I see what you mean.. It's a "feature" when it works, and a "defect" when it breaks.

Totally agree about the "Fading Assistance" - I did a double-take when I read that 'feature'.

I do not think - at least, I don't WANT to think - that some of these gadgets/features are intended to put you in a place you ought not to be. Rather, many are intended to keep you from doing just that.

Sorry if I can't pull a better example, but it happens I looked very very closely at the redesigned GX460 when it came time to buy (I had a GX470 prior). Remember how quickly it came out from Consumer Reports how its traction control didn't seem to work the way it should (it kicked in later than most did). OK, maybe that IS a safety item..

The demonstration videos were all over the place, and sure, it LOOKED scary. But many others who reviewed the vehicle had no problem with it.. If you were driving like that in the first place, you SHOULD wreck, just to teach you a lesson that the forces of physics are not to be "dissed."

I never READ it, but my thought was "maybe they did that on purpose.. to make sure you KNOW you overdid it before they corrected it for you." Who knows.

From my aviation hobby.. When the Boeing 777 was going through trials, one MAJOR flaw that came out was the "asymmetric thrust" feature. It was intended to make the aircraft easy to handle in the event of an engine failure.

The problem was that it worked SO WELL that pilots could not even tell that they HAD lost an engine.. And they decided that was NOT a good thing, no matter how proud the engineers were that they pulled it off.

Like the old axiom.. "Just because you CAN do a thing, it does not follow that you SHOULD."