Comment by MisterTea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MisterTea | Hacker News Reader

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> I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor all over the car start failing.

That's just it, the tech is making the cars less reliable. Will all of these bespoke parts be available in 10, 15, 20 years? I would hate to have to dispose of a working car because the dead now obsolete chip on the bespoke LCD dash module shaped like the cars dashboard is no longer in production. I had cars who's odometers didn't roll 100k miles until they hit 15 years. I have a 2002 van that has 102k miles on it.

> Now as others have mentioned, these unwanted smart features might actually be required by law/regulation/tax-credit/legal-dept, so it's not bad programming/design but "design by committee" that's dooming our chances of a good dumb car.

None of that requires LCD dash boards, tablets, touch screens, phone home, internet, subscriptions, etc. Everyone is just high on the concept of rent seeking and perpetual cash flows. They hate the fact that you buy something and walk away from them. They want you on a leash like a dog and they've been doing a damn fine job leash training you and your children.

Opinion: Mandated lane keeping and other lane keeping/self driving safety garbage is papering over the failure of the human race to govern itself. The people who I see swerving all over the road are either selfish assholes who insist on playing with phones/speeding while piloting a 3000+ lb machine or people who should not be driving at all. Now we have TV commercials that show people diddling touch screens while driving. We have failed.

Note that "cars are getting less reliable" is a gut feeling that many people have, but largely isn't backed by real metrics.

When's the last time you saw a broken-down car by the side of the road, and is this happening more or less often than 20 years ago?

Do you think cars require more or less upkeep and maintenance than 20 years ago?

Yes, cars do have some new components that have introduced new failure modes, and some of those may be doing worse than others. But as a whole, cars have improved.

I think overall you're right but I suspect the proliferation of luxury electronic features has subjected higher class slices of the population to more failures than they saw before. In 2004 these people bought Camrys and drove them uneventfully. The base car hasn't changed but now that car has half a dozen switches and motors in both front seats the failure of any one of which requires it to be fixed. If the lever in your '04 was finicky you just pulled/pushed slightly harder and were not the wiser.

> When's the last time you saw a broken-down car by the side of the road, and is this happening more or less often than 20 years ago?

The same? Cars 20yrs ago were already very reliable compared to say 30-40yrs ago. And breakdowns observed 20 yrs ago were mostly cars that were aleady old then.

If I see a broken down car now (which is rare anyway), it could almost be age from 30+yrs old to new. There doesn't seem to be a pattern with age. Adjusting for 20yr old cars having 20yrs more wear and tear, you would expect a pattern correlating with age. I wonder what todays cars are going to seem like in 20yrs?

Note: I'm not in the US or Europe, so my observations of the car population may be different to those that are. My cars have usually been 15-20 yrs old Japanese models, bought cheaply 2nd hand, mostly neglected, but still very reliable machines.

> Note that "cars are getting less reliable" is a gut feeling that many people have, but largely isn't backed by real metrics.

Yup. Just like my friends 2010 VW which went into limp home mode after he drove through a puddle a year after he bought it. Dealer had to replace some doodad to the tune of $500 for the part. He then bought a Mercedes in 2013 that started to kill the battery after a month because the park lamps refused to turn off. Mercedes could not figure out the issue even after swapping so they removed the park lamps. All caused by fragile electronics. Meanwhile I plowed the 2002 chevy van through a deep puddle once (being young and dumb) and it coughed, sputtered but kept going until it dried off and then resumed purring.

> Do you think cars require more or less upkeep and maintenance than 20 years ago?

Since I do my own upkeep including engine and tranny swaps (project vehicles), the upkeep is pretty much the same. Check/change oil, and check/top off fluids 4 times year. Then brakes and tires. Worst case check plugs and so on after 50k but those show up as misfires that are easy to feel. All the vehicles I have experience with are 1995 and newer with some 1980's trucks and vans thrown in.

You also have to account for a lot of wear and tear that came from fuel changes. When lead was eliminated the leaded cars suffered from premature ring and piston failure. And when we phased out MTBE we also suffered as alcohol was attacking metal and rubber components with oxidation causing failures. So these changes might make older cars seem less reliable but the fact is we forced them to be that way (for the better).

Already, around 5 years ago, I had a small repair (tranny fluid filler tube replacement) done at a transmission shop. When I arrived, I walked in to hear the owner cursing Ford, because the part required for a 10-year-old Mustang was no longer made by Ford, but also not yet made by any aftermarket. The shop had to custom-fabricate the part themselves.

This will only get worse. Look at how many smartphones don't get security patches after 2 years.

That's a bit much.

Not everyone has the aptitude for good, calm driving. That might make them excel in other areas of life, just not at driving safely in traffic. Has humanity failed because we provided them transportation? No, but we have an open challenge to provide transport and allow these (really, all) people the freedom to mentally engage with something else that they deem more important than the chore of driving safely.

> Opinion: Mandated lane keeping and other lane keeping/self driving safety garbage is papering over the failure of the human race to govern itself.

When you're done riding that high horse, could you come up with a plan to actually make it stop? Preferably one that can't be dismissed as papering over the failure of the human race to govern itself like self-driving features, or dismissed as an authoritarian power-grab like putting fifty times as many traffic cops on the road, or dismissed as a dream like leveling LA and starting over from scratch with a bike-friendly layout.

Backup cameras are mandated in the US now, so that requires an LCD screen on the dash.

No it doesnt. My subaru has it in the rear view, where it belongs.

It's nice if you don't want a touch screen, but a bigger screen makes a very noticeable difference in how usable the camera feed is.

Toyota had that when I looked at the Tundra in 2012. The image is far too small (postage stamp size) to really see what's there.

Am in the only one who turns and looks back, out the window?

I had 20 plus rental cars last year and very few had tech features I would ever pay for.

Lane assist with adaptive cruise are the only notable features for long drives. I did enjoy the red dash notification Toyota has. Totally caught me off guard the first time however, I tried out the ABS.

Once I got my first real backup cam, I was instantly sold. I don't blame the regulators from requiring it, because it's such a huge, obvious win. Especially in parking lots, the camera has a vantage point at the back edge of the car that no mirror will give me, so I can see someone walking or driving down the aisle before I start to pull out.

The other thing I'd like to see more or less mandated is blind spot warning. I especially like the kind that is visible to other drivers. I don't even have it on any of my cars, LOL. I just like to see it on other cars that I'm passing.

Lane assist I am ambivalent about. I had AP, it was okay. It does not drive as defensively as I do, however, which meant that it increased my tension on long drives rather than reduce it. I do like good adaptive cruise however. That means no phantom braking :).

That is actually not as good as it sounds. Your body cannot twist a full 180 degrees, so while you can see right behind you and out the passenger side, anything coming from the drivers side is not possible to see.

It takes some getting used to, but once you learn to back via mirrors you won't want to twist around anymore. You do need to check behind the car beforehand because you cannot see directly behind you and thus might hit something on the ground. However you get much better visibility to things that are moving from the side to behind you, and that in my experience is where the danger is most of the time.

I do favor backup cameras though. They show you things you would miss either twisting to look backwards, or looking in the mirror.

Yes, I can see this. If I was ever home to drive my car, I would get used to it I guess. Just turns into a habit and a tool over time.

A child can stand behind my car and looking out the rear window I would not be able to see them. I get more visibility from my backup cameras and radar sensors on my modern cars than I did on my 2000 Accord.

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