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Comment by rco8786 | Hacker News Reader

> Cars are literally immobilized by things like faulty sensors when if ignored, the car would legitimately still work just fine.

Any concrete examples of this?

FWIW, cars are orders of magnitude more reliable than they were 40, 50+ years ago even though those were easier to work on.

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Faulty Mass Airflow Sensor on my 09 Touareg told the car that not enough air was getting into the engine and it just refused to start. This is on the main intake, which unless completely covered is impossible to block. Plenty of air was getting into the system, so it was possible to disable it and the car worked fine.

Assuming that reliability is weakly inversely correlated with repairability (reliable things may be more complicated and thus harder to fix without specialized tools or knowledge), I'm sure there are subjective optima that balance the two and are more practical than the current extreme of maximizing reliability but being completely crippled at the slightest disturbance.

Again, any concrete examples of "being completely crippled at the slightest disturbance."? I've had lots of cars both modern and old and never experienced a disablement due to something that wasn't truly disable worthy.

A 2010 (not sure about other models) Toyota Prius has to be towed to and serviced by a dealer if it runs out of fuel and battery. An older car would have been able to be jumped and refueled.

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