| >My 2007 Toyota Avalon Touring drives pretty well with none of those 'trinkets'. Does it? This reminds me of a constant refrain on the internet about nearly any medical or safety advancement, where people say something along the lines of "we survived just fine before". But we didn't. Life expectancy for most of human existence, and right up until early 1900s, was mid-50s. And we had billions fewer people, because the death rate was so much higher despite a much higher birth rate. US modern car fatality rate per 100k people peaked around 1970, at around 26. Now the rate is 11. Or if you want to normalize by VMT (vehicle miles traveled), the rate is still over 4x less, 5x less compared to the 60s. And that's just fatalities. What about simpler injuries, or even plain old fenderbenders which can still be quite expensive and time consuming? These days, accidents involving blind spots are an obvious next thing to pursue. Looking at stats from the NHTSA and such, seems to be around 2000 deaths per year from parking lot accidents and 91000 injuries. 360 degree cameras have obvious value there. Even more so because now we care a lot more about fuel efficiency, but aerodynamic shapes don't always lend themselves to great native visibility particularly since we also care about driver/passenger protection. Cooled seats is more of a comfort feature, but then again a significant number of accidents are due to people getting sleepy, irritated or otherwise distracted. And too hot a car can definitely affect that. Cooling the seat can be an efficient way of greatly improving comfort without the energy of cooling all the air in the car so much. Carplay/Android Auto obviously have more minimal safety implications. They could be negative if they are badly implemented and increase distraction, or positive if they allow more control without removing attention from the road via voice or navigation that is more attention friendly then trying to use a phone while driving. But nevertheless they are now becoming more important features in terms of navigation and roles that were previously played by radio. So as is so often the case I don't think a naked "my ancient car 'drives fine'" is justified as the standard that should exist forever. And I say that as someone still driving a pretty old car (2006 Volvo) much of the time. And it was fine for the time. But that doesn't mean I think progress stopped in 2006 anymore then it stopped in 1996, 1986, 1976, 1966, or 1956. |
LE in the US started ramping up around 1800 and increased all through the 1800s.