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That's not the choice though. It's choosing one new car that doesn't have a bunch of safety recalls over one that does.

New car reliability measured in warranty returns per vehicle is much WORSE over the last few years than 15 years ago. Turning your nose up at the 15 year old Toyota is probably making a choice to be _less_safe, since at least the old Toyota's recalls are known, and likely fixed. The new vehicle doesn't have enough time on the roads for all the dangerous defects to be identified and recalled yet.

That's one of those numbers people throw around without understanding what it means. The vast majority of new car warranty issues are things like "I don't understand bluetooth" and "You have to actually read the manual?".

The 15 year old Toyota has fewer safety features than the modern one. Side impact airbags, collision monitoring systems etc. Additionally, the 15 year old Toyota will only be as safe as the maintenance that has been done to keep it operating properly. Do you trust a random Uber driver to have kept up with everything?

Back to safety systems, the 15 year old Toyota almost certainly had faulty airbags that were recalled many years ago. Something like 56,000 of those recalls still haven't been done. Which pool of vehicles does this Toyota belong to?

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