6 ms·

The downside, other than the obvious maintenance/reliability concerns of an aging vehicle is safety. Modern cars are much safer in crashes than 20+ year old car

The downside, other than the obvious maintenance/reliability concerns of an aging vehicle is safety. Modern cars are much safer in crashes than 20+ year old cars. [0] What sucks though is that basically every modern vehicle egregiously violates our privacy [1] [0]https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812528/ https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... [1]https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/article...

voakbasda 3y ago
If it’s a choice between safety and privacy, I will always choose privacy. Because without it, you are not safe.
- generic92034 3y ago
  A motor block going through your head might concern you more than an image of yourself going through someone else's head. ;)
  - kragen 3y ago
    in the 20th century governments killed about a quarter billion of their subjects (see https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM) plus another couple hundred million foreigners (see https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/20060800_cdsp_occ_leitenberg.pdf https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2006080...) which brings the total to about five million per year car accidents kill less than that, though by a factor of less than four, about 1.3 million per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...) so probably you should re-evaluate your risk assessment: even if you're only concerned with pieces of metal traversing people's bodies, rather than people being maimed, enslaved, raped, and kept in poverty, ignorance, and disease, you should weight the denial of fundamental human rights as a much larger threat than unintentional automotive injury
    - generic92034 3y ago
      Maybe do not drive a car with internal cameras if you are living in an autocratic hellhole? Yes, things can change in liberal democracies as well, but a car is easily sold.
      - kragen 3y ago
        autocratic hellholes arise where autocracy is more stable than democracy, for example when the police have enough dirt on activists to keep them from organizing opposition and can persuade themselves that such a crackdown is justified you can sell the car, but you may find yourself walking to work, and you can't un-record the videos the car already recorded of you; and, if your neighbors still have surveillance cameras the police have access to, you may not have achieved any actual privacy privacy, in the civil liberties sense, is a collective good, not an individual good
        generic92034 3y ago
        It is an unrealistic expectation that a sufficient number of people boycott modern cars (with internal cameras) to change the vendors' offerings. Besides that, there will not even be a sufficient number of old cars for everyone (everywhere). Your general point is quite correct, though, and I am avoiding surveillance more than most people.
        kragen 3y ago
        yes, i do think preserving democracy and civil liberties is an unrealistic expectation, but i think that we can make efforts in that direction which are productive even if they ultimately fall short of what we would want
steelframe 3y ago
Thanks for sharing the Mozilla report. I wish more people would pay attention to that. One thing I know for sure isn't spying on me is my e-bike, and that's what I use for the majority of my around-town trips.
simion314 3y ago
>The downside, other than the obvious maintenance/reliability concerns of an aging vehicle is safety. New cars appear safer because the scores include stuff that is not directly related with crash safety, so if a car does not have a back camera, or some "active safety" stuff they will get a very low score. but that does not mean that the car is made of paper and you will be less safe in a crash.

voakbasda 3y ago

If it’s a choice between safety and privacy, I will always choose privacy. Because without it, you are not safe.

generic92034 3y ago
A motor block going through your head might concern you more than an image of yourself going through someone else's head. ;)
- kragen 3y ago
  in the 20th century governments killed about a quarter billion of their subjects (see https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM) plus another couple hundred million foreigners (see https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/20060800_cdsp_occ_leitenberg.pdf https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2006080...) which brings the total to about five million per year car accidents kill less than that, though by a factor of less than four, about 1.3 million per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...) so probably you should re-evaluate your risk assessment: even if you're only concerned with pieces of metal traversing people's bodies, rather than people being maimed, enslaved, raped, and kept in poverty, ignorance, and disease, you should weight the denial of fundamental human rights as a much larger threat than unintentional automotive injury
  - generic92034 3y ago
    Maybe do not drive a car with internal cameras if you are living in an autocratic hellhole? Yes, things can change in liberal democracies as well, but a car is easily sold.
    - kragen 3y ago
      autocratic hellholes arise where autocracy is more stable than democracy, for example when the police have enough dirt on activists to keep them from organizing opposition and can persuade themselves that such a crackdown is justified you can sell the car, but you may find yourself walking to work, and you can't un-record the videos the car already recorded of you; and, if your neighbors still have surveillance cameras the police have access to, you may not have achieved any actual privacy privacy, in the civil liberties sense, is a collective good, not an individual good
      - generic92034 3y ago
        It is an unrealistic expectation that a sufficient number of people boycott modern cars (with internal cameras) to change the vendors' offerings. Besides that, there will not even be a sufficient number of old cars for everyone (everywhere). Your general point is quite correct, though, and I am avoiding surveillance more than most people.
        kragen 3y ago
        yes, i do think preserving democracy and civil liberties is an unrealistic expectation, but i think that we can make efforts in that direction which are productive even if they ultimately fall short of what we would want

steelframe 3y ago

Thanks for sharing the Mozilla report. I wish more people would pay attention to that. One thing I know for sure isn't spying on me is my e-bike, and that's what I use for the majority of my around-town trips.

simion314 3y ago

>The downside, other than the obvious maintenance/reliability concerns of an aging vehicle is safety. New cars appear safer because the scores include stuff that is not directly related with crash safety, so if a car does not have a back camera, or some "active safety" stuff they will get a very low score. but that does not mean that the car is made of paper and you will be less safe in a crash.