Cars Deaf to Women's Voices

An anecdote from about ten years ago... A woman buys a new Ford Focus (2012) and loves everything about it except its voice-command system which often cannot understand what she says while it has no problem hearing her husband when he talks to it from the passenger side. Driving safely becomes a bigger challenge for women since doing without voice activation means not having your eyes on the road all the time.

In 2005, a woman purchased a Buick Rendezvous and found it impossible to programme the voice-activated phone system. When she called customer service for help, she was told that it was not going to work for her and to get a man to set it up. In the meantime, improvements have been made (via).

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photograph (1972) via