Woman Drives Her Mother's New Car. Then It Starts Panicking: 'Intruder Alert. You're Not Phoebe'

A woman who borrowed her mother's new car says the machine greeted her by the wrong name, decided she was the wrong person, and then tried to fold her in half. Her account of the drive is a four-minute catalog of vanishing door handles, button gear selectors, and climate controls buried three menus deep.

The video was posted by Alet (@dr.mrs.knits), whose channel usually features stories and observations that match the motto in her bio, "In perpetual pursuit of whimsy." Her caption asked for "answers from the car people." The newest car she had driven before was a 2014. Now, she says, "We've upgraded out of every single thing that makes a car drivable.”

Her video has been watched more than 872,000 times.

"Intruder Alert. You're Not Phoebe"

The trouble started before she got the door shut. "There's no longer a little scoopy part where your hand goes. It's just a wall," she says, gripping with her fingertips and trying "to use the force" to pull it closed.

Then she pressed the start button, and the car ran a driver profile saved for her mother. "Hello Phoebe. Welcome, Phoebe," the car’s automated voice said. "And then it says, ‘intruder alert. You're not Phoebe. You're someone six inches taller.’"

The seat began moving itself to her mother's settings while she was in it, Alet says.

"It's forcing my patella through the steering block," she says. "It's exactly that scene in Star Wars where they're in the trash compactor." Her version of the car's reasoning was "Phoebe, there's someone in your seat. Don't worry, we're killing them."

Once free, she looked for the gear shifter.

"I look down expecting a [expletive] gear shift, so I know what gear I'm in," she says. "Oh no, we've replaced it with a button." She said that design decision means she has nothing to feel or see. "Literally a whisper on these buttons changes the gear. That can't be safe," she says. "I want to be physically moved around to put my car into reverse." The gear indicator, she says, is legible "if you're in complete darkness," which was no help in the middle of the day.

On the road and pulling up to a junction, she leaned forward to check the road and the belt locked her back. "The car decides it's my time and I get yeeted back," she says. "What do you mean the seatbelt just decided to hang man me?"

The climate controls were no better. "What I want out of a car is a knob that is blue and that is red, and then another knob that is big fan or little fan. That is all I want," she says. Instead she had to hunt through menus while driving.

The only surviving physical knob was the AM/FM tuner, which she regarded as "a taunt." She says she is "pro gear shift, pro knob, pro car that drives like a car and not like a garbage compactor.” She wants the old PRNDL gear display back.

Safety Regulators Have Made The Same Complaint

Alet's objection to shift buttons is one federal investigators have already litigated. In 2016, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) closed an investigation into "monostable" electronic shifters that prompted Fiat Chrysler to recall roughly 811,000 Dodge Chargers, Chrysler 300s and Jeep Grand Cherokees. The agency logged 266 crashes and 68 injuries tied to vehicles rolling away after drivers thought they had parked.

The shifter "has the familiar appearance of a conventional console mechanical gearshift assembly," investigators wrote, but "an unfamiliar movement that does not provide the tactile or visual feedback that drivers are accustomed to receiving from conventional shifters." NHTSA concluded the design "appears to violate several basic design guidelines for vehicle controls," among them that "controls and displays should function the way people expect them to function." Fiat Chrysler switched to a shifter that stays in the position of the gear selected.

Other bodies have backed up her argument about knobs. Crash-test body Euro NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) is changing its rating scheme so carmakers need physical controls to score top marks, including indicators, hazard lights, the horn, wipers and the emergency SOS function. "The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem," Euro NCAP's Matthew Avery told The Sunday Times, "obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes."

A study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, however, found every method of working an infotainment system placed "very high overall demand on drivers," with radio tuning and navigation producing the most eyes-off-road time. Dashboard screens and buttons scored better than voice commands and console rotary dials, cutting against the idea that any physical control beats a screen.

"Make Cars Dumb Again"

Many commenters had a similar view. "MAKE CARS DUMB AGAIN, I scream from the mountaintops," wrote Becca. Several thought they recognized the seatbelt. "Does she have a BMW, perchance?" asked e.wingdings. "I did not know the seatbelts auto tighten once you start driving, and the first time it groped me I screamed."

The rotary gear selector elicited alarming stories. "I rented a car last year that had the PRNDL as a freaking turnable knob in the center console, right next to the cup holder," wrote Amanda Figueroa. "My dog moved and threw us into neutral while doing 75 on the highway." Erin Birdsong said she "accidentally threw it into neutral on the highway" in a Chevrolet Tahoe while cleaning the windshield.

Others went after the screens. "It's illegal to use your phone while driving, and then they turned the whole [expletive] car into the least functional phone," wrote hideous_pizza. "Not distracting at all, very safe." As 420honey put it: "'Give me blue and give me big fan.' Louder for the car companies."

Motor1 reached out to Alet via TikTok direct message for comment. We'll be sure to update this if she responds.