VDO (Very Dangerous to Operate) Radios in Kia Cars

I've had two Kia Sedona cars, and three VDO Radios (the first one was stolen). First, and in general, they're the fiddliest faffingest fussiest eentsy-teentsy things to deal with while driving! The tiniest buttons in the most counter-intuitive places. If you and the radio were on a gyro-stabilised massive concrete block you could still quite easily press the wrong button.

The real problem, however, is that two of the three VDO radios were subject to channel-hijacking, requiring some quite nifty and dangerously distracting button-play to get back to the station you were listening to.

It's to do with the "TA ON" feature, where you can choose to be interrupted by traffic announcements from nearby stations. On a 'proper' car radio, designed by someone who's driven a car, there's a nice clear TA ON button. When it's on, any local traffic news breaks in as it happens. If it's relevant, you listen; if it's not your area, you press the TA button and revert to the radio station you were listening to.

When all is working well, it's great. On the two radios where it didn't work, you're driving along and suddenly the radio switches stations and gets louder - the sign of a Traffic Announcement.

- Sometimes it's a real Traffic Announcement, and you press TA to drop it when you want to.
- Sometimes it's not a real Traffic Announcement: somebody at the station has pressed the TA button by mistake. Again, press TA to drop it; no harm done.
- Sometimes it's a hijack - your radio has jumped to or been grabbed by another station. It's got louder, but no-one's doing traffic.

If you press TA on the third occasion (and you have to peer at the display to see if that's what it is) you'll drop the station but you'll also have inadvertently switched off Traffic Announcements. To get them back, you have to cycle the TA button through NEWS ON, NEWS OFF, then TA ON. All while squinting at the display and scything down a couple of bus queues.

Yesterday, 21JUN06, I had a double-decker - a first! Radio Leeds broke into my chosen Radio 4. I checked the display: a straight hijack; no Traffic Announcement. Before I could re-select Radio 4 (I now have all six presets set to my favourite station to give me at least a fighting chance of getting it back before I crash or rip the radio out), Radio Leeds' own Traffic Announcement came in on top and, when it was over, the radio dropped back to Radio Leeds. So I've now experienced a hijack with a Traffic on top!

If I wasn't trying to drive my car at the same time, I'd quite enjoy outguessing my car radio but (and there's a clue in the name) I'd prefer it if my car radio worked like a, well - er - like a car radio!