OT: Buying a new car – are ‘they’ for real?

[spdrun]

spd, you like to me make cost/benefit comparisons. How many people are killed per year based on human incompetence? Compare that to the potential number of deaths due to car hacking or tech failure?

I think self-driving cars would be better, safety wise.

I don’t give a rodent’s asshole about safety, frankly. World’s overpopulated anyway.

I prefer a world with a minimum of surveillance, even if that means a higher risk of death or injury.

[FlyerInHi]

how about better traffic flow? And less emission pollution?

Better traffic flow and much less accidents. Seems like huge win for technology.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=kev374]cars have just become so expensive I just have no interest in buying a new one anymore. I drive a 12 year old truck that is working just great so no interest in spending some ridiculous sum of money on a new one.[/quote]

Trucks are good to if you need to transport big items. Trucks don’t look dated like cars. I have an old truck from my property management purposes. Always reliable.

The downside is fuel economy.

[spdrun]

Trucks are good to if you need to transport big items. Trucks don’t look dated like cars.

Dated is a good thing in my book. Most cars made in the last 10 years look like utter crap in my book. Small windows, high beltlines that make them feel like prison vans inside. Yuck!

I much preferred the glassy, airy look of 80s and 90s cars.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=spdrun]

I much preferred the glassy, airy look of 80s and 90s cars.[/quote]

Me too.

But the mobile prison is to the protect passengers from impact.

If we had automated pods, then the glass structure could return.

I’m predicting that a city in China will declare a autonomous car zone. That would become great research and development location. Of course, that would send American policy makers scrambling for fear of losing jobs and development of the future of transportation.

[FlyerInHi]

On the plus side, think about all the tech that connected/automated cars would require.
Great for engineers and Qualcomm and silicon Valley

[spdrun]

I really don’t care about the fate of engineers and techies. I care more where society in general is going — and I don’t like fact that technologies that should be liberating are being used to create an infrastructure for corporate surveillance and control in the name of misguided notions of absolute safety.

Especially when corporations and government are sharing a bed.

You also do realize that maximization of road use by vehicles and increases usage will make things more difficult for non-autonomous users like pedestrians and bicycles.

[FlyerInHi]

I think that business opportunities are great. It can become the next area of growth for America.

New smart highway infrastructure and new smart automobiles.

[spdrun]

Nah: what we need is some level of economic and societal collapse, so neither government nor corporations will tell us what to do and spy on us. A break so we can evaluate where this kind of progress is taking us and whether we want to go there would be welcome.

[spdrun]

how about better traffic flow? And less emission pollution?

That can be solved with increased density as well as using cleaner sources of energy. As I said — less congestion will actually encourage people to commute further.

The idea of creating an entire surveillance infrastructure for this is insane and stupid.

[FlyerInHi]

spd, tech skeptics said the same thing about the incandescent bulb vs. the CFL and now the LED bulb. But now with LED, lighting can be built-into the architecture creating a revolution in interior design.

If were king, I would be a SimCity megalomaniac.

But think about what Dubai and Qatar and Singapore were able to achieve — turning poor backward places into rich, modern, high-tech, air-conditioned (ie controlled) megalopolises.

I can easily imagine transport pods zipping around in a dense city with pedestrians and public transport.

Will China be able to do it on a big scale?

[spdrun]

I think I’d have enjoyed Singapore more before it became modern, sterile, and bland.

Yeah. Just what we fucking need. Isolation pods whisking people around with no interaction other than pre-planned interaction. Would make for a boring life, and make social control very easy since people of different social and economic classes would literally never need to interact.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=spdrun] . . . I much preferred the glassy, airy look of 80s and 90s cars.[/quote]

Me too. And they’re MUCH more “streamlined” looking. They don’t have 1.5 to 3 ft of their trunks cut off and a portion of the trunk shoved under the back seat resulting in less interior room for MORE $$$$, like the post-2000 sedans are built. This is true for nearly all makes and models.

One of the main problems with the interior of vehicles of this era which are still on the road is LED failure in the dash. However these problems can be fixed, either with piecemeal aftermarket parts or simply dropping a new (rebuilt) console into the dash (if most or all of the necessary gauges in the electronic dash went out).

Believe it or not, a HUGE cottage industry exists for older vehicle parts, both hard parts and all manner of interior and exterior (body) parts. If an owner of an older-vehicle subscribes to online databases nationwide, it doesn’t take too long at all for almost anything their vehicle needs to become available for purchase and shipping … even something small but annoying like a stretched out seatbelt or one with a broken clip! Most salvaged or rebuilt hard parts have a 90-day or more guarantee and used/rebuilt engines/transmissions usually have a one-year guarantee. Most electronic parts out of major wrecking yards have been bench-tested prior to advertising for sale and have a 90-day guarantee.

I recently scored a 20-year-old trunk-mounted CD changer made by Pioneer for Toyota in excellent condition which was OEM for my vehicle on e-bay for $60. I had it installed by Progressive in SD and it is so awesome to have my music again! I didn’t have to pay for rewiring or destroy my vehicle’s factory dash and I can now play my platters on the road again 🙂

I haven’t been able to successfully find a way to play mp3s inside my car. Three different brands of audiocassette adapters all failed to work properly (even after cracking them open and tinkering with them), due to the auto-reverse feature of my cassette deck. I haven’t been able to find any direct way to play music from my phones (with active and inactive SIMS) inside my car.

There is always more than nine ways to skin a cat, folks. The bottom line is that older vehicles are much cheaper to operate and insure … yes, even with repairs factored in. I just outfitted mine with a set of 4 new comfy V-rated Michelins with a 3-yr alignment on Monday and then went home and applied for my $70 rebate. I am now ready to hit the road again!

[spdrun]

If you have a CD changer, you can inject audio from a 3.5mm jack directly into the cable from the radio to changer. Figure out what the pinouts are, make a box that switches between the 3.5 mm jack and CD input.

That’s how you connect a music player — works much better than a cassette adapter.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=spdrun]If you have a CD changer, you can feed audio from a 3.5mm jack directly into the cable from the radio to changer.

That’s how you connect a music player — works much better than a cassette adapter.[/quote]

Well the trunk mounted changer for my vehicle doesn’t have any jacks at all, nor does my “Pioneer for Lexus” portion of my dash.

[Author]

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