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Comment by bigfishrunning | Hacker News Reader

I always thought cars ought to have a weather band receiver in them, but I've never seen that feature in a factory radio.

As a HAM I have an amateur transceiver in my car and i find weather band reception to be really useful

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I'm not sure if Truckers still use CB but on a cross country road trip which involved hours being pinned in the left most lane on all sides by trailers with speed governors set to 66mph I recall wishing I had had the ability to communicate with the drivers. It seems like this would be easy to implement from the factory as well, although I suppose giving everyone with a new car the abulity to speak their minds to others on the road with them would a.) be less safe b.) be super annoying.

I agree. Subaru did have them for a bit in the early-mid-2000's. I had it in our 05 Forester. Stock radio. Our 2011 Outback and my mother-in-law's 2017 Forester lacks it though. No clue why they removed it.

It was wonderful going through New England mountains trying to know what the weather will do in 5 mins when it inevitably changes.

Seems so cheap to include, but I guess it’s the same weird reasons that car manufacturers are willing to make their UI baffling to save a single mechanical button.

Was this stock? I do not recall this feature in either the 1998 nor 2001 Subarus I drove into the ground. Seems strange but not implausible it would have been briefly an option in the generation after that. 2005 is about when Subarus got less boxy with big plastic bumpers and crumple zones.

Jokingly, perhaps it was not a feature but happened accidentally due to the head gaskets design on the EJ25 engine.

It was stock in my 2003 Forester that we eventually got rid of due to head gasket problems.

I had a 2002 Outback wagon for a while with weather band in the stock radio. I rather liked it for rolling across country during the winter - with a good set of snow tires, that car was pretty much unstoppable!

... and wisdom also suggested that when you realize you've not seen semis on the road for a good while from how bad the snow is, you should take the hint and go find a spot to sleep for a while until things improve.

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