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You will probably live to see human-driven cars banned from public roads.

In America?

Not

Bloody

Likely

Face it, Americans (a number of us, anyway) love to drive, and we'll be damned if we're going to let some pencil-neck bureaucrats take that away from us.

If you want fun driving go get your self a SCCA solo license or club license and go drive on a road track or out on an air strip with cones setup and beat on your vehicle there. It is fun as hell and did it for several years and then I got a job with too much travel and later had kids so that is on hold for now. It is much safer than doing that crap on the streets and they even teach you how to do it right. I had the solo license and you had to go through 2 driving school session to get and to stay current participate in a couple of events a year (maybe it was 2 events in 2 years) but let it expire as I just didn't have time for it.

If you want fun driving go get your self a SCCA solo license or club license and go drive on a road track or out on an air strip with cones setup and beat on your vehicle there. It is fun as hell and did it for several years and then I got a job with too much travel and later had kids so that is on hold for now. It is much safer than doing that crap on the streets and they even teach you how to do it right. I had the solo license and you had to go through 2 driving school session to get and to stay current participate in a couple of events a year (maybe it was 2 events in 2 years) but let it expire as I just didn't have time for it.

Thousands of people do it every weekend: http://www.scca.com/hub.aspx?hub=3

A coworker familiar with the manufacture of jet engines mentioned there's a requirement for car manufacturers (and Prat-Whitney engines) to provide parts for their products for at least seven years. So far I've only found a mention that "both US and foreign car makers are only required by law to provide replacement parts for something like seven years ( http://www.scca.com/garage/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=5003&get=last )" and a lot of mention of Lemon Laws in various states.

I also came across this about "planned obsolecence" that may be interesting in this discussion, as applies to Windows and dropping support for XP to force upgrades: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence_ (business)

I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft is put in the same catagory as Ford Motor and Lockheed Martin for supplier of vital and expensive products. :P

Well said, and far more informative that the original flamebait article.

Being the aggressive driver of a sports car, I certainly have the capability to cut in front of people at any point. However one thing I will never do is cut in front of someone who would have to slow down because I cut in front of them. If I'm joining someone else's lane, it's my responsibility to match their speed, not the other way around. Certainly owning a sports car gives me more opportunity to switch lanes, but it also means I'm less likely to be the one causing the backup. Of course, like the (biased) article says, anyone no matter what kind of vehicle they drive, can start a braking wave if they fail to notice a car before changing lanes.

Of course, being that I typically drive faster than most other cars on the road, I spend a lot of time slowing down (I generally am aware enough that I don't need to use the brakes, and can do it purely by taking my foot off the accelerator) due to other drivers who don't seem to take in account the difference in speed between themselves and other cars. I've got a theory, and it's that people who grew up playing sports are better able to judge the relative speeds, as it's often the least athletic who make these (bad) decisions... try it for yourself.

My other theory is that brake wear (use) is directly related to driving skill. I've seen plenty of people who can't judge the distance between them and the car in front of them, and will constantly speed up and then brake back... matching speed is a difficult task for them, and thus they wear their brakes out rapidly (I'm finally replacing mine after 4 years, which includes about a year of SCCA on them). Another type are the tail-gaters, who often don't look past the car they are directly following, and are surprised when that car slow, causing them to have to use their brakes to make up for the space they lost due their reaction time. Of course, not being able to judge curves is part of this, meaning they're deaccelerating much more with the brakes than by drag when they come into turns that are too sharp for their vehicle.

And as a lot of people seem to think that aggressive drivers are necessarily bad drivers, I'd like to challenge that assumption and prompt them to define the specific habits that they dislike (such as cutting people off) and then see if that's only associated with aggressive drivers or just bad ones. Personally, I've been cut off by way too many people driving the speed limit to listen to that.

Car makers used to have a saying "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday". Everybody knew that the cars winning the races weren't the cars you could buy but people assume that if their race cars are better than the competitors race cars, then their regular cars are better than the competitors regular cars too.

Actually, it used to be that the cars were the same. "Stock car" racing is named such because it used to be the racing of stock (as in, righ off the showroom floor) cars. It's obviously not that today, where only the shell is similar to (but still not the same as) the cars you can actually buy.

That said, there are still race series where the cars really are (mostly) stock. Some safety additions are required, like bolt-in rollcages and multi-point harnesses, but aside from that you're running stock in a class like Showroom Stock. The categories may not contain the newest cars, but you could theoretically go buy a used car, bolt in a roll cage and harness, and compete.