Personal Finance (Not Investing) • "Buy a new Toyota, and drive it until the wheels fall off"

Cars had "Advanced airbags, seatbelt pretensioners" before 2005.

"automatic braking, lane keep assist, cross-traffic alert,blind spot monitors" none of these are "life savers" they are irritating electronic nuances that get in the way of actually driving. Maybe for people that drive with a cell phone in their face they matter. But for those of us that actually know how to drive none of this is useful. Just distracting lights that warn of conditions which are fine. Blind spot monitor tells me there is a car in the blind spot when its 3 car lengths back and I can merge, lane keep is flashing on me when I'm at the edge of the lane because there is a semi and high winds and I want extra clearance, car slamming on the brakes because it thinks I'm going to hit something in front of me when I'm actually about to change lanes, etc.

Backup cameras are a convenience feature, on a small vehicle they are irrelevant, but if you really want one you can slap it on aftermarket for $30 like I did to make parallel parking easier.

I do agree that some of the new features (which I've experienced only on rental cars) seem to be annoying, although some like adaptive cruise seem handy. However I would have liked to have had them a few times when I was distracted for some reason (including before the cell phone era.) I could claim I never distracted, because I've lucked out and never hit anything because of that, but most of us do get distracted pretty often. And in fairness, even if you don't drive with a cell phone in your face, someone else might, so those automated features might keep them from hitting you (whether you're driving or just walking on the road.) So they might be life-savers.

Statistics: Posted by unwitting_gulag — Thu Nov 07, 2024 1:48 am — Replies 138 — Views 11083