This Nissan Kicks Won’t Stop Telling Its Owner How to Drive

Audio By Carbonatix

People buy cars to get from point A to point B, but one South Carolina grandmother says her new 2025 Nissan Kicks SR seems to think she’s enrolled in a GPS therapy session. The compact SUV’s driver assist system has been making its presence very known, so much so that the owner took to TikTok to show the world what it’s like to ride with the vehicle’s tech constantly telling her where to go and what she’s doing wrong.

“I’m not kidding,” she reportedly told viewers. “This car has a mind of its own.” Her post quickly grabbed attention, racking up tens of thousands of views from folks who either sympathized or just wanted to see how a little crossover can boss its driver around. The buzz reflects a broader cultural fascination with advanced driver assistance systems and what happens when helpful becomes a little too enthusiastic.

The Kicks SR is the spiffier, tech‑laden trim of Nissan’s popular subcompact SUV. Nissan has loaded the model with a suite of safety features under its ProPILOT Assist umbrella, combining adaptive cruise control with steering help and lane centering to reduce driver workload on highways. That tech is usually meant to ease stress in heavy traffic and prevent unintentional drifting out of your lane.

But for this particular owner, the system seems to be auditioning for a role as backseat driver. In the video she shared, the SUV chirps and vibrates almost like a high‑tech backseat coach, prompting reactions ranging from laughter to exasperation. Viewers in the comments had their own thoughts on the situation, with some joking that Nissan’s engineers had accidentally given the Kicks a “mind of its own.”

Car enthusiasts online weren’t shy about weighing in either. Some praised the Kicks’ various safety features and shrugged off the incident as typical teething trouble with new tech, while others shared their own experiences with quirky driver assist behavior. A few owners in online forums noted that similar systems can sometimes feel overly sensitive or misinterpret lane markings, especially in tricky conditions.

Watching a compact SUV scold its driver might sound like a bug, but there’s a method to the madness. Advanced driver assistance systems like Nissan’s are designed to alert you before you make a mistake and intervene gently if you really do wander off course. Sometimes the alerts include a slight shake of the steering wheel or visual and audio cues that feel dramatic to a human who’s used to full manual control.

A deeper dive into what’s inside the 2025 Kicks SR shows why this tech can be so opinionated. Nissan’s Safety Shield 360 package bundles automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, blind‑spot alerts, rear cross‑traffic warnings, and more, all intended to make modern driving safer for everyone on the road. On top of that, the ProPILOT Assist features are meant to help keep the SUV centered in its lane and at a safe distance from the car ahead.

@christypresherlim1 I stand corrected, it had 22 miles…not 22,000!! I didn’t realized that I said that until after I posted the video. It’s BRAND NEW!! #nissankicks#carsoftiktok♬ original sound - ❤️ CarolinaClassy ❤️  

To be clear, this isn’t a safety recall or a documented defect at this point. It’s simply one owner’s experience with how the system engages during daily use. Nissan has not publicly responded to the TikTok video yet, so for now observers are left to debate whether this is just a tech hiccup, an overenthusiastic safety feature, or simply the natural evolution of cars becoming ever more interactive—or talkative.

Still, the story is a bright highlight in the ongoing conversation about how far driver assist technology has come and how drivers feel about it. As more vehicles join the ProPILOT, Super Cruise, and other assisted‑driving clubhouses, stories like this one, where the machine seems to take the wheel and the personality, will almost certainly keep rolling in.