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- cross-posted to:
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Car Companies: “the regulations are so big and heavy and workers cost so much munnies. Pls let us do less QA on the vehicles mandatory to live in america.”
Republicans: “CRUSH MORE CHILDREN, who would dare inconvenience these poor sweet automotive corporations?!”
Anyone paying attention: “Yall know aside from oil companies, car companies are the most ridiculously subsidized companies on earth?”
Replace seat belts with piano wire and make air bags with 50x the explosive charge but replace the airbag with ball bearings.
Ford pinto
Ah yes the Tullock Spike
Exactly! Except I make Lemmy shitposts for shits and giggles and am not an economics professor who never gets invited to parties.
Why do you want millions of people to die? That’s pretty weird.
Millions dead? Are you crazy? 3 months of my 2 point auto safety plan and everyone will drive very very carefully all the time! I’m SAVING LIVES!
Natural selection has been removed. Now republicans are trying to reintroduce it.
They’ll (mainly) be the ones affected. I say let it happen.
Then again, I don’t like most people.
Reads as rather blantant satire to me. Perhaps you’re the weird one weirdy.
This is kinda misleading, the complaint is that cars are too expensive. They’re not saying cars should be less safe, just that the extra safety isn’t worth the financial cost.
(Still not a good position to take in my opinion)
Yeah, and the thing is I’d be a lot more receptive to that argument if they were willing to support funding the sort of road and transit infrastructure that actually make cars less dangerous.
That’s par for the course for Republicans. Are things too expensive? Let them be shittier so they are cheaper.
and then they buy tacky, gaudy expensive things.
And the act all surprised when they just get shittiee, but not cheaper.
Then it becomes shittier but the price stays the same while the manufacturer pockets the difference.
Its not misleading. They could cut costs in multiple areas, but specifically chose safety.
Cars in some ways are too coddling, giving people a false sense of safety. All these new features like lane keeping and blind spot warnings make people drive with reckless abandon.
I’ve seen people over rely on bad lane assist and just kinda ping pong from side to side in their lane. It’s… kinda stupid.
Also, what’s the deal with the side mirror light that turns on when someone is near? My car has a small convex mirror attached to the standard one and I can see my blind spot quite clearly.
Jesus fuck! What the fuck is it with these fuckers!?!? really? Cars are too safe!??! WTF?
I am guessing they want to deregulate the safety laws so that they can take the money that they spend on it and stick it into their pockets and still keep the price of cars the same!
To be fair, Automatic Emergency Braking sounds like it has enormous potential for things to go wrong but I say that out of concern for safety, not expense.
Furthering that they are indeed not the “Pro-Life” party but instead the “Pro-Birth” party.
“Forced-birth” party
Agree but starting to even wonder about that. I’ve never seen them do anything that benefits births let alone even celebrate it. Seems to be “Pro-Misery especially at others expense”.
That’s where the “the cruelty is the point” expression comes from
Remember, their cars are the gaint Yukons with a convoy of body guards aren’t safe enough. But your car. It could literally be a gascan strapped to tricycle for all they care.
It could literally be a gascan strapped to tricycle for all they care.

I’ve been seeing a lot of weird culture war coverage around this, even more than usual these days. Big fan of cheap, simple, accessible technology and tools. Cars are tools. Less components and less complexity means they are cheaper to produce and maintain. Bring back the econobox, the car I’m hype for is the electric equivalent of a 94 Corolla
I’ve always thought an electric 94 Ranger would be pretty dope.
Heck yeah, plenty of room for batteries down low under the bed and it’d help out with the mini truck achilles’s heel of poor traction unloaded. I’ve thought about a conversion like that a lot too, rwd only would be easy
Also, cars that are excessively safe for their occupants tend to make them deadlier to other road users.
This is the only excuse for the massive inflation of new car prices vs. rate of wage increases over the decades. I will give auto engineers props for this accomplishment; cars are so much safer now than 30 years ago.
Dont sleep on either “many new cars are electric” or “cars last a fuckton longer”.
Per-capira “total cost of ownership” for a car from purchase to retirement hasnt increased nearly as much as first-sale price would suggest. (Though the “financing cost” of the one-or-more transactions is a separate matter.)
Never buy new. Let someone else deal with the frequent hassle of getting all the problems fixed “under warranty” while the lemons get sent to salvage. Give me the vehicles that survive. Case in point, I bought my first car for $500, drove it for 24 years, and the biggest age-related expense was rebuilding the front end for $600. I sold the car in 2011 for $1000. I bought my current SUV in 2009 and the biggest mechanical failures have been replacing the power steering pump and the 4WD short axles.
I had a friend who insisted he needed to spend all his money buying new cars. He tried to tell me how much money he was saving because the dealership was fixing all the problems for free. I pointed out that he had barely even driven his new car because it was spending more time at the dealership every week or two and he was constantly wasting his own time taking it back for yet another problem.
Good advice, though not really germane to the topic.
Somebody has to buy the new cars for there to be used cars for you to buy, and the price you offer has to be more valuable to them than the car they’re selling.
That’s what rich people are for – to suffer for the benefit of the working class.
FWIW, A good argument for buying new isn’t “look what the dealer’s fixing”, but rather “I don’t want hidden surprises”. Private party sales can very much be caveat emptor, and even getting a dealership to stand by their claims can be unprofitable.
What year was that? I don’t believe a $500 car would last 24 more years. These days you can’t even buy a 24 year old car for $500
It was a '74 Pontiac LeMansthat I bought in 1987. And sorry, I did forget about one thing… I had to replace the transmission a couple times, but back then you could get them from a junkyard for cheap, and it only took a couple hours to replace. Probably would have lasted a lot longer if I’d taken the time to rebuild the clutches though. Of course it’s not like you can drive any vehicle forever, there was the maintenance as things like bushings and alternators wore out. For this discussion though I don’t count things that you have to do on any vehicle with 300k miles on it. Everything wears out eventually, and yeah even the motor was starting to smoke by that time.
Lots of ways. My first car was free because the owner kept getting oil leaks from the plug or filter and didn’t want to deal with selling it. Said she had tried three different oil filters and had the plug checked. Due to the big unknown problem she felt she’d have a hard time. Funny thing is when I got it home I checked it out, and someone had pierced it with a flathead screwdriver. I know that cause I took one and put it in the hole and it was a perfect fit. Horrible woman, so I’m sure she just pissed someone off.
My second car was $300 because my neighbors ex boyfriend had left his car at her place long past the limit to qualify for abandonment and she spite sold it to me. He loved that ugly car and it was souped up. I practically stole it. LOL
So it is possible, but I suppose not normal.
The cheapest car I ever owned was listed on Craigslist for $1,000 but I managed to talk it down because it had a broken fuel gauge, only lasted me about a year. It was a 1993 Dodge Dakota, so we’re in OBD1 era here. I’m currently driving a late 90s Honda with almost 300,000 miles, it burns oil but it’s still drives fine. I’m going to drive it until it dies and then hopefully I’ll have enough money to buy something on Craigslist. In my experience $500 would only buy you a mechanic’s special. I first got my driver’s license in the 2010s and I live on the west coast, if that makes any difference
I should also add the first one only lasted me three years because it was Jerry-rigged beyond any comprehension and I had already heard from my neighbor she was thinking of seeking the abandoned car, so when the transmission gave out on mine I just made her an offer and she took it. My second car is still going 15 years later, although I sold it to someone when I moved away and still see them with it when I visit.
Everything is a special model these days which makes the price higher. You don’t see mid range, average cars anymore.
Yes Ted Cruz I totally believe that if they got rid of these Safety Systems cars would magically get cheaper. No one should doubt that for a second Ted Cruz. There’s no way they’ll just get rid of the safety system and then pocket the extra the proceeds. Ted Cruz would never be for that I’m sure.
Instead of patching over the rising costs, maybe we can move to living in communities that aren’t so dependent on such a costly, depreciating asset for every home?
I agree with them whole heartedly. When they remove seat belts, they need to be the first to become a pavement puddle.















