Guest Post by Eric Peters
Car journalist were – once upon a time – car guys. They were not Safety Nags, indistinguishable from Ralph Nader or Joan Claybrook.
Today, they are indistinguishable. Might as well be Ralph. Or Joan.
Keith Crain, for example. He is the editor of Automotive News – which isn’t really. It would be more accurate to style it, Automotive Hate – because Crain doesn’t much like cars or driving them.
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He likes saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety.
And wants more of it to be mandated. Automated emergency braking, for instance. Crain writes:
“This technology has not only been developed, but it is offered on many vehicles today. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have a voluntary agreement with 20 automakers to standardize automated braking by 2022.
The problem is that automated braking is mainly sold as an extra-cost option or as part of a cruise control system, i.e., adaptive cruise control. IIHS estimates that only 1 percent of registered vehicles on the road today have automated braking.
In my opinion, if an automaker has developed automatic braking and can install it as an option, then it can make the technology standard on all its vehicles.
If it adds to the cost of the vehicle then so be it. Just raise the price of the vehicle!
I don’t know of any company that offers as optional equipment seat belts or airbags or any of the other life-saving devices that have been developed over the years.
There is something wrong with a company having the ability to save lives and choosing not to do so. The driving public deserves all the latest safety systems available.
The government will eventually mandate such systems anyway. Car companies that do not offer these systems as standard are making a big mistake.”
Italics added.
This Clover isn’t satisfied that the saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety technology he personally would like to have in a car is freely available to those who would like to purchase it. He is demanding everyone be forced to buy it – and if “it adds to the cost of the vehicle, then so be it . . . just raise the price of the vehicle”!
Of course!
Try to imagine a car journalist – Brock Yates, for instance – urging such a thing. As opposed to this porcine pile of authoritarian collectivism.
The most amazing thing, though, is how unconscious this Crain guy is about his Coercive Wet Nursing. It is a measure of just how saturated the culture has become with both coercion and wet nursing.
The casual insolence of the dude is absolutely halting.
You don’t get to choose. Crain, et al will simply decree. You, of course, get to pay.
How does he differ from other coercive utopians, such as Ralph and Joan? What is the point of having “journalists” such as Crain, who might as well be Public Citizens like Ralph and Joan?
The ironic thing – which probably does not occur to Crain, et al – is that their amen-cornering of coercive utopianism is why the car industry is dying. Why their jobs will go away along with it.
Coercive utopianism has sucked almost all the joy out of owning and driving cars; it has transformed them into anodyne appliances that are burdensomely expensive to buy and repair and beyond the ken of most people to tinker with.
They’re not much fun anymore, second-guessing almost everything you do. Buzzers beepers, cautionary warnings. Intervention when you don’t want it and didn’t ask for it.
They are suffused with peremptory, least-common-denominator idiot-proofing of the sort urged (at gunpoint) by guys like Crain, who then wonder why people are losing interest in cars as well as reading about them.
I may be the only car journalist left who likes cars – and loathes guys like Crain. Who does not view them as things to be sucked dry of all personality in the name of saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety.
Who figures that if there is a market for something – then the market will provide it at and at a price that those who want it are willing and able to pay. That it ought to be up to you – not me. That it is most definitely not the role of tubby not-so-little busybodies like this Crain character or anyone else to make those decisions on your behalf and without your consent; much less contrary to your consent.
As Crain himself observes, “. . . only 1 percent of registered vehicles on the road today have automated emergency braking.”
What does this tell you, Keith?
It tells me that most people do not want automated emergency braking.
Hello?
Just as – some 40 years ago – most people did not want air bags, either. Back then, it was Ralph and Joan who were furious about that – and urged that people’s decision to say “no, thanks” be rescinded and countermanded; that they be forced to accept a different decision – and pay for it, too.
Today, Ralph and Joan have been replaced by guys like Crain.
There is no car press anymore. There is a metrosexualized echo chamber for the EPA and NHTSA. Ralph and Joan and Keith are the same hermaphroditic homunculus.
It is of a piece with the transitioning of the car industry itself from a business that was in the business of designing and selling cars and driving to one that sells “transportation.”
God, my teeth ache today.
Unfortunately Eric, cars have become and appliance, much like my profession in comp sci.
As all industries mature – they turn to crap.
I love how they write about stuff you know they made up – like $75,000 Euro sedans with subtle traits only a race car driver IN A RACE could discern.
They fixed Nader’s ”unsafe at any speed” in 1964 with a torsion bar on the rear wheels. Then they changed the styling the next year. I drove my brothers’s hand me down ’64 Corvair Monza and watched the odometer click past 100,000 miles twice, rebuilt the volkswagen inspired rear engine once, and it was a bat outa hell. As good as a Porsche Speedster. It drove snow covered mountain passes and the sandy spit backroads of Eglin AFB’s huge reservation as a hunting platform. The only flaw was that elongated flywheel belt. Never go on a trip without one. I broke the fan belt somewhere in West Texas on my way from Californiate to the Redneck Riviera. I had to hitch a ride to the nearest town somewhere East of El Paso with a man with a bad case of b o. It only required one tool to change it. You had to have a socket with a 90 degree swivel joint to change it out quickly. My last month at Emory a preppy tagged my front wheel well with his cherry, red vintage Porsche Speedster. I didn’t give a tinker’s damn as graduation was weeks away. He asked if I wanted any money. I said, give me enough for a case of beer and be done with it. I bought a year old Jeep Commando shortly after that with an advancement on my future Air Force salary.
edit. The Jeep was sold new without seat belts. I eventually installed a set myself years later.
I have to press “accept” on the radio screen of my new truck before i can drive it or listen to tunes.Every fucking time. Didnt read what i am accepting. Prolly accepting sumthin i dont want. Wtf is the point? Once ok, but every drive? Shifter is a knob, and she dont turn til i accept. My goal is to never read, and therefore never know what i have accepted.
I rent a lot of cars for work, I have to use my ‘cheaters’ to read the damn accept screen. I hate it.
My next personal vehicle will be one from the 70s that I will have a shop rebuild it to make it a daily driver. The average price of a car is $33k, so there is plent of room to buy old used and rebuild.
Crawfisher, Enjoy it while you can…. There is a movement afoot to make every car lacking the (no one talks much about it) IP address and equipment needed to remotely disable it ineligible for street licensure. I give it about 5 years or so. Oh, they will use some other excuse (out of date airbags?, lack of required “safety” systems?) but the effect will be the same: Trailer your car to a closed track. Brew your own gas, pretty soon.
Am I the only one that thought Keith Crain looks like Captain Kangaroo? Maybe that is why he has a juvenile mentality. LOL!!!
Grassroots Motorsports magazine is the only automotive magazine worth reading.
I wish car radios were the old mechanical kind where you push the button and it manually moved the slider over. I can stop WAY better on snow & ice than fucken anti-lock brakes can. There’s a whole art to locking them up and purposely using the friction of the snow to slow you down. We have 100 words for snow.
What is the point of ‘car’ magazines and car ‘journalists’ anyway? Seems like there are only about 3 or 4 ‘different’ vehicles out there…..with 43 different brand names. All they are doing is buffing the various company logos for big bucks without any relevance. Besides, vehicles today are nothing but computers with wheels…….comments on them belong in a ‘tech’ magazine.
“… there are only about 3 or 4 ‘different’ vehicles out there…..with 43 different brand names”
My favorite comment in this thread (of many very good ones). Every fucken car today comes from some Cookie Cutter stamper.
I can remember EAGERLY awaiting the NEW cars feature in the various mags each and every year. So much variety! Each car so unique. Back when no one would ever ever mistake a Mustang for a GTO. Sigh. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Fuck. Even car mags can’t be trusted anymore. Double sigh. The whole journalism world is in the crapper.
Agree with you Stucky. If you painted all the new cars the same color and lined them up by sedan, SUV, etc, it would be hard as hell to tell them apart from across a football field.
The last novel car I saw was the Toyota FJ Cruiser, which I bought in ’07 and own still. The only real variety in these new vehicles is the electronics they get equipped with. The rest is regimented design in action, and a complete inability of any of these corporations to innovate or accept any risk.
Better check out and perfect the ABS systems they have now. Tooling down interstate or over a bridge and the car applies brakes and tries to stop. Have to power thru by holding on to wheel for dear life. Check out and you see on internet. We have it all the time in our Sequoia. No one has been able to repair yet. Some say it is a gas cap issue and many other suggestions but no fix. Going to try a switch to shut off as a work around.
Scary shit indeed when your car just decides to slow you down to 20 MPH while in traffic doing 70 MPH on the Hwy.
Probably a wheel speed sensor. Same problem with My wife’s Landcruiser. I just unplugged one of the sensors under the hood years ago, to make system go into malfunction ” disable/default”
Never happened again.
But, naturally ABS and stability control are now disabled along with the warning lights on the dash illuminated.
Henry Ford had it right – apply the KISS rule when engineering things. Today, the KISS rule is no longer taught. Every generation of cars is more complex than the last.
I had a 5-speed 1984 Accord that got 42 mpg, and I paid $1500 for it with 300k on the odo; original cost $9k. The wife had a Prius, which got 46 mpg but cost $25k. So we gained a whopping 4 mpg while boosting the cost by nearly 3x. Progress? Really?
I had numerous safety issues with ABS and traction control systems across ALL manufacturers these last 10-15 years. Complexity is NOT the answer for vehicles – it is a symptom of the disease that has eaten up the entire industry. I ate a guardrail when my SUV ABS decided that it needed to lock the wheels in a turn on a rainy day. Traded it in, and got another – this one decided to lock up going down a gravel road – and into the ditch I went because they would not release.
The most flexible and powerful computer in the world is our brain – so WTF are we doing trying to use less of it in cars?? The entire self-driving car thing is about COPYING and IMITATING a human! The word “redundant” melded with “stupid” might fit – is there such a word? Stupundant?
@ Brian Reilly –
Well, until the entire country is blanketed with uninterruptible cellular, that is unlikely to happen except in big cities. I still do not have wi-fi or even internet at my farm, 85 miles out of Houston – because it isn’t there. If it gets too damnably stupid in the context of legality vs illegality, then I guess I will do like many of my neighbors – ride the horse or the ATV into town down the side of the highway.
I’m still trying to figure out why a farm tractor needs an ECU in the first place…
Eric is so right about the entire “Nanny State” eating the car industry. There is hope though – how long do you think government can continue to spend and never repay the debt they create? When that chicken hits the roost finally, things will change.
In a modern car you’re just requesting the ECM (electronic control module) to do something- start/shift in to gear/apply brakes/steer/shut off. It gets to decide if what you want is reasonable and “allowed” according to its programming and it does the rest.
Recall a rented Lexus somewhere in California (I think) a few years ago. Going down the road the cruise won’t disengage. Driver applies brakes- drives through the brakes (apparently happened to a previous user and wasn’t reported)- continues to accelerate. Tries shutting off ignition (but apparently wasn’t aware the Start/Stop button had to be held down for some amount of seconds) to no avail. Tries putting trans in Neutral- ECM disallows (it figures “why would this driver want to select Neutral while cruising down the road at 80 mph?”).
Car finally crashes. Fatality/fatalities involved.
I don’t want any of that crap on anything I drive (hence a ’67 or ’83 F250 for me and an ’02 Explorer for the wife. My daily transportation is a Triumph motorcycle).
When my wife decides she wants a new car in the next few years I’ll put a switch inline to the ECM power supply. I’ll be able to kill it at any time.
So I’m a Luddite. Go carbureted! (With points)
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C.S. Lewis
Just think, now we have the worst of both worlds – Robber barons AND busybodies, all in this mighty cesspool called Washington DC. interesting times indeed.
Very apropos quotation Grog! My personal feeling is that all of this “safety” BS has simply allowed folks at the shallow end of the gene pool to survive rather than suffer self-deletion.
The single biggest lifesaver was seat belts – everything after has been incremental at best, yet mostly designed to reduce the incidents of stupid people doing stupid things. I just want the stupid to suffer their own consequences, rather than forcing us into contortions protecting them. May sound a bit harsh, but it is what I see when looking back from my own youth.
They want every expensive option to be made mandatory. They want people off the roads! Every time you mandate a feature you ratchet up the cost and thus price more people out of the market. I wish I could calculate exactly how many points of quarterly GDP growth is lost due to cars being forcefully made so hideously expensive.
automated braking almost caused me to get rear ended several times.
my brain says the car in front is turning and actually starts the turn, so I keep going, knowing they will not be there when I get there. The computer says, all i see is an object in front that is approaching fast, slam on the brakes. but the car behind me, always following to close in suburban america, doesn’t anticipate my cars ‘abrupt’ braking, and almost whammo, several times.
and I can’t turn it off.
i now have to re-learn 30 years of driving to get ‘around’ the computers flaws.
I do the same thing. I can be really aggresive about it if there is an open lane to my left. Scared the crap out of the old lady a few times. People will actually think you’re a bad driver for doing this. But its efficient. Why change lanes if you dont have to? Why slow down if you dont have to? And yet there are these idiots who will be behind me and slow down for me as I am turning, rather than simply change lanes on the bare ass empty road. I will signal for a good quareter mile before slowing down for my turn, and they’ll jsut be behind me sucking their thumbs and hitting their brakes rather than changing lanes. Sometimes I take my turn like a grampa just to rub their idiocy into their face for as long as possible. I’m like “dude its a 4 lane road and there’s nobody around and you’re stopping for no reason wtf”
When I was in high school in the Dark Ages(early 60s) guys gave a shit about two things, cars and girls. And the guys with cars got the girls. Might have been mom and dads boring sedan but it was four wheels and independence. Car and Driver, Road and Track, &TC were the bibles and their monthly release was highly anticipated. The writing was excellent (much like Eric’s) and the cars reviewed were exciting. Nowadays not so much. Cookie cutter describes today’s cars perfectly.
start by banning/crushing ALL transsexual SUV’S every where.
move to a car or a pickup.