2026 Hyundai Santa Fe

"TAKE A BREAK" - the feature prompts the driver to “Take a Break” with that text and a‘Coffee Cup” logo after a certain period of continuous driving. There are instances when turning it off is necessary and Hyundai has removed that option - high distracting false alarm rate. The alert, visual and auditory are intrusive, unnecessary, demonstrate a high false alarm rate leading to frustration and distraction. While designed as a safety feature, it has the opposite effect. The system inaccurately interprets the driver’s behavior as signs of fatigue with alerts popping up at an alarming rate. Perfectly normal and safe driving behaviors see the alert popping up again and again. Further there are environmental interferences - bright sunlight, reflections off glasses, bumpy roads requiring frequent corrections - system interprets these as driver inattention and cannot tell the difference between drowsy driving and navigating a poorly maintained highway. New Hyundai models do not allow the driver to disable the Take a Break alert. “You’re cruising down the highway, minding your own business, alert and focused, when your Hyundai flashes a coffee cup icon and tells you to take a break. Again - this for the third or fourth time in 20 minutes. You’re not tired, not swerving, and frankly, you’re getting annoyed”. The system is disruptive and unsafe as it disrupts the driver activating when the system detects inattentive driving, suggesting breaks even if the driver does not feel fatigued. The alert can illuminate even during short drives of less than 30 minutes. The alert can occur extremely frequently, especially during long drives, which is extremely annoying. The warning can appear shortly after starting a trip and may repeat every few minutes, which is extremely frustrating. It is far more disruptive than safe and helpful.

The vehicle has a feature that puts a message on the dashboard that reads “Consider taking a break “ that is not able to be adjusted by the consumer or the dealer. This message can come up repeatedly and has an audio portion that overrides the audio in the vehicle. Weather conditions, back roads, and unmarked lanes of traffic will trigger this message and without the ability to adjust the sensitivity or the ability to turn it off, it is a very dangerous situation. I have had it go off multiple times in a drive when there is a strong side wind and the vehicle is being pushed around and it can be very, very difficult to safely drive when this is visually and auditory messages keep coming up on the dash without any option to adjust it. On back roads or in situations where there is snow covered roads, this message can be nonstop and go off 50 times or more in a 90 mile drive. It is the worst thing about this vehicle and it’s not reasonable for the vehicle not to have the ability to adjust the feature? I’d ask that an investigation be opened to look into this and demand that Hyundai update the vehicle software to allow the settings for this message to be adjustable. When looking on the internet for this problem, there are 100s of not 1000s of people that have been searching and complaining about this message on the new Kia and Hyundai vehicles. Thank you.