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Cars. I appreciate all of the advances in emissions reduction, safety, etc., but when I was a kid I learned the basics of working on nearly any car on the mark
by bbarn 5y ago
Cars.
I appreciate all of the advances in emissions reduction, safety, etc., but when I was a kid I learned the basics of working on nearly any car on the market, and now even with an OBD scanner most of them are still near unfixable without visiting a dealership. Cars are literally immobilized by things like faulty sensors when if ignored, the car would legitimately still work just fine.
That's just the purely functional stuff. The hassle-ware that's been installed between in dash "infotainment" systems, integrations with remote third parties, etc., I honestly believe is more distracting and dangerous than genuinely helpful. We've grown accustomed to this so much that people have told me they are "bored" driving sometimes without all of their gadgetry. That shouldn't be the state of normal when driving, it should be "I am operating heavy machinery and should pay attention to what I'm doing because my life does depend on it".
It's interesting to me that our trend with software has been to simplify interfaces over the years and cars just keep adding buttons and integrations and auxiliary ports for devices, and excuse themselves with useless friendly warnings that tell you not to use them while you're using the car.
- rco8786 5y ago> Cars are literally immobilized by things like faulty sensors when if ignored, the car would legitimately still work just fine. Any concrete examples of this? FWIW, cars are orders of magnitude more reliable than they were 40, 50+ years ago even though those were easier to work on.
- uoaei 5y agoAssuming that reliability is weakly inversely correlated with repairability (reliable things may be more complicated and thus harder to fix without specialized tools or knowledge), I'm sure there are subjective optima that balance the two and are more practical than the current extreme of maximizing reliability but being completely crippled at the slightest disturbance.
- rco8786 5y agoAgain, any concrete examples of "being completely crippled at the slightest disturbance."? I've had lots of cars both modern and old and never experienced a disablement due to something that wasn't truly disable worthy.
- naturalauction 5y agoA 2010 (not sure about other models) Toyota Prius has to be towed to and serviced by a dealer if it runs out of fuel and battery. An older car would have been able to be jumped and refueled.
- bbarn 5y agoFaulty Mass Airflow Sensor on my 09 Touareg told the car that not enough air was getting into the engine and it just refused to start. This is on the main intake, which unless completely covered is impossible to block. Plenty of air was getting into the system, so it was possible to disable it and the car worked fine.