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Comment by llm_trw | Hacker News Reader

The difference is that new cars are safe cars. Old cars are death traps.

If you value your life you will be buying the new shiny every 5 years or less.

It is one of those 'was it really that long ago? I am getting old' moments to actually look this up, but the last major safety features which moved the needle on keeping you alive in a car were the mandates for side-impact protection and anti-lock braking systems. Both are more than ten years old.

I think you would be hard-pressed to name a single innovation from the past five years which has increased your lifespan in a car as either a driver or a passenger. Given the fact that things like adaptive braking, lane-following assist, and blind-spot sensors are old enough to be showing up in low-end cars these days I cannot name a single new or shiny safety feature which would not be available in a mid-tier car from 2014. Can you?

Adaptive cruise was still higher end at that time. Certainly not ubiquitous at the mid tier. Heck, it's barely ubiquitous now. Both adaptive cruise and automatic emergency braking are game changer features for safety on the highway.

Nah, it's the same game.

Adaptive driving is a nuisance for me whenever I rent a new car (it seems most of the rentals have this feature). Those visual and audio cues going off when I am in the middle of changing lanes is very disconcerting - and makes me lose focus for a fraction of a second. I wish I could turn it off - but after one look at that hot mess on that center touch-screen I back off in repulsion.

(I also do not like the lights on the side mirrors that indicate a vehicle coming by. I constantly think - what about false positives - and then I double check my blind spot)

Usually they don’t beep on lane changes when you use the indicators before switching.

The lights in the side mirrors are also not removing the obligation to check your blind spot.

Both help, but don’t take away your responsibility as driver.

AEB is pretty recent, though I'm not sure of the exact timeline, and it has already saved lives.

Anti-lock brakes, if I remember correctly, had essentially no safety effect in the real world. Stability control, on the other hand, dropped single car accidents by something like a third. Perhaps you were thinking of that?

Regardless of that, the threat environment has changed pretty dramatically in the last two decades. I gave up my 2006 VW sedan for a new SUV this year because the IIHS numbers had started to look bad for lighter vehicles.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

Back in 2006 the previous gen VW Passat was basically as safe as anything you could buy (according to their dataset). Now you need something a lot bigger to be upper tier.

The new vehicle is a plug-in so in the first 4 months of driving I've more than doubled my fuel efficiency. So there's that, anyway.

You are correct, I was thinking of stability control. Both were mandated by NHTSA at the same time I think.

While it’s certainly true that old cars are death traps I’d live to see a source showing that car safety is increasing at notable levels every five years. Federal safety standards haven’t.

Is there evidence for the rationale for five years or less for the age of a car?

I hate all the entertainment systems and believe anything beyond Bluetooth and no complex entertainment system to be a lethal distraction that makes cars just as unsafe as older or weaker safety controls.

I do think CarPlay is very helpful for navigation, I mean, I can read map because I’m old but my kids and my wife when they’re driving need a onscreen display if they’re going somewhere new. And the CarPlay or similar provides a good navigation option that I think is safer than mounting a phone.

Everyone says this but the number of accidents (of which injurious, let alone fatal ones are a small minority) the typical person gets into in a lifetime are low enough to make the tradeoff worthwhile.

If only those 4 people that burned to death in a Tesla last week [1] would have a chance to revisit their vehicle choice...

[1] https://people.com/4-killed-after-tesla-crash-sparks-fire-in...

> If only those 4 people that burned to death in a Tesla last week [1] would have a chance to revisit their vehicle choice... >

Kind of a weird story for People magazine to be covering, but I guess any story with Tesla gets clicks. Doesn't say if the fire or the high speed impact killed those passengers.

Anyhoo, I'd bet those 140+ people killed by GMs ignition switch wish they had a chance to revisit their car buying choice.

Seems like the kind of advice that was true up until about 10 years ago

That's incredibly wrong. 10-year old cars are quite safe.

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