I’ve been following your blog for a while and I agree with most of the things that you are saying. I travel a lot and so I’m exposed to lots of rental vehicles and am increasingly unimpressed with all the new features. It wasn’t until you described ASS, that I realized that was actually a feature and not a bug, although I would debate the feature/bug aspect of it. I have no interest in purchasing any of these new vehicles. I drive an older car (’99 3000GT) and will probably continue to do so for some time. At least until I can’t get parts for it anymore. Just wanted to let you know that I enjoy your articles. Keep up the good fight.
My reply: New York City is to cars what the Vatican is to stag parties. So it doesn’t surprise me that the New York Times would talk up the end of cars; it’s already happened there. Most people who live there don’t own or drive cars, for the reasonable reason you can usually walk to where you’re going faster – and finding a place to park is all but impossible. Ride-sharing will work there for the same reason taxis work there. It just means cutting out the taxi driver and replacing him with software – in the case of automated cars.
But what sells in the city won’t sell elsewhere, especially the farther away you get from the city. The distances are too great; the wait too long – and that’s not even getting into the automated aspect, which also won’t work absent a technical miracle bordering on the magical.
This is a frenzy, like Orange Man Hatred and the EV Obsession. It is an affliction of elites in DC, LA and NY.
Unless they intend to go full Stalin – and exterminate us Kulaks – this is never going to fly. At least, not for a very long time.
. . .
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NYC residents have been taking sh!t for a very long time…and apparently liking it.
Since the Sullivan Laws were enacted, enabling the most extreme and restrictive limits on the acquisition and uses of firearms, the Constitutional right to defend one’s self and others has been almost totally obliterated. Once restricted to handguns, the laws have been extended to rifles and shotguns, all of (what were supposed to be “registered”) demanding that they either be confiscated or taken out of NYC. I’ll bet that those people who voluntarily turned in their weapons added to NYC police officers’ nice gun collections.
NYC prosecutors relish the thought of prosecuting those who legally defend themselves, even a “rolled up newspaper” is considered to be an illegal “weapon”. The honest citizen is the easiest person to charge and convict.
If you defend yourself successfully against a criminal without NYC police being involved, you WILL be prosecuted.
Witness Daniel Penny who is being viciously prosecuted for saving fellow subway passengers from mentally ill Jordan Neely who had been harassing and threatening subway passengers for decades.
You see, the approximately 36,000 NYC police officers do not want to give up their monopoly on the use of force. They cannot have honest citizens “taking the law into their own hands”.
On the other hand, observe the “kid glove treatment” given to the jews who were tunneling under the streets under their synagogues. Despite evidence of child abuse and other crimes, blood-stained child-size mattresses, toddler high-chairs and other child-size items being found, the tunnels are discreetly being “filled in”, destroying criminal evidence in the process. If child abuse were not a part of the equation, seeing jews crawling out from under the NYC streets scurrying like rats makes for top-notch comedy. In NYC, jews are politically powerful and are also a “protected class” and can do no wrong. There will be no investigations…
Nope, NYC is not for me. I will go around it and avoid it like the plague…
Does NYC allow one to live without a car? Yes, but it comes at a cost. Whatever you save in terms of car payment, insurance, maintenance, fuel, and depreciation will be offset by the high cost of living in NYC. Rent is expensive there, even in the outer boroughs. Unless you’re wealthy, forget about BUYING a house or apartment there, let alone pay the exorbitant property taxes! Then, there are the CROWDED subways to deal with. I was in NYC visiting recently, and the R train was like a sardine can on rails! Fortunately, I only had to travel to the next stop. I like visiting NYC once in a while, but I sure as heck wouldn’t want to LIVE there. Besides, I like having a car and the ability to go where I want and when… 🙂