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Apparently, it's illegal to fix your own car in the USA
 
#26
Quote:Logan Darklighter wrote:
Wonderful article from Wired that underscores my opinion on older cars. 
Nothing Beats an Old, Crappy Car

Quote:I write about cars for a living. The job is nothing if not surreal. Last year, I lapped Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a Porsche 962C that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I spent the better part of a day last fall drifting six-figure exotics on a closed-off airport runway for a photographer. I have driven every new car on the American market and more supercars than I care to remember. I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of my heroes, the racers and artists and engineers who spend their lives pursuing speed, beauty, and genius. As with any job, there are bad days, but the best of them provide a glimpse of how humanity works and thinks and dreams.
And at the end of those magical days, I come home to my piles of crap.
Of the seven cars I own, five move under their own power. Just one was built in the last decade, and only two—a 1965 Ford Mustang fastback and a 1968 Alexis Formula Ford race car—could be said to have any real value. Lest you become envious, my entire collection, a term I use loosely, is worth less than a new pickup. I’ve always been this way. I’m 34 years old, and I have owned almost 40 cars. (I’d also note that I can’t stop, but my wife might read this, so let’s just say I can. Any time I want.)

Read the whole thing. Very much worth it.
I especially like how he describes the transmission in the vehicle he recently acquired.  No linkages, no wires.  The shift lever goes straight into the transmission.
Something I like to do with my truck is let my right hand's fingertips rest on the knob of my gear shifter.... and through that I can feel the teeth of the gears running together.

Now that's what I call feedback.

I do not need some over-engineered (and I do not use that term in the good way) hunk of metal to decide for me what gear I should be in.  I can do it by the sound of my little 2.5L four-banger and the feel of the road through the chassis.
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#27
But, Ebony (he asked in a playful manner) How can you drive while holding your latte and cell phone with your rocks-banging-together transmission? Wink
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
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#28
On the flip side, there is this, which would likely put something of a hamper on some of what they are trying to do with copyrights, at least in MA.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.
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#29
My brothers and I got to talking and I had a rather interesting epiphany.

Fully automated vehicles will not be a thing.

Why?

Because it will put the auto insurance industry out of business.

Think about it for a moment. If you completely remove the human element from driving, then there is no one person to hold at fault for an accident - at best, such things will be considered 'industrial accidents' because they were caused by malfunctioning equipment. And therefore, no one will need to be required to have auto insurance - it would be the same sort of optional thing as home owners insurance. Nice to have, but not required by law.

And you can bet that people will not want to have to buy such insurance. Fault for accidents can be offloaded onto other entities that can easily absorb the damages - the manufactures and dealerships, or the local government if it was a malfunction in a traffic management system.'

For this reason, the auto insurance industry will not permit fully automated vehicles to be a thing - it would be their death knell.
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#30
The thing is, there is no "Auto Insurance Industry" any more than there is a "Sugar Bowl Industry". Auto insurance is just a variety (aka "line") of Property/Casualty insurance, and to the best of my knowledge there are no commercial entities who underwrite auto insurance and only auto insurance (except for some special-purpose pools for high-risk drivers in various states, like New Jersey); those that look like it are basically subdivisions of bigger companies. If for some reason auto insurance stops being a profit center, well, Property/Casualty is a big field, and there're lots of other lines in which to make money. Plus, if things work out like you envision, all those other entities will have to carry their own insurance, because they're sure as hell not going to pay any settlements out of their bottom lines.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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#31
And General Motors joins the dark side: http://consumerist.com/2015/05/20/gm-th ... ho-own-it/
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