My Kona thinks water freezes at 39°F

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Jgood

Jgood

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I was going to post this on the "dislikes" thread but decided there might be a fix out there that someone is aware of. My Kona happily chimes to warn me that the roads may be getting slippery once the temp hits 39°F. (or 3.9°C). What is that all about? I can understand warning me at 33 or even 34°, but 39? Does water freeze sooner in Korea or something? I can't find anything in the manual about this. Does anyone know if this can be adjusted or do we have to live with an unnecessary warning when it's not needed, and a missing warning when the roads actually are about to freeze?
 
My other car (not Hyundai) does the exact same thing. I suspect most if not all new cars do this. Where I live, we have a lot of mountains, and when you drive up a pass, you want to be forewarned about the temps getting close to freezing. The roads can get very, very slippery at this point, and a timely warning could save an accident.
 
I think ever car I've owned that gave an ice warning did that at 4°C. There is some scientific basis for that difference in ambient v.s. road surface.
 
Yeah, I noticed that, too. My previous Subaru gives the warning at 37° F, so it was a little less anxious. [emoji6]

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So what you're saying is they designed a system that warns people about the 2% of situations that occur, versus the 98%. I'm confident that water isn't going to freeze unless it's very close to 32°, and while ambient temps, wind chill, solar exposure, shading and salt residue on the roads will all affect this, 32° is really the only factor is going to count in the end. It sounds to me like car manufacturers in trying to be safe are designing systems that are actually less safe because they warn us when there is very little chance of a hazard, but don't warn us when the chances are very high.
 
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Yes. I fully understand this. Frozen precipitation also forms when the ground temp is 80° as summer hailstones, so why isn't there a warning for that? It's just as dangerous and not at all uncommon. Plus, airborne precipitation comes with it's own warning. You can see it. It's either rain, sleet, hail or snow. Black ice, or ice forming on road surfaces due to thawing and refreezing is really what these warnings are supposed to be about. Like when bridge surfaces freeze before the road surface does...because the air temp has dropped below freezing. I slow down when it rains, and especially when it snows or hails, etc. I might not slow down when the road is dry with intermittent wet or moist patches. But I certainly would if the car suddenly told me the temp just dropped below freezing. The reason this "feature" annoys me so much is that it's warned me dozens of time in the past month or so, and not once has it been useful. It would have been last night when the highway I was driving on was changing in altitude frequently and alternating between wet and black ice patches and the temp was ranging from 30 to 34°F.
 
Jgood said:
I was going to post this on the "dislikes" thread but decided there might be a fix out there that someone is aware of. My Kona happily chimes to warn me that the roads may be getting slippery once the temp hits 39°F. (or 3.9°C). What is that all about? I can understand warning me at 33 or even 34°, but 39? Does water freeze sooner in Korea or something? I can't find anything in the manual about this. Does anyone know if this can be adjusted or do we have to live with an unnecessary warning when it's not needed, and a missing warning when the roads actually are about to freeze?
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We get the warning at 3 C which I am happy to have as it alerts me. We have areas on our local routes that are very low lying and heavily shaded by trees and sometimes channel the wind and are very icy when the rest of the area isn't icy yet. They chime gives me a heads up so I remember to slow down in the low lying shaded slippery sections.
 
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Air temperature may be above freezing point while ground is below freezing. Additionally, living in the mountains, temperatures change quickly with altitude— I believe the warning is prudent.
 
My Kona is looking at me with angry eyes and it really bothers me! [emoji23] seriously?


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