Auto manufactuerers want to prevent people from modifying or working on their own cars.

stanger_missle wrote: If they outlaw non-self driving cars then only outlaws will have non-self driving cars.

When I cross the one-lane bridge and leave the giants stranded at the riverside, they'll know they've been hit by a smooth criminal.

yamaha wrote:

Tyler H wrote: I can't believe anyone would argue against ABS these days. You can't out-brake it.

Do you completely fail at understanding what antilock braking systems do? In a nutshell, they sacrifice braking distance for the ability to maneuver. You can beat ABS with non-ABS by simply avoiding lockup.

I feel like I have a decent grasp on it. In my experience, the problem with most cars' braking systems is that you can only threshold brake 1 or maybe 2 wheels. One of them is going to naturally lockup first due circuit length. (On MR2s, it's always the front right.) So you're either flat-spotting that tire, or leaving some braking potential on the table on the other three wheels.

I'd love to take the Pepsi challenge and see some instrumented tests of someone trying to outbrake their modern ABS-equipped car, but I digress.

I've driven and raced cars without ABS -- no problem. But flat-spotted Hoosiers suck, and it's going to happen eventually if you are playing around with the last 10% of your traction in the braking zone. All the other attributes aside, this one thing would be enough for me to prefer ABS.

OldGray320i wrote:

wbjones wrote: with the millions and millions of roads in this country (think of all the gravel back roads), not to mention all the residential roads, both public and private, I don't see there ever being cars that you can't drive yourself … for that matter how would you ever park one … anywhere … at a store, in your driveway … anywhere ?

My uncle has a country place, that no one knows about...

that in a nutshell is my point

Ottobon wrote: Also AlfaDriver mentioned the Tempo being the worst driving car ever, clearly he has never driven a "Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais".... I've driven both, and the Tempo feels like a race-car compared to the Calais, and that is saying somthing The Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais has to be the most diabolical car ever made

Hey, I have a g-body Supreme with the F41 package, and I resent that!

Ottobon wrote: Also AlfaDriver mentioned the Tempo being the worst driving car ever, clearly he has never driven a "Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais".... I've driven both, and the Tempo feels like a race-car compared to the Calais, and that is saying somthing The Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais has to be the most diabolical car ever made

No way. I find it hard to believe that there is a car out there that makes a tempo even remotely nice to drive.

G_Body_Man wrote:

Ottobon wrote: Also AlfaDriver mentioned the Tempo being the worst driving car ever, clearly he has never driven a "Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais".... I've driven both, and the Tempo feels like a race-car compared to the Calais, and that is saying somthing The Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais has to be the most diabolical car ever made

Hey, I have a g-body Supreme with the F41 package, and I resent that!

I think the Calais was the FWD abomination - while I was rebuilding my Z as a kid, I drove my mom's 82 Cutlass. Loved that car. It was fun to do the ol' reverse bootleggers turn in that.

Leaving my buddy's house one day, about a block away he realized he forgot something. Queue the reverse, squealing tires and all (old part of town, nice wide streets, lots of room). We pull up to his house and his mom hollers out "David was that you!?" He answers "No...." She says "Don't lie to me!" "Well don't ask a stupid question!".

Such fun....

jr02518 wrote: The reality is third world countries get "cars" void of the nannies. Without the lawyers to protect the common man the producers of cars provide transportation that will do the job at the lowest cost. If I am willing to sign the waver, can I buy that car? Why not?

Because you are not the only driver on the road, and roads are shared with pedestrians, and are lined with property that you could damage.

I've read through this and am of varied opinions on the topic; I get what would drive a manufacturer to do this but also recoil as an enthusiast. Now as for the Tempo my wife had one when we were first dating. It pinged like mad and the dealer could never seem to fix it even after they had to repair the burnt valves under warranty. I made slight adjustments to the timing till we found the sweet spot between no more pinging and no power. As for it being awful to drive, well yes it was an appliance but it had great brakes and decent steering. I always felt with some decent dampers and sway bars it would have driven fairly nice........which brings us back to the topic. If car makers offered more than one size fits all for most cars most people likely wouldn't want to mess with them. Case in point my Beta 520 (fancy Italian street legal dirt bike), the company allows you to mix and match options with BYOB (build your own Beta) custom spring rates, seats, controls etc. This is not cheap (the bike isn't cheap to start with) but you get your bike exactly as you want it from day one.

 Tom

you used to be able to "build" your own from the automakers … anyone remember the COPO Camaro's ?

you could sit at the dealers sales desk, and check off exactly what you wanted .. now-a-days if there are ANY options offered, they come in packages … and you can't break the packages apart

I understand the reasons this is so, just don't like it

Curmudgeon wrote: I know first hand that ABS and airbag systems are made EXTREMELY hard to hack for obvious reasons.

Just to sorta refute that claim about how hard it is to do.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/07/24/hackers-reveal-nasty-new-car-attacks-with-me-behind-the-wheel-video/

and

http://jalopnik.com/darpa-hacks-gms-onstar-to-remote-control-a-chevrolet-i-1684593523

and

http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-usenixsec2011.pdf

and

http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-oakland2010.pdf

and

My 14 year old son downloaded a free app onto his android phone that supposedly can disable Ford brakes on some vehicles via bluetooth. I did ask him to remove it before he experimented with it.

In reply to foxtrapper:

And those apps etc are exactly what the OE's are worried about. There's no way to make the firewall high enough, there will always be some hacker wanting to be a 'hero' (that's another discussion) who will find a way. So since the physical and software approach won't fly they are taking the legal approach.

Now that I think about it - the concerns about pirated ECUs may not be all that far fetched. We once received an RFQ from someone who wanted to see if we could turn out several thousand copies of a European car's ECU. Based on the wholesale price they wanted (it was only slightly more than what we paid for a Gen 1 MSPNP case!), I don't see how this could have been done profitably without simply lifting the information off the CPU and copying it straight onto a new chip, and the pirate ECUs most likely would have sold at around 1/3 to 1/2 the price of real factory ECUs.

In reply to Curmudgeon:

There certainly is a way to make the firewall high enough and/or separate the functional from the entertainment but it is not the priority of people to who make remote control servos to make them hard to control. A by-wire steering rack that requires private key encryption to accept a command isn't a thing. Yet. Security is grafted on top of several exploitable sub-systems that have been cobbled together from third party suppliers after it all works together rather than built into the system as a whole. Like building a moat around it.

It is prohibitively expensive to engineer it into the atomic pieces so the vulnerability of the moat is a calculated risk and a single point of failure. Often, it's "Security via Obscurity" rather than even a decent hardened solution.

They can try the legal route... but it's getting hacked whether it's legal or not. Some people climb mountains because they are there. Some do it for profit. But they will do it. If people want to feel safe in a network appliance robotic car it's going to be a while.

yamaha wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH: The difference is prior to versus post lockup. Maybe new setups are better as the newest car I've had thus far is a 2005, and even it braked better with ABS disabled(granted, that difference in stopping distance was 997 911 territory versus c5 vette territory) IMHO, with that car, the 10ft or so from 60mph made it worth it.

The best drivers in the world are still faster with ABS.

You aren't Senna, deal with it.

Then that 2005 car was crap. My STi is an '05 and it has ABS with EBD (Electronic Brake Distribution). No human can beat that. The best threshold braker in the world can only threshold brake the system as a whole, which inherently means he is limited by the weakest link in the system (which can be different links at different times depending on whether braking into right or left turn, elevation change, etc). A good ABS/EBD system can threshold brake all four wheels individually at rates imperceptible to human senses.

I wonder if this is just a ploy to limit their liability when one of their systems does get hacked and kills someone. They can point back at this and say, "We tried to keep people out of it, we tried to get you to regulate it and keep people safe, but you wouldn't let us. It's not our fault."

In reply to jsquared:

Well it was a GM, but with braking performance that was very surprising from a sport compact.

The bugger of it all was the intervention point was way too quick on that car, it was OK in inclement weather as I used it year round, but in the dry, with sticky tires on....it left you needing more.

the "fact" that ABS is so bad, is why the F1 teams would LOVE to get the technology back …

Rupert wrote:

rcutclif wrote: In reply to OldGray320i: I guess I meant you could still choose to drive a non self driving car...

When the day comes. You might be able to keep your self driver for awhile. As long as you maintain it yourself with parts you have stocked up. But forget about driving it anywhere but on private property. You won't be able to license it or insure it for very long.

But this is exactly what I want! I only want to drive my cars on private property! Tracks! Auto-X! RallyX! I'll read this forum while my electronic chauffeur takes me to the track, then I will beat on my car all day, then I will sleep all the way home. Someone will still produce self driving cars, and parts, and service, etc, because there are still people willing to buy them. In fact - those companies will be - wait for it - catering to the car enthusiasts (us), so they will listen to us and make small, light cars with silly old junk like manual transmissions.

I don't want to pay for registration or insurance for my cars, nor do I really care to drive them (or tow them) on the freeway.

My whole argument is that the car hobby doesn't die, in fact it gets better because you only do (and pay for) exactly what you want to be doing. You don't have to do (or pay for doing) anything else.

If the horse example is to old-school, think about the off-road world and ATV's.

wbjones wrote: the "fact" that ABS is so bad, is why the F1 teams would LOVE to get the technology back …

Which also goes to show you can still have serious human-driven racing cars even if computers out there can do it better.

Toyman01 wrote: I wonder if this is just a ploy to limit their liability when one of their systems does get hacked and kills someone. They can point back at this and say, "We tried to keep people out of it, we tried to get you to regulate it and keep people safe, but you wouldn't let us. It's not our fault."

This is exactly right. No law can prevent me from modifying my car. But a law can help prevent me from 'proving' that the results of my modifications are someone else's responsibility.

In reply to wbjones:

Peasant vehicles aren't F1.....pretty sure their systems are still adjustable for intervention and probably cost more than a 918 Porsche after the market adjustment.