It turns out lots of people do not like the “technology” that’s become weirdly standard in all new vehicles. In italics to emphasize an interestingly odd thing about all this “technology.”
That being almost no one opted for it.
From the Model T era onward, vehicles came standard with the basics and were available with optional features, for those who thought they were worth paying extra for. The willingness to pay extra was an affirmation that these optional features were desirable.. .
Air conditioning being a good example.
It has become a standard feature in new vehicles – but only after many years of being optional. So many people did opt for AC that it became plain most people wanted AC and so it was that AC became a standard feature. Similarly other features that began as optional ones that became standard after years of being optional – such as power windows and a defroster and cruise control, to cite a few examples.
Air bags are a contrary example.
When these were first offered as optional equipment, few people chose to pay extra for them. Instead of accepting the market’s verdict about air bags, the government – in tandem with corporations (the car manufacturers) made people pay extra for them, by denying them their former right to say No thanks to them.
“Technology” is of a piece. It is included – one might even say it is pushed – which tells us something about the desirability of this “technology,” now confirmed by JD Power’s U.S. Tech Experience Index.
It queried owners of new/late model vehicles equipped with “technology” such as Lane Keep Assist – the system that tugs the steering wheel left when you’re trying to turn right – and Automatic Emergency Braking – which slams on the brakes unbidden by you, when the vehicle thinks you’re “too close” to a car that’s slowing down 50 yards ahead of you. And “self driving technology” that only self-drives if the person who doesn’t want to drive keeps his hands on the wheel.
There’s also ASS – a “technology” that automatically stops the engine every time the car stops moving – as for a red light – and then automatically starts it up again when the light turns green and the driver takes his foot off the brake. There is probably not a single case of ASS having been opted for. Yet – weirdly – this “technology” is now almost-unavoidable in new vehicles (Mazda’s vehicles are among the few that do not come standard with this “technology”).
JD Power surveyed 81,000 drivers and found lots of them are annoyed by the “technology” they never had the choice to skip”
“Despite the increasing availability of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), many owners remain indifferent to their value. Most owners appreciate features that directly address specific concerns, such as visual blind spots while backing up. However, other ADAS features often fall short, with owners feeling capable of handling tasks without them. This is particularly evident with active driving assistance, as the hands-on-the-wheel version ranks among the lowest-rated ADAS technologies with a low perceived usefulness score (7.61 on a 10-point scale). The hands-free, more advanced version of this tech does not significantly change the user experience as indicated by a usefulness score of 7.98, which can be attributed to the feature not solving a known problem.”
Italics added.
How many people are “indifferent to the value” of air conditioning?
How is value determined?
How about by seeing whether people want the thing in question – and consider it worth paying extra for? That is how the free market determines the value of a thing. It is something Marxists do not understand. They assert the value of a thing is a function of the labor put into it – such as digging and refilling holes. Or the pushing of the thing, by Marxists. If it is of value to them, then it must have value – such as paying $50,000 for an electric vehicle that has half the driving range of an otherwise similar vehicle – and those who do not see it are too backward thinking or obtuse to understand it.
They must be pushed into appreciating its value.
That is why all of this “technology” few seem to actually want – and no one was given the option to buy – has become standard equipment in all new vehicles. It is part of what you might call a training process. People are being acclimatized to the “technology” that the Marxists who control the economy plan – there is always a plan when Marxists are around – to control driving with.
By controlling drivers.
When you encounter the word “assistance” in the company of “technology” understand that assisting means controlling you. The Marxists use the word “assistance” because it sounds gentle, even kind. Marxists – who are fundamentally violent as every plan they present relies upon forcing people to comply with it – always soft-peddle the violence of their ideology. It is helpful. It is caring.
Joyful. And neighborly.
Some pretend to like it. But the proof that most don’t lies in the necessity of making it – so to speak – standard equipment. The JD Power survey makes the point.
We do, for now, have the option to say No thanks to “technology” – by opting not to buy a new vehicle equipped with it. But for how much longer will the Marxists allow us that option?
It may be as short-lived an alternative as just a couple of months-to-go.
. . .
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> We do, for now, have the option to say No thanks to “technology” – by opting not to buy a new vehicle equipped with it.
…and so I didn’t. I’d first brought up buying a pickup sometime last year with my wife. I’d considered a new or late-model-used Colorado or Ranger for a bit, but the prices put it on the back burner. I’ve also had experience in the meantime with these so-called “driver assistance” technologies in a number of rental vehicles. The only ones I’ve run across that are worth a damn are (1) reverse cameras, (2) those blind-spot indicators in the side mirrors, and (3) the auto-restart feature that kicked in after stalling out the manual-transmission-equipped Nissan Juke I rented for a week over in England last summer. Push in the clutch and it would restart the engine for you. (It was also equipped with ASS and all of the other stuff mentioned above…there was at least a button with which ASS could be turned off.) One could argue that knowing how to properly drive a stick would mostly obviate the need for this feature, but it had been 27 years since I’d owned a car with a manual transmission and my skills were more rusty than I would’ve liked. 🙂
Instead of a late-model midsize pickup, I ended up buying an ’06 Tundra a couple of months ago. I’d set out to buy nothing newer than a 2012 model…my wife now drives my ’12 Rogue, and her ’99 Yukon with inoperative A/C and a check-engine light that wouldn’t stay off was traded in. It’s a tough market for used trucks, with not many older models in the ½-ton and midsize categories and even 8- to 10-year-old trucks still fetching prices on the other side of $20k…often well on the other side of that. High prices and the increasing prevalence of “driver assistance” misfeatures make for slim pickings, but I found something that ticked all the boxes and snapped it up. (There was also a ’14 Passat TDI on the same used-car lot that caught my eye, but I really wanted to get back into a pickup. 🙂 )
Hi Scott,
I think you made the right choice; especially as regards the Tundra – which is a great truck. Such a shame that it’s not anymore.
I had an experience trying NOT to get the “assists”
In 2014 I planned to get a Mercedes M class with the 6 cylinder diesel. At the local dealer o told them what I wanted. I onmybeanted 2 options, leather seats and premium sound, the Harmon Kardon.
We searched the stock throughout the country on their system. Plenty of diesel M’s available but ALL had standard sound, leatherette and the assist crap that was offered at the time- this was 360 degree cameras, automated parallel parking and some other stupid garbage. The sales said he could order it for me. I picked all the colors, ticked the boxes I wanted and off we went. Werks turned to 2 months when I got a call telling me my choices were “unavailable”. If I wanted the car I had to take the retard assist.
That’s how I ended up with my Cayenne Diesel so I guess they did me a favor, I love this care way way better.
But it was frustrating that I couldn’t delete that nonsense even by special order. I am pretty certain none of that nonsense was actually government mandated, but MB preferred to lose the sale to another company rather than sell me one without the clown show crap
The auto industry can be assured I will never again buy another new car.
Eric. Did you get that diesel TLC?
As with much electronic automation, all that the technology is doing is transferring the fight from you vs. what you’re trying to do, to you vs. the tool you’re using to do what you’re trying to do, while taking away your control (or making it much more difficult to achieve control when you want or need it) and rendering your tool obsolete sooner or making it less durable.
Cameras are a perfect example of this. Take an old manually-operated film camera: You learn the basics of photography -what aperture and shutter speed to use for various lighting conditions and effects, and you had a versatile tool that would allow you to accomplish anything and that would last for many decades and still be as useful as the day it was new.
Contrast that with all of these modern cameras (whether film or digital). You can use them on “automatic” which means you’ll get you picture, but have no control over it. Or, if you want control, the vast majority of cameras produced in the last 25 do not offer any simple control of aperture or shutter speed, or if they do it is via a menu which is slow and cumbersome to use. So, you are left with a camera with 1000 features and options, and now your task becomes learning how to persuade that particular model of camera to do what you want it to do (Whereas it used to be just the turn of a dial or ring). You essentially have to learn how to outsmart the camera’s features and programs to get it do what any photographer could easily do in a split second.
And if your camera breaks after the warranty is up, you’ll likely be throwing it away unless it was an uber-expensive one (in which case the repairs will be uber-expensive also, if the parts are even available), with no guarantee that some other electronic component won’t fail tomorrow, because unlike mechanical devices, there is no way to tell in advance when a transistor or circuit board is going to fry.
That has become the exact same scenario we get with new cars. Instead of you vs. the road and the cops, it’s now you vs. your car. Correcting your steering when needed, or braking, or checking your blind spot has now become battling your car to not steer or brake when not needed, and to annoy you. And the “safety features” like blind spot monitoring save you nothing, because you always want to check anyway, manually, because you never know when the feature may just stop working.
And then, if you go back to an analog car, you’ll likely feel strange and be a less competent and less confident driver, because you’re so used to having all of the BS.
And what’s more, now there are a plethora of extra things to go wrong on your car, which can cost THOUSANDS to repair (While the parts are still even available, -a period of time which seems to be getting shorter and shorter lately). You may say “Well, I just won’t repair the extraneous crap when it breaks”, but the trouble is, since everything on modern cars is interconnected via computer and modules, one thing can affect many other things and render an otherwise perfectly functioning car undriveable, or unimsp[ectable if you live in a communist state.
So for all of this technology and cost, we have ZERO benefit, but rather much detriment, which has ruined the driving experience and our autonomy. Considering the cost of these vehicles, imagine what we could have if rather than electronics and mandated “safety” crap, that effort and money were put into actually making the cars better!
We used to be able to live without AC. Even today, I rarely if ever use mine in the car, wife needs it just to drive down the street to the post office. I still remember as a little whippersnapper, it was a big deal, the first station wagon dad got with AC. You could drive along in 120 degrees outside, yet in the car, it felt like you’d stepped into the beer cooler in the back of the store..
“We used to be able to live without AC.”
Yup. Society has become incredibly soft and unable to survive without modern conveniences. Going to be unbearable for a great deal of society when SHTF.
Its good news for those (especially youngsters) who can learn to adapt. The world will literally be their oyster.
Like many here I intend to keep my older vehicle (an ‘03 Corolla) running until I am too feeble-or dead- to drive it. The day may come when Fedgov decides to outlaw older vehicles that they can’t control, in which case I will become an outlaw because there is no way I will comply with that.
My newer vehicle has this saaaafety crap on it. But thankfully, no stop/start junk. The guy who sold me the vehicle, I had him turn that all off before I even left the lot, and have had no problems since then. No bells dinking at me, no whistles, nothing. Except when I just want to drive on the back road to a friend’s house; I still have to wear the damned seat belt because of that nanny shilling in my ears. Years ago, I drove a Toyota Forerunner, while my old car was getting fixed. It was Winter, so per usual we were all driving where the roads were clear and free of snow. The local police and the State Troops do the same. Even with the lane/keep assist turned off, the steering wheel was still fighting to keep me in the half snowy lane, as we were hugging the far right side of the road. During break-up (our version of Spring), we all drive like we are in a game of ‘Frogger’, darting around the newly formed frost heaves and pot holes. The last thing anyone up here wants is a stupid safety feature forcing us to do otherwise, and especially if Bullwinkle decides to suddenly appear out of nowhere and cross your path. I did get a laugh reading the comments here, though, as I remember the old vehicles I had, where the only air conditioner I had were two windows rolled down-and when the bright/dimmer switch was on the floor board.
your new 2026 motorcar has a message for you……through a text.
“‘The ACME (Mother)board in your vehicle has issued a warning to the state transportation administration’s correctional division that your system has an inoperative moisture sensor for automatic wiper control. This creates a serious and possible safety hazard for motorist in your
general area. You now have 48hrs to make the necessary repairs at an authorized state correctional center or your vehicle will be remotely made inoperative and be towed to a State correctional holding center until your compliance is accepted and documented.
Hi Check,
Yup. I anticipate they will issue “lock downs” based on weather – and the learned helplessness of most drivers to deal with such things as as wet/snow-covered roads. For saaaaaaaaaafety.
Eric,
I don’t know if you already heard, but Massachusetts issued “voluntary lockdowns” over a disease that’s primarily carried by mosquitos called EEE. If the criminals that run various governments, including the U.S. government, doesn’t scare enough people over bird flu or Monkeypox (now called Mpox) to “lockdown” their lives and line up for experimental mRNA “vaccines” Big Pharma concocts, they may use EEE to do it.
Ha! That smacks of the bully whose victim has suddenly grown into a teenager, developed muscles and is on the varsity football team. The bully is sad remembering the days when he used to be able to beat the crap out of the little snot nosed kid and sneakily approaches for one last insult. The response is harsh and final. After picking himself off the ground he quietly slinks away forever.
and maybe the weather locks downs will be issued due to recent “this just in” global warming data. Let’s hope it all doesn’t come to this, but the groundwork is ongoing.
how about when the car thinks your impaired and locks the doors. rolls up the windows and parks you and your car on the side of the road in 100 degree heat…shuts off the engine and your cooking slowly until one of the state owners of the vehicle arrives to arrest you. or take your corpse to the recycling center…for a funeral. isn’t that what they do with your body now. liquify it and pour it on the trees…your master at the state will do that once they find your corpse locked inside your cooking car.
people will know what happens to their pets and kids that are locked in a hot car. only it will become the new normal. much like post covid injections being dead suddenly and unexpectedly as the new normal.
or would they say…murdered by vehicle…
Or, when the car pulls that crap at -40 below in BFE in the dark in Decembre, and you freeze to death? No need for cooking, you will be a well-preserved, very frozen corpse.
very very true! frozen to death doesn’t take long.
and it might be like that office worker at wells fargo office building…dead for days no one notices until the smell..or until someone decides to stop and see if the car needs to be towed away and a ticket added for parking on the shoulder…which the former owner had no choice over.
maybe carrying a hammer if you own one of those smart cars…so you can break the window when it decides to take you somewhere else.
That is already being conditioned into kids already. There are WAY more snow days now a days. Now they cancel if the forecast is bad, let alone if it actually happens…..
And covid of course..
I don’t think many of us like any machine with automated features that can’t be turned off. A toaster can be unplugged, but not your “Emergency Braking?
Broken windshield? Sucks to be you. The lane departure bs is somehow tied to the windshield and requires calibration which equals additional cost. Ask me how I know..,
It’s amazing that we’re still able to look out through good old-fashioned laminated glass in the first place! With all of this “saaaaaafety” nonsense, we should all be driving M1’s with “smart screens” in them. Then again, a military tank stuffed with pillows inside would STILL be deemed “unsafe”!
Someone comes up with an idea. He builds his idea into a prototype to show to investors. If his pitch is good and the idea is thought to be sound, the investors might front some money to get his prototype into a sellable product. He’s now an entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur isn’t an inventor. An entrepreneur is a salesman. Whatever the idea is, it needs to be sold. First to investors, then to the general public. Then later to investors with deeper pockets, then even more of the general public. At some point the entrepreneur cuts the product loose -or the product does the same- and it becomes self-replicating.
The entrepreneur then starts looking for another idea.
At some point other would-be entrepreneurs begin approaching him for advice or funding. Good entrepreneurs avoid falling into this trap, but many join investment funds and form vulture capital groups looking for ways to stay in the game without having the 18 hour work days. So they pick and choose based on their expertise, which probably doesn’t apply, but they do it anyway. And they offer “sage advice” that may have been relevant back 20 years ago when they were starting out, but probably doesn’t make sense anymore. If the idea is sound it will probably survive the VC advice. If it isn’t, or the market isn’t ready, or the regulatory environment isn’t favorable, it will wither and die.
Someone figured out how to adapt surveillance tech (probably developed for the CCP’s social credit score system) for seeing a drowsy driver. I suppose it could be a good thing but probably isn’t necessary. Yet here it is. And someone is looking to lever that tech for big payback. After all there are far more drivers in the US than China. If your tech was adopted by Ford and GM you’d get 30% of the market, easy. That’s a lot of sales. And if you can get the regulators on board, cha-ching!
In a normally functioning market the tech would be put out there, and customers would decide if it was valuable or not. Sure there’d be a lot of marketing behind making it sound useful (think back to Lee Iacocca pitching airbags), but it would still be a decision in the hands of the buyer. These days the VC firms don’t want to rely on the marketplace to decide if their product will be a success, so they pitch to regulators. Making it a requirement means you’re only competing over market share with other companies (who can afford to capitalize a new complicated product), not if there will be a market at all. Your “big world” problem is now a “small world” problem.
A little off topic, but comedian Jimmy Dore played video of someone who had a hilarious breakdown of Kamala Harris’ CNN interview. Harris must have done so poorly in that interview that CNN cut a little over half of it out of broadcasting, even though Harris had her running mate there with her.
The whole idea that Kamala Harris somehow magically went from the MOST unpopular Vice president in years to a POPULAR presidential candidate makes NO sense whatsoever….
https://rumble.com/v5d2zpx-scathing-breakdown-of-kamalas-cnn-interview.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
Its like everything the left promotes. They have to invert reality because their ideas would be ignored or rejected. Wearing masks for example. Or the recent idea they have been pushing that eating meat must stop and bugs are now healthy and delicious. When people find the idea of eating or being around bugs repulsive.
Hi RS,
Here’s something else, this time committed by establishment media….just last year, Time magazine ran a piece titled “Why ultra-processed foods are so bad for you”. However, after Robert F Kennedy Jr suspended his presidential campaign in battleground states to endorse Trump and even dropped several truth bombs about ultra processed food, Time magazine flip flopped and ran pieces like “What if ultra-processed foods aren’t as bad as you think?” and even “Why one dietician is sticking up for ultra processed food”.
It does this question indeed.
Why is my libertarian Car Guy not just fucking with AGWs like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93ds1VldZGI
Fuck ’em, Eric!
Fuck ’em, indeed!
Let’s just say I have found some ways…
Now that’s just the service I love. You take ’em out in any way you see fit.
Fuck em, sir!
Trespass: to make an unwarranted or uninvited incursion
It is more or less Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, you are the target.
Trespassing is a crime and is against the law.
If I park my mobile home in your yard, use your electricity, water, use your driveway, you might balk, and I, the trespasser, will be moving to someplace else right quick.
Auto manufacturers are parking technology in your automobile to watch you, looks like trespassing in the real world.
Trespassing causes harm to the victim, and why it is a crime.
The technology can then be perceived as trespassing, the technology allows a crime to be committed, an invasion of privacy or something.
Might even be a weapon. Probably is.
“Mind your own damn business.” – Tim Walz
I think ol’ Timmy’s right. And, we should shove those words down his throat and up his ass…with vigor. This also applies to the control freaks on The Right as well.
If this country can be shown to one example it is that Government, no matter how “limited” it is intended is a cancerous, destructive force at its core. What makes it so infuriating is the passive-aggressive nature of those who seek employment therein. Cool Hand Luke is a perfect example of this when The Captain tells Luke his punishment is “Fer’ yer’ own gooood.” To which Luke replies, “I wish you’d stop bein’ so good to me, Cap’n.” It is at that point Luke get a blackjack behind his ear.
Government is like kudzu. You bring it in thinking it will solve a problem, then it becomes THE problem and is nearly impossible to get rid of.
“ This also applies to the control freaks on The Right as well.”
Although I sympathize with the Right in general, the Right is by no means adverse to control freak behavior, and there’s a lot of things the Right supports or condones that I don’t approve of.
Among them is the control freak behavior by Big Business: which is just as serious, if not more so, than Big Government. And with Big Business, you can’t even vote them out.
Also among them is control freak behavior over what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes and injecting Christian fundamentalism into what’s supposed to be a secular government.
So a pox on Left and Right!
“Among them is the control freak behavior by Big Business: which is just as serious, if not more so, than Big Government. And with Big Business, you can’t even vote them out.”
True enough, Bryce. However, without the guns of government backing up business with regulatory restraints on competition, e.g. declaring freon an environmental hazard when the patent ran out, they have no power to control the customer base.
Big business is owned and controlled by the slave owning control group on top….they own 85% of the SP500 through blackrock…
The SP500 companies are all pushing DEI, global warming fictions, migrant cheap labor slave replacements,
the slave owning control group on top are marxist satanists…. not conservatives…..
One of the bigger problems with this so called assistance technology’s is that it will lead to a loss of driving skills. Unless you do something on a regular basis whether it’s playing a piano or driving a car you will get out of practice and your reaction time increases as you try to remember what to do.
This may still work out well as long as the system is operational but what happens on a cold snowy day if you really have to get somewhere and the technology gets disabled due to the same weather? I guess you’re screwed then.
This would also make an enticing target for people who would use this technology for nefarious purposes.
As Mike Rowe would say: Safety Third. Not everything should be about safety, life isn’t safe and we should stop kidding ourselves about it.
Truth: How many people can drive a stick shift today? Or could, but forgot?
Once you figure it out you never forget.
You might lose a little finesse but you won’t forget.
I was looking at one of the right side drives. Don’t know if I could ever overcome the muscle memory to start shifting with my left arm, without grinding the gears.
probably not much different than leaning a non-synchro gearbox.
If thats shifting without the clutch, I learned to do that on a ten wheel dump truck. All by sound, feel, and RPMs, setting the shifter in the gate, using a light touch to put it into the next gear. I was always better going up than down shifting. My CDL instructor could drive that thing down the road and never use the clutch if he wanted to show off.
For me, it’d be more about getting used to using your left vs right arm to shift. I tried to teach myself to write left handed and gave up.
“technology” that’s become weirdly standard — eric
There’s a reason for this:
‘In May 2024, NHTSA finalized a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard that will make automatic emergency braking, including pedestrian AEB, standard on all passenger cars, SUVs, and light trucks by September 2029.
‘Watch U.S. Transportation Secretary Buttigieg’s exclusive interview about the new rule on NBC Nightly News here. The Biden-Harris Administration, safety stakeholders, and the general public know how urgent it is to improve safety on our nation’s roads. The standard fulfills a provision in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
‘Joan Claybrook, former NHTSA administrator: “We are in the middle of a full-blown safety crisis on our nation’s highways. I am thrilled that the U.S. DOT has issued this life-giving AEB safety standard.
“This new safety rule matches the importance of airbags and safety belts. It also assures AEB is no longer a luxury feature reserved only for those who can afford it as optional equipment.”
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/support-automatic-emergency-braking
To Eric’s point: how many buyers ordered AEB as a ‘luxury feature’? Must be at least several dozen nationwide. /sarc
Like the Clintons (both lawyers) and the Obamas (both lawyers), the ancient crone Joan Claybrook (now 87, and a lawyer) just can’t stop hectoring us. She is our rule-dispensing schoolmarm, and we are bad, unruly boys. This bad boy is NEVER going to buy a p.o.s. Claybrook-mobile with AE-frickin-B — and you can take that to the bank.
By the way, Joan Claybrook — a crony of lawyer Ralph Nader– was imposed on us (at NHTSA) by Jimmy Carter in 1977. She is the arrogant, purblind ‘crat who issued the idiotic fatwa for 85 mph speedometers. Elect another two-lawyer couple (Kackala and ‘Emhoff’) and watch all this patronizing nannying get ten times worse.