Man, I’ve had tree limbs fall on my car, breaking every window, knocking body panels loose, and leaving a giant dent in the roof, and I still haven’t gotten a different car because of that bullshit.
Yeah, my car is a little bit newer than that, but it’s a base model and is missing a lot of “features”, even compared to the higher trim levels (which still didn’t have android auto or car play). I have no interest in adding cameras and the voice recognition is so bad I could probably just unplug it completely. I’m sitting at about 60-70k miles with the only major work being spark plug replacement and a brake overhaul. I expect another 100k miles at least.
There’s a shitload of privacy issues with almost all new cars, but at least outside of Tesla I don’t know of any streaming cameras anywhere past the dash. Even if they did most 360 camera systems have pretty shit views for anything but the road immediately around the vehicle. I just got a new Ford and you wouldn’t see faces no matter how close or far someone was from any of the cameras without them putting their head right up to one. Sure my GPS data is going who knows where at all times and they know about every hard turn or speeding incident, but outside of removing the battery from my phone I’m not exactly sure how to avoid that going to a half dozen random companies for pennies anyway.
I’m a privacy conscious dude but I’m so damn tired of losing to big companies I’m not sure how hard I can fight beyond tiny donations to the EFF and being aware of all these issues to annoy my friends about whenever it comes up. 🤷♂️
Huzzah for old hoopties! I drive a '97, myself. Doing all your own maintenance goes a long way in keeping your car running, both in terms of the money you spend and your ability to react calmly when something inevitably breaks on it.
It’s why I’m holding onto my dumb early 2000s car as long as I can. I don’t want a fucking surveillance machine on wheels.
Man, I’ve had tree limbs fall on my car, breaking every window, knocking body panels loose, and leaving a giant dent in the roof, and I still haven’t gotten a different car because of that bullshit.
Yeah, my car is a little bit newer than that, but it’s a base model and is missing a lot of “features”, even compared to the higher trim levels (which still didn’t have android auto or car play). I have no interest in adding cameras and the voice recognition is so bad I could probably just unplug it completely. I’m sitting at about 60-70k miles with the only major work being spark plug replacement and a brake overhaul. I expect another 100k miles at least.
There’s a shitload of privacy issues with almost all new cars, but at least outside of Tesla I don’t know of any streaming cameras anywhere past the dash. Even if they did most 360 camera systems have pretty shit views for anything but the road immediately around the vehicle. I just got a new Ford and you wouldn’t see faces no matter how close or far someone was from any of the cameras without them putting their head right up to one. Sure my GPS data is going who knows where at all times and they know about every hard turn or speeding incident, but outside of removing the battery from my phone I’m not exactly sure how to avoid that going to a half dozen random companies for pennies anyway.
I’m a privacy conscious dude but I’m so damn tired of losing to big companies I’m not sure how hard I can fight beyond tiny donations to the EFF and being aware of all these issues to annoy my friends about whenever it comes up. 🤷♂️
Huzzah for old hoopties! I drive a '97, myself. Doing all your own maintenance goes a long way in keeping your car running, both in terms of the money you spend and your ability to react calmly when something inevitably breaks on it.
It sure does! I’m no car expert but I can and have been doing basic maintenance on this car. Its a hooptie but it’s serving us well.
Luckily, we live in a time where you don’t have to be an expert, just need to be able to read and organize yourself!