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The safety features are worth millions of crashes prevented and thousands of lives saved, making them remarkably cost-effective.
Capping the luxury features and size of passenger vehicles would do a lot more to bring down costs than removing safety features.
Clankers shouldn’t be allowed to drive at all, much less mandated. I miss when cars were more “dangerous” but cheaper, simpler, and more efficient. My 1994 Toyota pickup will still be running long after the last of these rolling smartphones are bricked by a lack of updates or Certified Service Components. We’ve been through this already on heavy equipment, I’m mad about having to hack tractors and mad people would fall for safety as an excuse to complicate basic tech we rely on and increase dependence on corporations for service
I appreciate the online update/kill switch/repaiarability, lock out concerns, but these systems are surprisingly good for safety
On an early outing with my kid driving, we were going on a freeway next to a long line of cars waiting at an exit. Well suddenly someone pulls right in front of us, in a way that even if it happened to me I think I would have hit it, and certainly the car couldn’t brake in time and my kid swerved instead, a good call but one I’m sure would have left us running into the ditch at the speed we were going and no experience with that maneuver. However it was like a professional driver, managing to dramatically yank the car around the sudden slow car and neatly back in the lane after avoiding.
I was shocked my kid pulled that off with only 10 hours of driving experience, turns out the car had an evasive steering assist. Saved our asses.
Tons of videos about the emergency braking tests that should easily convince anyone of their value to safety.