Quote:
I disagree on automatic tranny's, ABS, stability control, roll over protection, traction control and the like being any detriment to a young or old driver. The one exception is most but not all are aware of awd.
Many people just drive the vehicle with no awareness of any of these systems or what they do. Most current drivers now are at least trained not to "pump the brakes". In a way lack of knowledge of what these systems do does not make for dependence on anything.
You contradicted yourself a little bit here. You said driver aids are no detriment to any driver, then you said that people drive the vehicle with no awareness of what these things do. If you ask me, not knowing a driver aid is there/not knowing exactly what it does is a lot more dangerous than not having it at all. Under normal driving conditions, one probably would not notice any effects of anti-lock brakes, traction control, or stability control, because they aren't being utilized. Then, come winter, somebody pulls out in front of you on a snow covered road and you have no choice but to panic stop - this is where anti-lock brakes, for example, will really screw you up.
Sometimes while driving with my mom in our Chrysler 300C on perfectly dry city roads I will push the "traction control off" button on the dash. After a few kilometers she will look down at her gauges (shows you how little she looks) and see the little icon that depicts a car sliding out of control - she freaks out, tells me she could have crashed because of it and insists that I turn it back on.
A few years ago my parents bought my sister a brand new 2004 Jeep Liberty, 3.7L V6, loaded for Christmas...I got a cheap grocery store DVD player (guess who got the short end of that stick?). Anyway, she had been driving for a year or so and was actually a pretty decent driver for a teenage girl, but I explained to her how the four wheel drive worked (I was twelve at the time) and suggested that she puts it into "4-HI" until she gets to clear pavement because the roads had yet to be plowed. So she starts driving, takes the first bend in the road and instantly slides sideways into a 4' high snow bank and gets stuck, less than 50' from our house. She said she thought four-wheel-drive would make it "not slippery".
You have to remember that ANY "aid" of any kind is going to create dependence. Vehicle mechanics worked for years just fine without any power tools of any kind. If you took away all of a mechanic's electric and pneumatic power tools these days he or she would be lost, they would be unproductive, not make any money, and you would never hear the end of it. Take away a teenage girl's automatic transmission that she's driven exclusively with for years and replace it with a five speed manual and she won't be driving again until she stops complaining and learns how to drive it.
