Your Personal Micro Blog(s)

...So it's alright if someone locks up their brakes and crashes, but you draw the line at someone locking up their brakes and going slow?

 

The former is a natual random phenomenon caused by entropy since "99% of the time, if your ABS module breaks, it's because of wear and tear", while the latter is an artificial phenomenon caused by the deliberate act of sabotage by manufactures who disregard user's right.

 

I'm just being realistic here. The world doesn't revolve around car enthusiasts

 

this whole conversation has so violently departed from the original argument its actually funny

 

Realistically speaking, non-enthusiasts' cars also need repair. They have right to repair their cars themselves, or send their cars to an auto repair shop. If manufactures deliberately make their cars in a way that repair cost is so expensive that auto repair shop cannot earn a living, or install malware that brick the car when repaired by third-party, then we have a serious problem.

 

That point is fine and fair, but the OP was referring to car culture dying out because nobody wants to fix cars like people did during the old times. Either way, we have the internet and car forums are a thing. There's thousands of pages of information at your disposal.

 

Not "nobody wants to" but nowadays cars are getting increasingly hard to repair.

Here's a notorious example: Tesla Model 3.

In this video(in Chinese) a Tesla Model 3 and a BYD Han were being driven 40,000km as a endurance/reliability test. Both of them encountered some problems and repairs were conducted. In the Model 3, the bearing of the rear motor failed making the motor sounds like a V8 engine. Instead of replacing said bearing, the ENTIRE rear powertrain, including the motor, power inverter and the reduction gearing were placed as a whole unit. This practice not only hurts customer, but also very environmentally-unfriendly.

 

add to that the fact that cars need less repairs.
back in the 70s, it was common for your car to not start in the morning, because the carburettor had rattled out of adjustment and it was a cold morning. you had to take your car and get a regular "tune-up" (or do it yourself). Not to mention cars only having 5-digit odometers.
up until the 60s/70s it was still standard practise to get your car repainted every few years because the shitty single-stage paint would die from being in the sun for too long.
looking back at 1920s luxury cars, owner's manuals are always filled with "get your man to grease all 37 points on the chassis every 5,000 Miles", there was so much regular maintenance required you were expected to hire a chauffer to do it for you.

cars naturally become less "repairable" because there are less things that need repairing.
yes, locking diagnostic software away so only licensed technicians can have it is shitty, but it's not the whole story.

 

ICE cars nowadays are generally easier to repair because all you need is an OBD-2 port and a scanner. "Oh, my car is throwing a code for EGR? Time to clean that out". Now YMMV, but from what I've worked on so far, having the computer tell you what the hell is broken on your car is great.

 

BMW scrambled their OBD signal delibrately to make diagnostic difficult for non-BMW auto repair shops.

 

True, but certain concessions to comfort can amplify their effects. In order to have head-on and run-off-the-road crashes of these types, you need to meet two conditions:

1. The driver needs to stop paying attention
2. The car need to be able to wander out of its lane before they start paying attention again

Overboosted, too-light steering decreases the length of time needed for 1. to become 2., potentially by quite a lot, thereby, at least theoretically, making distracted-driving crashes more likely.

Cars are getting expensive (and there are bannable reasons for that as well), but when it comes to time, somehow I find it hard to believe that people today have less time for vehicle maintenance and general DIY stuff than they did before. More likely, we all have about the same amount of time, but we now spend it differently... like maybe on passive entertainment? I've wasted enough of my own life (and this day) on video games and the internet to know very well how that goes. And as a result, we all become a little more helpless by the day.

There are other troubling cultural shifts involved here too. Have you noticed how dull the color palettes of mainstream cars have gotten lately? Few bright, glossy reds or yellows remain, and there is scarcely a metallic purple or light teal to be found anywhere; the few interesting colors that do remain tend to show up mainly on sports trims or dedicated sports cars. Mainstream cars are stuck with lots of neutral colors and muted metallics; if you want to burn with a little bit of color, you can choose, depending on the car, metallic dull medium blue, metallic dull ruby, metallic dull burnt orange, or maybe a very dark metallic teal. It's as if the intent is to stand out as little as possible in traffic while still giving off a "premium" vibe. Where did this thing - this desire to blend in and avoid conspicuousness while still looking vaguely upscale - even come from, and how can we get rid of it?

Funny how every time I hear someone say this, they're using it to justify a world without car enthusiasts, or at least the path to one.

Not to mention, the original purpose of my mentioning too-light steering wasn't "everyone should want lots of steering feel", it was just that a car's steering system should have at least enough weight to prevent accidental course changes.

And here's another thing a lot of people don't realize - car culture is a canary in the coal mine of greater society. Because it irritates some types of people and tends to operate in not-strictly-legal ways, it is often one of the first things to suffer when things go wrong in an overall culture, and yet things which harm car culture will eventually harm the normies too - just much later on, when it's too late to go back.

Most normies back then wouldn't have gone to single-make forums either, but they still thought it was cool to have a car that looked and sounded fast, and useful to know how to maintain it. Back in the 1960s my grandfather, an ordinary family man working a blue-collar job, was putting glasspacks on the Plymouth Sport Fury that served as family transportation. He wasn't a street racer; this was seemingly just a case of "haha V8 go brum brum". I would go so far as to call that sort of low-intensity "mainstream car culture" absolutely essential to the long-term survival of car culture as a whole, and even if it isn't, it makes a good base for it, but either way, it's either becoming much less common lately or large numbers of manufacturers have all started refusing to acknowledge its existence. The insane sales success of the modern Dodge Challenger tells me it just might be the latter.

 

This. That's the reason why I love mechanical hydraulic power steering. The feature of hydraulic power steering is that it always reduces the required steering force by the same % regardless of driving condition. When driving a vehicle with hydraulic power steering, if the steering feel "empty", you know you are on ice. Steering a vehicle driving very slowly with electronic power steering feels like driving on ice all the time. Thus, the driver will receive more road condition data when the vehicle with HPS than vehicle with EPS. The same applies to other condition such as crosswind where the driver have to correct the steering constantly to prevent the car from changing lane inadvertently. The use of artificial feedback/gain curves in EPS may lead to driver misjudging the road condition.

This might also be the case of aviation. The use of fly-by-wire(FBW) physically disconnects the control column from the control surfaces, making the wind pressure unable to reach the pilot. This does not pose a problem most of the time since the FBW has its own flight envelope protection, making the aircraft itself feel heavy despite the side stick is too light. However, in the case of FBW failure, the heaviness of the aircraft is gone(since the heaviness is created by artificial means to begin with) and since there's no mechanical linkage, the stick still feels too light, making the commercial airliner feels like a fighter jet. In both the case of Air France Flight 447 and Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501, the FBW were disengaged inadvertently and the pilots lost control of their aircraft due to disorientation caused by lack of "feel".

 

The driver needs to put their phone away and focus on driving to begin with. I've driven a few newer cars and don't feel the "overboosted, too-light" steering. Sounds like it's a vehicle thing.

From what I've seen anecdotally, most people are afraid to break stuff and are not mechanically inclined to do things themselves.

For example, my dad will maybe replace windshield wipers and headlights. Anything else and he sends it to the shop. Why? Convenience and time. Some people just hate fooling around with cars.
At this point, why not tell people to stop being lazy idiots and start cooking on their own instead of going to a restaurant? I guess society is going downhill right?

Hell even people wanted to, there are HOAs will not allow you to wrench on cars in your driveway or you'll be fined which has happened to a few of my friends.

 

And its stuff like that make me think humans will not last another few decades without softly killing each other


And people should stop being lazy and cook for them selfs, its save them money in the long run

 

It'll save humanity in the long run

 

Lol i like that you've used my old post as an example of malicious crippleware.
I recommend to NEVER take a new model VW to a warzone. Or during peacetime even, wouldn't want to drive more than 10 miles from a service center.

 

https://www.adac.de/verkehr/recht/verkehrsvorschriften-deutschland/tesla-touchscreen-handyverbot/

Spoiler: English

A touchscreen in the car falls under the cell phone ban - if the driver looks at it for too long. What drivers should know after the ruling of the OLG Karlsruhe.

Operation of the windshield wiper in the submenu can lead to a fine

"Mobile phone ban": No difference between mobile and permanently installed devices

Only brief glance allowed: Touchscreen must not be distracting

Since the so-called cell phone paragraph (§ 23 para 1a StVO) was expanded four years ago, many things are more concrete: Not only is talking on the phone with a cell phone to the ear prohibited, but also the use of other electronic devices. Touch screens are also listed there - regardless of whether they are used for entertainment or to operate the vehicle. In the summer, the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court upheld the verdict against a Tesla driver who had operated the permanently installed touchscreen in his Tesla 3 while driving in order to activate the interval control of his windshield wiper in a submenu (Ref. 1 Rb 36 Ss 832/19). In doing so, he drove off the road, hit trees and a sign.

The judges explained that the provision § 23 para 1a StVO does not distinguish between mobile and electronic devices permanently installed in the car. In addition, controlling the windshield wiper interval via the touch screen requires significantly more attention than operating it with a lever, the judges said. A windshield wiper icon takes you to a submenu in the Tesla 3, where you can then choose between five settings. The judges therefore considered the use of the touchscreen to adjust the windshield wipers to be a violation of the cell phone ban and thus an administrative offense. In the specific case, this meant a fine of 200 euros and a one-month driving ban. The special thing about this ruling: for the first time, a vehicle-related activity led to a fine - not making phone calls, texting, checking Whats-App.

According to ADAC experts, frequently used functions that are relevant to the driving task do not belong in the submenus of the touchscreen. Dino Silvestro, head of vehicle testing at the ADAC Technik Zentrum: "Basic functions such as windshield wiper, heating and light control must be operable without taking your eyes off the road. So new concepts must be at least as easy to use as haptically tactile buttons or switches." Touchscreen: When use is permitted

The ruling has a direct impact on practice, because touch displays have become indispensable in modern vehicles. Important: § 23 para.1a StVO allows the general use of touch screens. There it says: "Provided that for the operation and use of the touch screen permanently installed in the passenger car, only a brief glance at the device, adapted to the road, traffic, visibility and weather conditions, and at the same time a corresponding averting of the gaze from the traffic situation, takes place or is necessary, the device may continue to be used by the vehicle driver." So: a quick glance is fine. Anything else, however, is prohibited. Every driver should internalize this. Because numerous studies, including those by the ADAC, show that distracted driving is one of the main causes of accidents.

Find out more about the ban on cell phones at the wheel, what the penalties are, what you can and can't do here. Petra Zollner Editor

--- Post updated ---

Here's another one. You are escaping from a war zone, and your rear left motor inverter gets shot. If you are in a vehicle that respects user's rights. Only the rear left motor will fail and you can drive away with two remaining motors running. If you are in a vehicle that disregards user's rights(Tesla Model X) crippleware will disable the remaining good motors, making you a sitting duck and this will get yourself killed.

No one(at least no one in this forum) wants war, however, life is unpredictable and you'll never know if(or when) a war is going to break out in your area.

 

Me having been away from the forums reading all this:

So what is the main argument here?

 

Do any French people here have an opinion on this?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ch-jargon-in-push-to-preserve-language-purity

 

back to the blogging, I spent some time to restore my newly inherited car. not quite perfect the way I want it, but it's getting there. completely stock 3800 supercharged with 55k miles on 'er.