Only looking at injury data in the real world would show that.
It's my understanding new cars are not significantly safer than cars from 10 years ago.
This may not be safer as in better crash resilience, but safer as in you have a backup camera, and side sensors for changing lanes.
How did you come to that? The new cars are new and there's no real world statistics for them yet, if you only go by real world data.
What if technology in the newer cars (adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, etc.) prevents injuries altogether?
Most notably this happens when I'm driving down the freeway, and the car thinks something is in front of us that isn't and randomly slams on the breaks.
It has also happened when other negligent drivers have started merging into my lane (where I am), and the vehicle slams on the breaks, against my better judgement of slamming on the gas to avoid the collision because it would have been safer.
My daily driver is old and has no security features, and modern rentals are a nightmare for exactly those reasons.
Also, what's with the newer cars randomly beeping at me to communicate instead of presenting an actual sentence of information? Almost all the time I have no idea why the safety features are engaging because they only communication is a beep of some kind, leaving me confused and taking my eyes off the road to look for some supporting message in the car's interface.
That is luck not skill. Humans are not good drives and never can be.
> Stay focused on the task at hand and be responsible.
That helps. It would help some more if you would also get updated training - safety engineers have discovered a lot of things over the years that few people know.
It's both. Even if an accident is the other driver's fault, there are plenty of cases where driving more defensively would have let you avoid it.
But yes, there's luck too. If you're sitting in traffic at a red light and someone drives into you, not a lot you could do to prevent it.
More importantly, the OP should not claim skill even if he has some: that leads to complacency. If he claims luck he is more likely to admit he isn't perfect and thus pay attention to changes in what he best practice for driving. What he was taught in drivers training 20 years ago assuredly has some things that we now know were wrong, and it didn't even cover some things we now know is important.
But, it also sounds like, some of the driver assist features aren't so good yet either ( reading many of the other comments in this thread )
This is a stretch. The better argument is that the best human reflexes can't react to others' stupidity with the speed and precision modern safety mechanisms can.
This is a difficult sentence to parse. Shouldn't you want the opposite from a car?
Sudden acceleration is a contributing factor in many vehicle crashes.
Driver input causes sudden acceleration. Having access to more power is not an inherently dangerous thing. Poor driving ability is a dangerous thing - though I agree that more power can compound that danger.
I drive a 480bhp 1800kg car. It takes active involvement from me in multiple steps to "take off" or 'suddenly' accelerate, and when it does so, the whole car is configured to _increase_ its stability as its speed increases.
That said, if I were to aggressively accelerate when the road conditions are in excess of what the stability aids (and my fallible human skillset) can counter - which from experience is a high bar for modern DSC (oil, ice) - then I would crash and power would be a contributory factor. But from experience I can say that a small front wheel drive car will have 'let go' far sooner under those same conditions.
High-powered cars, by virtue of their expense, tend to have more comprehensive and capable driver assistance features both tech and mech (you're not going to find a limited slip differential on a budget super mini car)
Under-powered cars have trouble effectively matching carriageway and motorway speed in the short slip roads that are common in the UK. A 1 litre, >80bhp car is fine for city/town and village driving. It is not an appropriate vehicle for motorway or NSL carriageway driving. Anything that has no ability to out-accelerate a HGV maintaining cruise speed to join a motorway has no business being on the motorway.
That’s exactly what he meant.
That said. I did get rid of a perfectly good 2002 Camry to buy a Mustang Mach e about 14 months ago. It was pure indulgence and I'm still smitten. I try to take care of it, but don't park across 2 spaces an extra 200 meters away while at the grocery.
Assuming you can afford to replace it on your own if you need to, this one really adds up.
Even if insurance went optional I'd still go fully comp, as the cost of a new car is not what I need if I'm already financially struggling due to injury
In the US you either have to have liability insurance or be very wealthy. Bill Gates has no need for insurance after all.
You are required to have liability and collision coverage in most states, but comprehensive is optional. People often drop it from their policies to save on the premium. I have tried doing that on one of our vehicles over the years but have barely realized any savings so I’ve ended up keeping it on the policy. Seems like others have fared better.
It definitely increases the drag, but after spending a week driving at 70 the difference in mileage was almost unnoticeable. It helps that I have a small, aerodynamic car that's geared high instead of a truck or blocky SUV.
In dollars, the additional amount you pay to drive an ICE faster is considerable:
https://afdc.energy.gov/conserve/behavior_techniques.html#:~...).
"For light-duty vehicles, for example, every 5 mph you drive over 50 mph is like paying $0.18 more per gallon of gas (based on the price of gas at $2.63 per gallon)."
Even that is a simplification. Air resistance increases exponentially with speed, so the jump in resistance (reduction in efficiency) is much greater from 70-80 than from 50-60.
Also, gas is a lot more expensive now, so the additional $0.18/gal could easily be doubled or tripled at today's prices depending on where you live.
> It helps that I have a small, aerodynamic car that's geared high instead of a truck or blocky SUV.
According to consumer reports, even a very gas miserly Toyota Yaris loses 4mpg going from 65-75mph. It's probably double the efficiency loss if you go to 80mph. Can't cheat physics.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2009/09/tested-spee...
My overall trip efficiency maxing out at 70 was 31mpg, and 80 was 27.9mpg.
Personally, I’ve never driven a Camry and thought, “this is awful”, but rather “this is totally fine and wow, great mileage!” In a similar vein, its status as an abundant vehicle with many parts out there and being generally reliable are all similar and useful things I’d consider before buying a new washing machine or whatever.
If you are struggling to build your self-worth through a car or think you need to spend $50k to get that, try fixing an old Camry yourself for dirt cheap, and then see how you feel. No need to fight for right-to-repair laws either, just buy a part anywhere and clean or replace it according to the manual, which is just a 1000 page PDF on the internet of every possible repair. (Although my next car will be electric, because of climate change. Sorry Camry.)
You can already buy random EV parts online. As automakers make more models and source more common parts for their cars to do this competitively, this aftermarket gets better and more useful. A fairly promising thing is the apparent popularity of EV conversions and home-brew EVs, so perhaps there will be some competition for e.g supplying full-on computer control systems with some serious capabilities. There are also more modifications people will conceivably want to do on their cars. I know someone whose petrol ute has a fridge under the canopy, powered by a solar panel on the roof and an extra battery. Nobody is out there drilling a hole in their iPhone to add a headphone jack, because it would be really bad, but you can do all sorts to cars without ruining the whole experience. The complexity and variability of what people want their cars to do leads to modifications and that demand will have to be met somehow. It's also the kind of strange demand that cannot be met by the big automakers alone.
As for reliability, I hope the market will continue to speak pretty loudly with their wallets on the importance of that. People care about it now, I have no reason to believe they'll stop.
In replay of the recent election in Aus.
There are a lot of high mileage Teslas out there. Most of Tesla's negative reputation seems to be people complaining about fit and finish (paint, panel gaps). The actual mechanical reliability seems to be quite higher than a normal ICE car. However EVs are still pretty new so long term data is still being collected.
Considering how many Teslas have been shipped, a postmarket community forming around the vehicles seems likely. I just don't know how successful it will be when the manufacturer is so hostile toward third party repairs and tinkering overall.
I don't doubt they are reliable cars, though. So are Apple computers and phones.
http://www.truedelta.com/car-reliability
But Tesla still sells well for other reasons, so apparently they don't have to care about product quality.
The writeups of high mileage Tesla's that I have read have not mentioned very many repairs - and that seems to be the general consensus on the owner's forums.
Note that software updates are also considered 'recalls' on Teslas now.
one data point on a high mileage model 3 : https://electrek.co/2020/09/26/tesla-model-3-high-mileage-ex...
https://www.statista.com/chart/23586/average-reliability-sco...
I now drive a 2000 4Runner that has actually gone up in value from when I bought it 12ish years ago. I’ve had two people in the last two years drive by randomly and ask if I was selling.
One of my all-time favorite Onion headlines: Toyota Recalls 1993 Camry Due To Fact That Owners Really Should Have Bought Something New By Now
https://www.theonion.com/toyota-recalls-1993-camry-due-to-fa...
What I have come to realize though is that most people couldn't drive quickly in corners if their life depended on it.
And that there is nothing more satisfying than watching a Tesla or Audi become a small dot in the rearview mirror on a highway onramp or a switchback road, when the emblem on your trunk says "1.4 EcoFlex" and your bumper sticker says "Baby on board".
Sure, you'll get passed when the road straightens out again, but both them and me know that I've won.
Go out and actually drive the cars in this class and they're pretty much all the same. Honda build great cars, but let's not pretend you hop in an everyday Civic and it'll blow your socks off. They are very pedestrian.
We bought a Mazda3 because my wife didn't like the sight-lines in the Civic. YMMV.
It's a moving chair that gets me from A to B
On the contrary, we recently added a 3rd car, and it ended up being a $4000 used Toyota Camry. My first choice would have been a Corolla or civic but none were available at a reasonable price, condition and mileage. Due to the well known rise in used car prices.
It's in good enough condition and meets all the requirements for something that's comfortable, has cruise control and working AC, wasn't in bad shape, and can be repaired and maintained economically. Now I'm optimizing for dollars per km driven and although I could easily afford to take out a car loan for a new Model 3, or similar, I have absolutely no intention of doing so.
At the purchase price of this car and its highway mpg, and driving around 14,000 km per year, even at the current fuel prices (or if fuel goes to $6.85 USD a gallon) there is no way that its $/km is going to be anywhere near as high as the TCO of buying a new Prius or Ioniq nevermind a fully electric car.
I have simply opted out entirely from the concept of buying a dealership new car or late-model car and will continue to spend money on things that are reasonably adequate, and my financial outlay and overall level of stress are considerably lessened. No more worrying about if it collects a rock chip in its front plastic bumper, or a ding in a parking lot, no more paying comprehensive insurance, no more dealership haggling and waiting lists, no more inventory problems.