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Comment by justinph | Hacker News Reader

Sure, as far as basic transportation goes, but you can't get the vastly improved safety features in a used car that you can in most new cars today. Buy a new Toyota? It comes with automatic emergency braking, collision avoidance, blind spot detection, adaptive cruise control, and built-in backup camera, standard. Buy a used 2014? It has none of that.

I just bought a new car for the first time in my life. The safety of those features was worth the $10k premium for a new car.

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>It comes with automatic emergency braking, collision avoidance, blind spot detection, adaptive cruise control, and built-in backup camera, standard. Buy a used 2014? It has none of that.

Don't run into stuff? Most of that tech is only useful if you are an absent-minded driver and even then it only covers some cases (e.g. emergency braking doesn't help if the car in front of you slammed into something and you were following too closely). They are selling this tech by exploiting your fears, don't get caught up in it.

Getting in a wreck in a 2014 Corolla is still incredibly safe due to the crumple zones and airbags. The $10k you blew on those features in the new model could easily pay for the damages to a 2014 and would cover all of the cases those features didn't (e.g. someone running into your car in the lot).

First of all, I think the word "accident" is crap. It should be called crash in most cases, and crashes are more often than not avoidable. Predominant cause: Driver error. If you glance in the mirror, something might catch your attention there, and if someone cuts in front of you at that very moment, that's when AEB (or the "normal braking" + warning from dynamic cruise) can come in real handy.

Also having Dynamic Cruise might teach you what a proper following distance is; hint, most people have no idea about what 2 seconds gap actually equates to. The DCC distance is typically set in seconds, or at least in the Mazda it is (1,2,3 or 4). Even 1 second is more than most people give, in Melbourne Australia.

Speaking as a 2014 Mazda 3 Astina owner, this tech works. Including if someone cuts in and then slams their brakes. Autonomous braking functions is the biggest safety invention since the Dynamic Stability Control. Try to Google effectiveness of AEB, and it's quite conclusive.

E.g. "The findings showed a 38 percent overall reduction in rear-end crashes for vehicles fitted with AEB compared to a comparison sample of similar vehicles." https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275772651_Effective...

I'm excited by the new Tesla cars extra sensor and autonomous driver tech packages, which includes so many more ways of reading the environment than what my "mere" Mazda 3 radar + cameras offer. If I had the budget, I'd definitely be getting into that.

Don't run into stuff??? You realize it is called an "accident" for a reason. The backup camera and blind spot detection are worth real dollars in my experience.

> backup camera and blind spot detection are worth real dollars

I agree on the camera.. it's been especially useful in more than a few places on my work truck, but I worry that features like BSM go along with a trend of designing more "stylish" interiors that have significantly reduced visibility along certain angles.

The difference between my small Japanese car and my sisters American SUV is amazing. I can physically see everything around my car, in her car, there are huge chunks of surrounding space that are blocked by pillars and other design considerations. If you feel you need BSM, then you may just be driving a horribly designed car.

Generally,American cars provide awefull visibility of surroundings - high and narrow rear windows, and thick pillars make me feel claustrophobic

Calling it an "accident" is doublespeak so you can wave your hands and go "I had an accident, oops, it couldn't be helped."

Making it seem like it was just your fate that day. Which if it was at-fault, it certainly wasn't. It sounds a lot better than "I am either negligent or incompetent and shouldn't be trusted with piloting a 2-ton hulk of metal."

If you checked your blind spot every time like you ought to, the blind spot detection is at best a minor additional safety backup. I see a lot of people relying on it instead of actually doing that, and the systems aren't perfect. (One good example: Someone else is starting to merge into your blind spot but hasn't gotten in the lane yet).

> If you checked your blind spot every time like you ought to, the blind spot detection is at best a minor additional safety

This is not true. On some freeways in my country, idiots have a habit of driving 2x the speed limit. Checking your blindspot at the time you started the maneuver is no guauantee it will still be empty a half a second later. The blind spot detector is pretty helpful IMO.

Btw .. I don't understand what perfect world some people live in. Do you live in a world where programmers write bug free code every single time like they have been taught?

This is one of the biggest points that I have seen taught in driver training courses and repeated throughout my life. Most of the events people refer to as car accidents are crashes/collisions.

Yesterday I went around a sharp turn on a 4 lane highway only to come face to face with a box truck that had flipped on it's side moments earlier.

FAB slowed down my car enough for me to get a chance to maneuver around it.

I much prefer the array of red leds I had to face instead of dealing with a wrecked car and possible injuries.

$10k premium + accelerated depreciation

And in 3 years, I'll have all those features on my used Toyota. ;)

And if you buy a used luxury sedan, you can have all that stuff now. Go pick up a 2006 Lexus LS430 with 150,000 Mike's on it for $10,000; they were $70k new and have all those whizbang safety features and it's a Toyota Avalon underneath. You can put 400,000 miles on them if you treat them right.

You can do the same thing with the big German luxury sedans, but upkeep will be more. Those aren't Toyotas underneath. It's still pretty reasonable for the amount if car you get; just budget for it.

Not going to pile on the Avalon comment.

But the LS430s aren't really comparable to the current gen Toyota safety systems. The LS430s have dynamic cruise control but they won't bring the car to a complete stop, the dynamic cruise control in the 01-03s is a little weird (and I think it has some reliability problems). And the dynamic cruise control is bundled with the Ultra Luxury package which has a lot of stuff to break (an extra A/C unit for the rear, air suspension, and double thick glass that can fog internally if it cracks).

The Modern Luxury trim cars have the dynamic cruise control without the air suspension, a/c unit, and a few other gizmos but they're really rare.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it, but the 01-03 LS430 is probably the best used car value in America. You can get a decent one for 5k (they'll ask for 7k but tell them to pound sand) and they're unbelievably nice. They're not Avalons, but they drive like every Toyota ever just with more poise and fluidity.

Is there something special about the LS430 air suspension? I own a Town Car with rear air suspension and it is my favorite feature of that car. Parts don't seem to be expensive and there is a large aftermarket. I have been recommending rear air suspensions to others interested in comfortable road trip cars.

It's a volume thing - the LS430 is a relatively rare car, air suspension is a relatively rare option (only available on the top two trip levels), and the replacement parts are only available through lexus. There isn't anyone who rebuilds them or sells them private label.

For the price of 1 air shock replaced at the dealer, you can get an independent mechanic to put the car on conventional suspension and it'll still ride good enough on smaller wheels.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Built on a totally different platform than the Avalon (The Avalon is even FWD)

No pre-collision braking (A partial system was included on some Japanese models, but none on the US model)

No blindspot monitoring

So, hardly "all that stuff".

Here's an easy way to be more wrong:

The LS430 is basically a Toyota Cavalier.

Or - the LS430 is basically a Toyota Century.

Why is it worth 10k? Do you get in a lot of accidents? I genuinely would not want any of those things, I don't want my car making decisions for me, I'm smarter than it. On top of that it's just junk to break you can't fix.

I have never been in an accident.

I drive a pickup I paid sub $1000 for. Been driving it for three years no issues. That $10k could buy me ten trucks.

Would I take it on a trip? No, I rent a car for less than a car payment.

In my opinion buying new vehicles is a foolish waste of money I could be spending on something else.

"I have never been in an accident"

Much less a serious accident where important safety features make a difference is one of those things you won't generally hear the reverse being said since, you know, you'd be dead.

> In my opinion buying new vehicles is a foolish waste of money I could be spending on something else.

Don't tell them that, otherwise us people who only buy SH cars will have nothing to purchase in 5 or 10 years.

> I have never been in an accident.

Gambler's Fallacy. Prior incidence has no effect on future occurrence.

A lot of the new safety features are for low-speed collision protection, automatically sounding horn and applying breaks when your car gets close to another, say in traffic. Unless you go top-range you generally won't get actual driving automation. Other than that it's just convenience; Climate control instead of air con, reversing sensors and camera instead of (as well as) mirrors and turning your head around etc.

Instead of barking the names of logical fallacies at people, perhaps consider why the auto insurance industry employs scores of actuaries and takes driver history into account so heavily.

It is still a fallacy. Insurance companies don't look at someone who is 40 with no accidents and insure them for free because even the lowest risk drivers get into accidents sometimes.

Gambler's Fallacy. Prior incidence has no effect on future occurrence.

We’re not gambling, we’re driving cars. And the fact that the current F1 champion has won some races means that he is more likely to win the next one than I am. And the fact that I have a lower-than-average rate of driving collisions means that I have a lower-than-average chance of having a collision in the future. If you doubt me, ask an insurance actuary.

The Gambler's fallacy doesn't take independence from different trials into account.

However, since it's the same driver for each of the "trials" then the Gambler's fallacy doesn't really apply.

> That $10k could buy me ten trucks.

It's kind of hard to drive them at the same time, though.

You could invest that $10k and the profit would yield infinite trucks.

What is the limit of the interest rate as we approach infinite trucks?

Just more stuff to go wrong. I buy well-maintained cars about 7-10 years old. The newest car I own right now is a 2004.

There is something to be said for simplicity but it gets worse with time and exposure. Many of these older cars have first run issues like exotic oil types or vanos type engines + known mileage warts and expensive replacement parts.

I used to drive old used junk all the time and the truth of the matter is that the newer the better and you will miss what you don't have. Yes, the car industry is a racket but keep in mind that a car is not an investment except in some wealthy circles.

All that extra tech is unnecessary junk, though. I like the backup cameras, but just recently had an near-incident where that didn't help either. It's up to you what you want in a new car, but I'll tell you from experience, all those extras are just going to break and have problems and cost big bucks to fix (or you'll have a Christmas tree of warning lights on the dash while you ignore this or that malfunctioning feature).

My Mazda 3 Astina (sedan, mt) which I bought in 2015 as an ex demo 2014 has all of the AEBs, dynamic cruise controls etc. (You forgot to mention rear cross traffic alert, which is brilliant.)

I bought it specifically for these features.

But collision avoidance, blind spot detection you can get in aftermarket Mobileye and back up cameras can be installed aftermarket very cheap as well.

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