I used to drive a roll off dumpster truck. One day I crest a hill on a 45 mph road, with a load on the back, only to see some asshole turkey, right in the middle of my lane, a few feet ahead of me. I had no time to brake, and as usual, had a car on my ass.

Why not just ask for world peace and free bj's while you're at it?

Because it has all the drawbacks of a 70s Ford with all the charm of a 90s Ford.

Why would you want a 70s car made in the 2000s?

"There was a lot of traffic, and she inched close to the tracks, to the point where the railroad crossing guard arm came down and struck her rear window."

It's not just Mercedes — Lincoln's push-button shifter on the MKC caused my arm to flail for a ghost shifter that wasn't there almost every time I got into it, and I suspect that if I was on tracks with a train hurtling at me and I had to find reverse in a big hurry, I could be pretty screwed as well.

We're not totally sure what happened. But even the possibility of something like this happening brings up the issue as to what car controls should be regulated by law, and be standard in all cars. The old PRNDL layout, for example, was a legal requirement — car companies couldn't just mix those letters up to spell…

And that's where speculation about the Mercedes shifter comes in. Mercedes' drive-by-wire automatic uses a small, column-mounted shifter that has a neutral center default setting, and then pushes up to engage reverse, and down to engage drive. Brody had the car only a couple months, since December, and it's likely…

Why? Based on witness accounts and normal logic, it would seem like she'd entered the car to reverse a bit to get out of the arm's way. So why did she go forward?

No, an idiot who drove into a train is to blame for the accident.

Ruf

Gotta love Ruf.

RUF can be secretly be funding ISIS and I'll just be like

I have plaid seats in my car too. What's wrong with plaid?

Young fella arncha bud?

psh, not hippie enough! Needs more flat 12!

They are separate from Porsche and started out as a tuning company. Now a days, the modifications are so extensive that they're considered a manufacturer in their own right. The cars even have Ruf-specific non-Porsche VIN numbers.

They're their own individual company. Porsche just sells them bodies in white and they do the rest.