Drive Focus and bluetooth weirdness

Since updating my iPhone 16 Pro to iOS 18.x the screen is replaced with a simple Car icon when my iPhone is connected to my truck's radio via bluetooth. I have tried for hours over the past month trying to get this turned off.

Between Apple support pages, dozens of various forum threads, YouTube videos, etc., I've tried the following:

• I've tried turning Drive Focus off, setting to Manual only, and eventually just deleted the Drive Focus entirely.
• I've tried to forget* the truck radio and reconnect it in bluetooth settings.
• I've reinitialized the bluetooth on the truck's radio.
• I've changed the truck's radio bluetooth device type on my iPhone to Other, Speaker, etc.
• I've tried many other things I can't even remember.

Nothing I've tried stops this annoying screen that, while it's supposed to improve safety, actually makes it far worse. Siri's capabilities are not sufficient to operate any aspect of the phone without access to the screen, even for simple things like placing phone calls, navigation, or controlling music / podcasts, etc.

I had this problem when my iPhone 13 Pro was new, but I was able to shut it off pretty easily. With iOS 18 not so much.

Related but separate (?) issue

*At some point in the past on my iPhone I renamed the bluetooth item for my truck radio from whatever the default was ("DPT52x" or whatever) to "Truck Radio".

One of the recommendations to resolve my main Drive Focus issue is to: forget device, turn off bluetooth, restart iPhone, reconnect, etc.

When I do this, the device named "Truck Radio" shows up under OTHER DEVICES that I can connect to. If the iPhone truly "forgot device" why does it remember the custom name I gave the device? (I've also tried searching for ways to clear any bluetooth cache, to no avail.)

This makes me question if other settings aren't being remembered / stored correctly, like stating that the truck's radio is "Other" instead of "Car stereo"?