[disishhsha]

I use my phone a lot, and gladly spend a few $ a day for a marginal improvement in my quality of life.

Another question - why do people spend $30k on a car when a $10k car is nearly as good? Seems like a much bigger waste of money than the phone.

[strict9]

I use public transit unless leaving the city, almost never use uber/lyft, and yet have a new iPhone.

Why? I hate driving and would rather be reading or goofing off on twitter than being angry behind the wheel as I get somewhere.

Not for everyone but I'll never go back to driving.

[singingboyo]

Hah, I'm the opposite. Despite having pretty great transit here, my needs don't quite line up with the transit network, and so some times are far longer than they are by car, to the point of 20min drive vs 1.5-2hr transit. Given that, I got a car... and now prefer it whenever possible.

If I want to engage my brain at all I'll listen to a podcast or something, but often those half hour periods of relative disengagement are very nice breaks to have.

That said, I do choose 10 minutes of walking over 2 minutes of driving in anything but a torrential downpour, or 2 minutes of walking over an extra 30 seconds hunting a closer parking spot. Maybe it just all comes down to not wanting to deal with (potentially unpleasant) people.

[baroffoos]

If it takes 1.5 hours longer by public transport than by car that means you do not have good public transport. Maybe good compared to surrounding areas but still bad.

[disishhsha]

I’ve considered buying an expensive car with advanced stop-and-go traffic self-driving mode, but it’s more effective to live next to the train station.

[singingboyo]

Eh. Having the car self-stop is overrated in my experience. It's really hard to trust it, and not particularly difficult to drive stop-and-go yourself, so long as you accept that you can't rush it.

Adaptive cruise control for fast but varying speeds is great, however - it makes the spacing much better, which makes things more relaxing. It also reduces the active brain load to 'what lane do I need, what's coming up in the next mile, and do I need to be preparing to stop/exit', rather than needing to worry about the car in front of you so much. For me at least, it also makes things like lane changes more deliberate, so instead of "need to change and keep speed" it's something more like "I'll get there when it's safe, and change lanes if it's really clear", which is a much better mindset.

[cosmie]

+1 for the adaptive cruise control in fast but varying speed traffic. The variant that my Hyundai has is also really pleasant for stop-and-go traffic, too. As the space shrinks below the minimal set, it'll basically progressively slow down all the way to the point of coasting for quite a while before it finally comes to a full stop (if the traffic hasn't started going yet). A small thing, but since cruise control only disengages if it comes to a complete stop, it in effect makes for a really pleasant stop-and-go commute as it very rarely has to come to a complete stop and disengage along the way. Also has the secondary effect of drastically improving my gas mileage vs. when I manually drive the same commute.

My previous experience with adaptive cruise control with another manufacturer wasn't nearly as polished, so I didn't think much of it when I bought the car. But it quickly became one of my favorite features!

[mr_spothawk]

I bought an old $5000 truck, which I know I can find parts for easily. It's got 200k miles on it so far, and I expect to put another 200k on it (assuming I will eventually need to spend ~3k on a refurbished engine).

Hard to argue with $8k for 250k miles.

[denimnerd42]

Unfortunately an old truck is one of the least safe vehicles you can drive. But as far as miles per dollar nothing beats a common $5000 vehicle, that's for sure.

[taobility]

The answer is similar with current computer market. Most of people in the world still choose the cheaper PC, even Mac is more beautiful, solid and fancy.