Absolutely. And just as the real-estate devoted to a topic on your resume should be proportional to the significance of said topic, the actuating force on a control in a car ought to be proportional to the safety-relevance of the function. I don’t care that much if the tactile feedback on the audio controls or HVAC…

IDK, it depends on the vehicle. My ‘08 A4 has hunt-and-peck climate controls and crazy six-level seat heaters controlled by flush-mounted rotary knobs at the very bottom of the center cluster — you learn to do a one-fingered jiggle to operate the bloody things eventually, but really VAG? And then there are the…

Lucas configurator

Because nobody makes you buy the car without the stick? Because manufacturers don’t have a economic reason to always satisfy small fractions of their customers? Look, I think it sucks too but I don’t get the self-righteousness — they promised us jet cars, not more choice (BTW, in the shitty early 80's of cardom, I’m…

Yep, defeat software that only works every third day.

Yeah, I’m a lifetime bike commuter and I try to avoid being on roads (as opposed to paths) in these conditions. Even if you can squint and see, drivers are effectively blind.

Yeah, fuck the PC clowns trying to make the roads safer. I started driving in the late 70's and used radar detectors (the first was non-heterodyne cheap - it was more like a “now you have a ticket” detector), and I was happy to motor along down I-90 in upstate NY at 75 - 85 when traffic was dragging along at a few…

yep, too many ejection fatalities out here in the Midwest for exactly that reason...

Really, that’s not the way I recall it. Four students in two major accidents during high school (late 70's) - I’d guess 5% of us thought about what happened once things went wrong.

Yeah, it’s really riskier. That said, I’m not sure I’m convinced by the OP — growing up I had a couple of pretty hair-raising rides with family friends in large sedans (two that stand out were a ‘72 Ford LTD and some mid-70's Caddy). Cars that insulate you and make you feel safe aren’t as new as we think, and the…

Because they only kill themselves, right? No, they often take out other drivers, peds, bicyclists. So it’s not just a personal choice, sorry.

A lot of folks are talking about how they don’t use snows, but then let on they’ve got all seasons. Those all season’s are a far cry from the performance summer tires on the Vantage, which are truly bad in the snow.

Isn’t this primarily an issue of steering geometry, specifically the steering roll radius (SRR)? There was a great piece in R&T 40 years ago (when I used to read it cover to cover each month) detailing negative vs. positive SRR — my recollection was that at the time, VW was a notable large manufacturer that used…