Because You Are Too Stupid To Drive

You wonder why the average price of a new car is almost twenty thousand dollars?
Here's why.

10 carmakers will offer automatic emergency braking as a standard feature 

 

Federal safety regulators, the insurance industry and a coalition of the world’s largest automakers announced an agreement Friday to make automatic emergency-braking a standard feature in future car models sold in the U.S.
Such systems, which alert a driver to a potential forward collision and robotically trigger the brakes, have proved successful in reducing crashes, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, but they are typically an expensive option.
“We are entering a new era of vehicle safety, focused on preventing crashes from ever occurring, rather than just protecting occupants when crashes happen,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “If technologies such as automatic emergency braking are only available as options or on the most expensive models, too few Americans will see the benefits of this new era.”

Ten automakers — Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo — will work with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop a timeline for installing automatic braking as a standard feature in all vehicles they sell.
Those companies accounted for 57% of U.S. auto sales last year.
Making the systems standard will be an important step in motor vehicle safety, said Jake Fisher, automotive test director at Consumer Reports.
As the feature finds its way into more vehicles, Consumer Reports will stop recommending cars that lack it, Fisher said.

A little  "incentive", also known as Extortion.

I used to be a factory trained Ford automotive technician, or as we used to call it, a mechanic.
I worked at a Lincoln/Mercury dealership for almost ten years back through the nineties and I saw this technology explosion in it's infancy and could see what was coming way back then. When I threw in the towel, they had just come out with automatic windshield wipers and already had a list of electronic gadgetry a mile long.
Things like Multiplexing, where ELEVEN computers on one car talked to each other simultaneously through one wire.

Now, what they have boggles my mind.

I quit working on that shit because it's unnecessary bullshit, "entertainment" systems, dual climate control, back up and crash avoidance systems, WIFI systems and on board personal computers that make the laptops available five years ago look like an Atari system, the list of crap goes on and on and on.
The average mechanic these days has to have as much education as a medical professional just to keep current yet the pay is so far apart as to be ridiculous.
Not to mention the thousands of dollars of tools one has to buy.

None of this is necessary if you look from the standpoint that cars are for transportation. It is only when you look at it from the perspective that people spend a lot of time in their vehicles and started demanding all these creature comforts and the government decides to impose safety requirements that you realize cars are an extension of home and society on wheels.
Transportation almost is an afterthought.

This is why I refuse to own a computerized vehicle. The wife has one and that's fine. My own?
Fuck that shit.
The only way I compromise is electronic ignition and even that is only if I can't get my hands on a non electronic distributor with a set of points and a condensor in it.

Take a look at this car from 1964, they lasted forever. You could not kill the Slant 6 engines in these things.

To this day, I still see these things running around.

That twenty thousand dollar plastic piece of shit you drive now?
It wont' be around in forty years, I guarantee it.