Just glad yer Better 'Arf got away kinda unscathed.
Never know the minute.
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Hi Barrie, Iāve finally logged in for long enough to see the whole thread and seen the bad news.
I hope Mrs B recovers quickly and sheds the stiffness. A good soak in a warm bath with a glass of a favourite something might help. Perhaps she also needs some gentle massage in the relevant places.
I also hope she doesnāt become afraid of driving.
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Any driver aids are great as long as they are not French or Italian & guaranteed to stop working very early on in life & nobody has the first clue as to how to fixvthem.
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Interesting thread - firstly I also hope Mrs B is ok and not afraid to drive in the future.
As far as driver aids are concerned, I have a new Golf with just about everything, but when I drive my Mk1, the only thing I miss are the folding mirrors. When I put the car in the garage, I have to close them in, which is a pain when reversing into a tight space. then I have to wait a minute while the window goes down so I can adjust them back - which is not easy on the passenger side to get them right. then another minute wait for the window to go back up! My car also does not have ABS, which I have noticed when I locked the wheels, but some cadence braking meant I was ok - now I just drive more carefully, especially in the wet, as you can take liberties if you know you are partially shielded from accidents with the technology - but this is more psychological.
Most aids are really for convenience and we can live without them, but statistics have shown that ESP (electronic stability) has saved a lot of lives since being made compulsory - but driving standards are probably lower than they wereā¦
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In this day and age I suppose we expect a certain level of equipment and driver aids In our cars . As for equipment failure the more equipment you have ( like moving parts ) the Percentages of failure are higher. If the car is out of manufacture warranty the running cost can increase, but do we take this into consideration when buying a fully loaded model especially in the secondhand market
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Three Iāve not yet seen mentioned here:
- Emergency Brake Assist (EBA) that goes hand-in-hand with ABS, if you jump on the brakes quick it will ensure full stopping power is deployed even if you panicked and didnāt get the pedal to the floor (often it strobes the hazards or brake lights when activated too)
- Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) screams at you if it thinks youāre about to plough into something (Forward Collision Warning), then if you donāt do anything about it brakes for you using the EBA. New cars must have this to get a 5* NCAP now, thatās why the ND MX-5 is only a 4* car. Itās only fully effective upto a certain speed but given most crashes are low speed impacts in to the back of someone else because of a distract driver, it will save a lot of hassle.
- High beam assist (HBA) flicks between dipped and full beam to avoid dazzling oncoming traffic (at least thatās the theory, never used the system and not sure if Iād trust it), some of the cleverer systems with LED matrix or laser headlamps can pick out individual vehicles and āsteerā the full beam around them.
- No one seems to have mentioned automatic parallel parking yet? One of the benefits of EPAS (as much as it robs steering feeling), but Iāve only used it once and it scared the crap out of me!
And my go to only mentioned once thus far: Cruise Control, I love it! And these days you can get it radar guided with a braking function. And if you have lane keep assist itāll steer you between the lines on a motorway too. Tried this in a new Suzuki Swift Sport though and didnāt much rate it, plus it wouldnāt let me follow Audis at tailgate distance 
Iāve been driving long enough that my first cars didnāt have ABS or power steering (or electric windows or remote central locking or air con) and canāt say I care much for those days!
Adaptive Cruise Control is fantastic! I use it a lot, but I know a lot of people do not get on with cruise control at all, but in my Golf I use it on every journey. It is great if you are in a speed controlled area (arenāt they all?) such as motorway roadworks traffic with speed restrictions.
However I have had the brakes applied when the car thought I was going to hit something that I was not. If we move to driverless cars, the technology needs to improve as there are some false negativesā¦
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Just a thought, would they be DRIVERS aids if it was a driverless car?
Theyāve got those laser lights on one of the new Ferrariās, over Ā£8,000 as an extra wow!
Cheap extra for a Ferrari - as Apple Car play is about Ā£2,500ā¦
A few years back a top-of-the-range brand new (41 kms) hired Renault Megane almost killed us because of its dire brakes. It claimed to have all the latests whizzy systems including EBA, but it was the most useless car ever to drive.
. Electric parking brake, sometimes it was on, sometimes not, unpredictable; so how to do a hill start at the traffic lights except by heel and toe?
. EBA kicked in if one merely touched the brake pedal chucking one through the windscreen if seatbelts not tight-tight-tight. I soon noticed many French drivers in town kept an extra safe distance behind other Renault kangaroos.
. On the motorway in an emergency stop situation from 130kph and from 200-300m behind the car in front, they faded to almost nothing at all by about 30kph and I ended up on the hard shoulder alongside the car that had been in front. The other driver rolled his passenger window down, a gave gallic shrug and said āCāest un Renault. Dommage.ā and rolled the window up again.
I phoned up the hirer, who tutted and apologised, confessing they had omitted to take out the factory brake pads and fit more appropriate hard ones. A mechanic arrived two hours later who fitted new pads all round. At least they didnāt fade after that.
But Iāll never drive another Renault.
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Yes, as above, cruise control, what a wonderful thing. Perfect for sticking to the speed limit, and I use it a lot on all sorts of roads even if only flicking on for a few seconds. But I know many donāt like it and think itās just there for the long cruise on the motorway.
Passenger side door mirror? They used to be optional, and are quite useful.
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thats a really good one! 
Barrie
Just like a picnic basketā:joy:
Hill assist,or whatever itās called. Got it on the Kuga and my 12 year old transit. Keeps the brakes applied for a couple of seconds when you take your foot off the brake pedal when on a hill
I was taught to do a hill start holding the car on the hand-brake, no fancy footwork needed then. Still do.
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Has anybody mentioned or driven anything with head up displays and was it helpful, havenāt myself.
I think all new car tech is wonderful, especially if you just use it without analysing its failings, no tech is perfect for all situations. I drive along thinking about what the tech is doing āthe camera is looking at this, the radars are sensing thatā. ALH (Adaptive LED headlamps) being one of my favourites. I drive new Mazdaās with all the new tech and while I wouldnāt miss some of it if I had to pay for it, non of it, in my opinion anyway, is bad in any way at all.
My current Mazda 6 has heads up display (HUD) with traffic sign recognition (TSR), how I miss it when Iām in my 1994 MX-5. Itās amazing how quickly you get used to stuff.
I love car tech!
Re the incidence of failure of driver aids on older cars I donāt tend to drive cars much more than 7 or 8 years old but older cars . basic or upmarket obviously break more than young ones - and it was ever thus . But there has been a quantum leap in reliability and build quality since I started driving in the Seventies.
Back then driver aids were unknown and cars were very simple . But cars were very often were shonky old basket cases within a relatively short time from new - even 3 or 4 years or so on some BL nightmares . Rust , , electrical woes, poor starting , awful brakes , 3-6000 mile service intervals, knackered synchro , awful petrol and oil consumption -none of these problems was unusual .
Thank God they donāt make them like they used to .
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