I deliberately sought out a car without that stuff when I had to buy a new(er) car recently. It’s usually quite annoying - the worst was a rental car that had an alarm buzz whenever I activated my turn signal while there was another car anywhere near my blind spot.
IMO the only technological improvement from the last decade and a half that’s worth having is a backup camera, and that’s only because I must shamefully confess to being terrible at parallel parking without one despite having years of practice. (I was tempted to buy a Miata since they still have real dials, but ultimately I did settle for a car with a digital display instead of an instrument panel.)
Maybe this makes me sound like a jerk, but my thinking in that regard was “I don’t have children and rarely drive near other people’s loose children. Why should I pay for hardware I don’t need?”
First, yes it does. Second, you’re not paying extra for it at least in the US as it’s federally mandated equipment, you can’t legally get a new car without a reverse camera.
Knowing that something rolled up just behind your car can be a saver in many ways… not running over surprise debris, for one, not hitting the neighbor’s anti-cut boulder on the edge of the grass that you can’t see when looking behind you for another…
I deliberately sought out a car without that stuff when I had to buy a new(er) car recently. It’s usually quite annoying - the worst was a rental car that had an alarm buzz whenever I activated my turn signal while there was another car anywhere near my blind spot.
IMO the only technological improvement from the last decade and a half that’s worth having is a backup camera, and that’s only because I must shamefully confess to being terrible at parallel parking without one despite having years of practice. (I was tempted to buy a Miata since they still have real dials, but ultimately I did settle for a car with a digital display instead of an instrument panel.)
The reverse camera is useful so you’re not backing over some little kid. Anything else it does is a bonus.
Maybe this makes me sound like a jerk, but my thinking in that regard was “I don’t have children and rarely drive near other people’s loose children. Why should I pay for hardware I don’t need?”
First, yes it does. Second, you’re not paying extra for it at least in the US as it’s federally mandated equipment, you can’t legally get a new car without a reverse camera.
Knowing that something rolled up just behind your car can be a saver in many ways… not running over surprise debris, for one, not hitting the neighbor’s anti-cut boulder on the edge of the grass that you can’t see when looking behind you for another…