Seeing these ads during the bball games. If you can't operate a motor vehicle yourself, just don't get behind the wheel. Please. And get off my lawn too.
OT self-parking cars
- Thread starter otismotis08
- Start date
I will be glad when I don't have to drive a car. Could use that time more productively than fighting traffic and morons. Now, a motorcycle, I'll always want to drive.
This is why I’d prefer that all the cars around me were driven by computers rather than humans.
It is interesting my first car was a large Dodge Polara, then a 1963 Cadillac Sedan, then a 1971 Oldsmobile 98. Back then I could whip all three of them into a small parallel parking spot no problemo. Of course they all had real power steering, not the speed-sensitive crap steering on cars now. Fast forward 40 years and I'm now one of those people you laugh at who struggles parallel parking. I don't know why. Probably practice. Back then I parallel parked a lot and now hardly at all. My Explorer has the automatic parking feature, but I've never used it.
I'm pretty lousy at parallel parking. I grew up in a small town where there was no real place needed to. Moving forward I've never lived in a place or went anywhere that needed me to. So if I'm not using it in real situations, I'm not practicing just to say I can. I'd also not try it unless I had no other choice in a real-world scenario, so probably not gonna get laughed at.
I'm pretty good at parallel parking but I'm amazed at the people who become enraged when you try to do it, and block "their" lane of traffic. How do they think these spots are ever going to get used? Should I circle the block until 3:00 a.m. when there's no traffic and four open spots strung together?
I remember my old man saying the exact same thing about automatic transmissions. If you can’t drive stick don’t drive. On top of them being worse for mileage, more expensive and more maintenance.
Yet here we are.
My Cadillac has their Super Cruise feature. It takes a little time to build up trust with it. A lot of time with your hand and foot a couple inches away from the wheel/brake. But it actually works very well in a number of circumstances.
It does not work on every road, only controlled access freeways/interstate. But they have spent time mapping out the supported roads and does require a service for updates. It also has sensors to make sure your eyes are open and watching the road, along with cameras/FLIR to watch the road.
I have driven across Pennsylvania a couple times and the only time I touched the wheel is to change lanes or change highways.
In Connecticut, the Hutch parkway has a couple sharp turns. Super Cruise will flash up a message saying that the sharp curve is coming up, slow the car to 45 MPH and then go back to the set speed once it has passed.
It is more nerve racking in cities, based on other idiot drivers. But on the open, I do feel a lot more relaxed during and after a long drive.
Our Volvo XC90 has the feature, but we have yet to use it yet. It's my wife's car, so she would probably use it, but the amount of bells and whistles on cars is insane these days and once you get used to them, you never want a lower model. I have a fully loaded Tundra, but it doesn't do half of what my wife's Volvo does.
So you don't use cruise control?
Do you drive an old car? Because any modern card has a computer making all kinds of adjustments and decisions when you drive.
Letting the car park or drive for you instant as much of a leap as you probably think.
Oh, and get off my lawn.