headlights? If I turn the headlights on myself during the day, or they come on with the wipers, the **** to adjust dash brightness does nothing.

Why, when I put the wipers on interval, does the car wait several minutes before turning the headlights on?

I love the car, but I could make a list that's pages long about stupid electronics implementations. Chevy should farm the whole thing out to Google.

 

There is difference between having the choice to be safe or not. And having the choice made for you.

 

Illegal? What's illegal? Cite me a law that requires manufacturers to disable any cell phone functionality in a car, at any time? Some (probably most) states have laws regarding using a cell phone while driving, but I'm not aware of any that limit what the car does or doesn't allow.

It's not illegal for Chevy to allow the driver to access BT settings while driving, but Chevy has decided not to allow that. But, at the same time, they allow you to do other things in the system that are at least as distracting. This foolish inconsistency was the point of the OP, which you seem to have completely missed.

If GM isn't going to let you access BT settings in the name of safety, why do they let you access Engine Sound Management while driving? Or Comfort and Convenience? Or any of the dozens of other menu settings you can do while driving? Heck, one feature that's specifically intended for you to use while driving (responding to a text message), requires far more attention to the infotainment system than what the OP is talking about.

Go back the read the thread, this time for comprehension. Maybe ALL of these things should be unavailable while driving, but to claim that one menu (BT) is more distracting and less safe than another menu is just absurd.

 

 

Blue tooth connection in both our cars (C7 and MINI Cooper) display some strange operational behavior. Pairing seems to vanish in the C7 for whatever reason, which means I have to re-pair the phone to the car before I can start using it. In the MINI it's all about the sequence you use to connect to BT.

Both are designed with Apple in mind and I use Android, so that may be an issue. At a MINI seminar, I asked about this issue and was told we live in an "Apple world" for better or worse.

Asking for an explanation for the capriciousness of laws isn't likely to render any useful answers. I'm still trying to figure out why we have a mandated seat belt laws (to protect our well being in the event of a crash is the usual answer) and no helmet law for motorcyclists (as an former biker, it was a huge freedom of choice issue when most state laws were over turned).

 

Never said it was a huge problem - I just said it was stupid.

 

I too have a Tasker task for this. See some of the Tasker forums regarding my posts about it. By and large it works most times but sometimes it doesn't. It's my most important Tasker task (aside from the two tasks that prompt me to set my timer (Harvest) to track my billable hours when I approach and leave my client's site). I believe the Tasker task fails only when the polling interval for Bluetooth for Tasker and the polling interval of the car seeking out new Bluetooth devices overlap in such a way that the time is too long and the Bluetooth stuff fails to connect.

IIRC one of the key steps was to toggle the Bluetooth off and on. It works like 95% of the time. It was worse with my last car, also a Chevy, a Camaro then, in that if the handoff didn't work I not only had to pull over, I had to stop the car and open the door in order to drop the Bluetooth phone profile and wait up to a minute or so for the head unit to essentially shut down such that it would play the splash screen when I restarted the car. Then, and only then, would I be able to connect the Bluetooth Media profile to the car.

Since you use Tasker I will describe my Tasker task. Maybe it'll help you. The profile is triggered off of BT Near the Bluetooth connection for my car. When that happens I do:

1. Turn off Bluetooth
2. Use Secure Settings to connect to the car. In this step I also toggle on the Automatically Enable Bluetooth toggle.
3. Turn on GPS (since I'm probably using Google Maps)

It's that simple. When I leave the car I do

1. Use Secure Settings to connect my headset (since I left the car I'll probably be using my headset)

So the Bluetooth gets toggled off then back on to connect to the car. As I said, with the Camaro there was absolutely no way to reconnect the Bluetooth Media profile if the handoff messed up unless you stop the car and open the damn door (or wait like 5 minutes for it to drop the connection itself. Why it would even attempt to re-connect to a Bluetooth phone when the radio was off is beyond me.

Yes and this is exactly why I complained here. Maybe the Chevy people do not always browse this forum but the best thing I can do is mention the stupid behavior and ask that it be changed. Being silent will only insure it's never fixed.

 

They probably aren't laws but regulations (what's the real and practical difference between a law and a regulation has always confused me). That said I had test driven a Tesla. Nice machine but I don't have a garage (apt dweller) to put to 240V line in. In any event the Model S has a 17 inch screen in it! You can put Google Maps right up there. Hell you can surf the web! Damn you can even watch YouTube videos if you want.

The point is stop treating adults like babies!

Exactly!

Exactly again!

No, such things should not be locked out. People will do things like use their cell phone anyway. Intelligent people will use it only when they can say at a stop light or in stop and go traffic. Unintelligent people? Well that Darwinism in action.

Of course Chevy could make is such that the voice recognition is at least halfway decent but that stuff blows chunks badly. Waiting desperately for Android Auto to correct GM Stinky....

 

I doubt it a "law" , but it certainly protects the mfr against stupid "macdonalds coffee" type suits.....

for years BMW allowed full use of nav input while driving, the new 15-16's don't. Now you gotta stop to input address.

 

When we do stupid things to cover stupid lawsuits (which should summarily and easily be disposed of as frivolous by the courts which I've never understood why it's an issue. Such stupid suits should be disposable within minutes at most) we have succumbed to being stupid ourselves. Kinda reminds me of that dumb sign on candy machines warning the people who have little control over their anger that if they shake the machine enough it could topple over and kill you. I say, "why are we telling such people this?".

Speaking of which, the stupid Nav thing... Why does it insist on me saying the City and State? Google can figure it out without such additional knowledge. And why do I have to "Change location" if the POI is not near by? Again Google figures it out. I just say "Ok Google" and "Navigate to Rite Aid" and Google finds all the Rite Aids around and sets course for the nearest one with a little timer before setting that course that lets you say pick the 2nd or 3rd one if those are better. The car? No, it wants the complete address and afterward I have to "confirm my choice on the main display". Really? Just F'ing go there already! Do I really want to hit the call button? Maybe, sometimes, but 95% of the time I do not wish to call the place, just get directions. If you do not confirm it on the car you don't get the directions. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I'm convinced that you must "eat your own dogfood" and force the engineers to actually use the system they create, actively and discuss their experiences and desires for improvement among themselves often. That's the only way you'll get it better.

 

I actually noticed yesterday that turning BT off, then back on, got me connected. I didn't have time last night to play around with my Tasker script, but I do plan to modify it to see if that will work reliably. Thanks.

Yep, I use Secure Settings, so that's what I'll try. Thanks again.

I've even tried shutting the car off and opening the door, but that doesn't seem to work on the Stingray.

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