Those ‘professionals’ tend to do merely adequate jobs. I always double check their work when having warranty stuff done (outside of warranty I do it myself) and regularly find things not up to snuff.

Ex: early water pump leakage repaired under warranty at the dealer. Crap I had to redo in my garage: attach two wiring…

Please please properly torque your lug nuts (or bolts) when putting them back on. 'As tight as possible' is ok for putting on your mini-spare for an emergency trip, but you really don't want a newbie (well, anyone, but with someone new it'll scare them off) snapping a stud or rounding off a bolt on a simple brake job.…

Truck fatalities are reported in 100 million mile rates by IIHS

Extremely few folks are saying the truck driver bears no culpability. However, the Autopilot failed in some very fundamental functionality (ie, not at all attempting to stop/evade a giant fucking semi-trailer) and strongly looks like the driver (passenger actually, I suppose) failed to meet his fundamental…

It absolutely is the responsibility of a driver to avoid or lessen a collision if possible...even if the other road users are disobeying the rules of the road. You won’t be held criminally or administratively responsible (ie you won’t get a ticket) but you can be, and regularly are, held partially or fully liable for…

That’s a disingenuous comparison though. That’s comparing the road user stat (which includes motorcycles, pedestrians, bicycles, etc.) to a point car stat. If you wanted a valid comparison you’d need to compare luxury cars (actuary tables show older drivers are less likely to be in fatal accidents and that's who…

Um...what?

If that’s the metric (which is a bad idea since we’re at a single data point) we should have human drivers driving semi-trucks since their occupant fatality rate is .21 per 100 million miles traveled from IIHS. Nearly 5 times safer than Tesla autopilot...ban all passenger vehicles? That sounds just as silly.

A…

The reason they end up getting sent back to the manufacturer is due to the interface being damaged, not necessarily the data storage medium. If you’re lucky in a crash nothing will have happened to the interface and you just plug in a cable and...bam...data. If pins get bent/deformed/ripped off or the plug melts or…

Yep, that's a big issue with these things. There've also been a number of these types of articles going at least back to the 90s and it regularly turned out that the 'AI' was given instantaneous, perfect, access to all data including, sometimes, the inputs the human opponent was making. I don't know if this thing is a…

Clutch interlock is a government requirement and has been for quite some time. Same with automatics, they have a park/neutral/brake interlock (depends on manufacturer). Happened after a bunch of folks squashed people starting in gear.

We lost that battle a long time ago. Can't fight common language once it's established.

I'm bettin they’ll probably just join in the European Free Trade Association with Switzerland and some of the northern countries. So meh.

This post is a stealth Honda scooter advertisement.

I see what you did Douglas.

Yep, very common in cars designed solely or mainly for the US market. Remember, the traditional seating arrangement in the US (through the 70s) was three across the front bench seats. Foot parking brakes make more sense than hand brakes for that arrangement. Trucks (which retained bench seats longer) and mass market…

They do not, standard mechanical ratcheting foot parking brake.

These Jeeps have the standard ratcheting mechanical foot parking brake.

These jeeps actually won't allow you to do that. Engine will not shut off unless in park.

The engine will not turn off unless you're in park. All of the roll-aways are people who left the car with the engine idling without using the parking brake. IIRC, the car does ding that you're not in park when you open the door but it's a similar ding to the 'your keys are not in the car' and the 'you're not wearing…

IIRC, the only thing in the regulations about the ‘cool down’ is that all cars must proceed, unaided, to Parc Ferme. It becomes a whole lap because the only way to get back to pit entrance is the long way around (driving the wrong way on the circuit is an automatic exclusion). If they don’t make it the regs say ‘may…

The 6 minute rule was set specifically to avoid that. Even if they were running neck and neck at qualifying pace at final ‘-1' and one car instantaneously stopped and waited a lap then instantaneously crossed when the leader took the checker they’d still have a final lap in the 6:30 time frame.