f13.net

We have tons of really odd laws intended to make money or force people to stop doing things that don't "look good"

Example, in Georgia you can't live on a houseboat for more than 30 days. http://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-12/chapter-5/article-4/part-4/12-5-288

The more important thing here is to acknowledge that people who back into parking spots are awful, awful people.

It's true, I really hate those people at my parking deck. I saw a girl as she was getting out of the car next to me after taking forever to back into the fucking spot. I asked her if she backed in because she was robbing the place and had to make a quick getaway.

Yes, the worst part is that it takes more time to back in/forward out than to do it the way human beings do it.

It's safer to back into a parking spot than to reverse in to moving traffic and hope they have the common decency/sense to stop and not drive around you. I don't find it any more difficult to back out than in, that's why we have things on cars called wing mirrors.

Here it comes. :awesome_for_real:

I would be happy to discuss how I'm an awful human being in a seperate thread :oh_i_see:

The only people who can't back into a spot quickly and efficiently are shit drivers who shouldn't be driving in the first place.

It sounds silly but I sort of understand it. If you back into a spot when you are getting ready to move there is no light indicators to show that is about to happen so its more dangerous for pedestrians although in theory you are looking straight at them so it should not be that bad. So yes a bit silly but its less silly than some infractions.

With you all the way.

Mine's in a fucking parking garage. Just get in there and quit dicking around.

I don't dick around, just reverse straight in. It's called knowing how to drive and judge distance.

Good for you. If I had a dollar for how many people I've sat behind this last year back in, go forward, back in, go forward, and finally straighten that shit up? I'd pay rent this month.

Good thing they don't live somewhere where they'd have to parallel park, then.

Like I said about shit drivers. If for some ungodly reason, I didn't make it in exactly how I wanted and I need to adjust, I make damn sure I am not going to hold people up by making a correction. I will wait till there are no longer people driving by. Of course this applies equally to pulling in forwards. Sometimes if there is a lot of traffic in the parking lane, I will just pull in forwards quickly so everybody can continue on about their business, I then park the way I want to when I am not holding people up.

Edit: It occurs to me now that nobody here is really complaining about parking habits so much as they are complaining about shitty discourteous drivers.

Good:
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85916/quick_escape_by%20_parking.gif)

Bad:
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85916/flip_over_wall_to_park.gif)

I mostly hate people driving trucks. Unless you are in construction or a contractor or you are currently hauling shit, there's ZERO reason for you to be driving a truck everyday in Atlanta. Zero.

And those idiots driving trucks in a city have no clue how to park. A drunk 12 year old would have more luck.

No shit it's bad, that guy is taking up two spaces, like he's afraid someone is going to ding his doors. What an asshole.

--Dave

wat

I back into spots unless they're angled into traffic.

But then, I know how to fucking drive great. And I spent a few years backing up dump trucks with just side mirrors through tight spots.

Now, people who drive into angled spots and then fuck up the flow when they have to make an obtuse turn to get back into the traffic flow? Yeah, fuck them.

Oops, didn't see the following page's posts.

If someone makes you wait while they perfect their back-in, they're assholes. One should at least let traffic flow before adjusting.

That first one is from a jackie chan movie.

No kidding.  I love driving my truck when I need it, but parking it in anything resembling traffic is such a hassle (F250 long bed) that I never drive it unless I'm exercising it or actually hauling something.  I see all the dipshits around here driving huge jacked up trucks taking forever to park or just flat out taking up 2-3 parking spots at an angle because they are lazy.

Paelos is in Atlanta.

People back in a lot there, and it's fucking obnoxious. It makes way more sense to pull in forward, when you have less space, and back out where there's more space. And usually takes less time.

 :grin:

Consider this:  When I back my pickup into a space, the mirrors and reverse camera allow me to avoid hitting your car with ease.  Driving in forward to a tight space, I'm often just kinda guessing whether or not my front bumper is clearing your vehicle.  A collision won't bother my bumper all that much, but it'll ruin your car's day.

The rear of the pickup also overhangs curbs a lot farther than the front, keeping more of my giant-ass vehicle out the way of drivers.

(Don't tell me I'm a bad person for driving a pickup.  I don't live in Atlanta or park in parking garages)

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VXA60br7_KM/UgUHrODc6vI/AAAAAAAA-d0/lTT3jpFzSNk/s1600/Russian_Truck_Driver.gif)

Most people don't use their mirrors, or have rear cameras. :oh_i_see:

You can aftermarket one for not much these days.  I'm tempted to mount one on the front of the pickup.  I do a walkaround when it's parallel parked to make sure nobody left their scooters/motorcycles/really tiny-ass cars in front of it, but you can't be too safe (that shit is invisible once you climb into the driver's seat)

If a person understands how to properly back into a parking space it can be faster and easier than pulling in, especially if it's a big car or truck. The problem is most people don't know how to properly do it and don't care two shits about making people wait while they make micro adjustments the middle of the lane for 15 minutes. College parking decks are the worst for this shit.

I can't prove it, but I have a feeling that there is a high correlation between people who back into spaces and people who are also douches.  I am not directing that towards anyone in this thread, necessarily, just based on personal observation.  They tend to also drive fancy german cars or pickups, again a sign of probable douchosity.  I would also place a small wager that these people are far more likely to be smacking into other vehicles, despite being better drivers in their minds.  They may in fact be more skilled with the vehicle, but that usually just means they are taking more risks.  This is why males cause all the accidents, even though they are "better drivers".

Still not worth a 15 dollar ticket.

The same people who back in badly will also make micro adjustments when going forward to a space surrounded by other cars. They won't understand they need to swing out to get the right entry angle. To me it seems the problem here isn't with the direction it's just bad drivers.

I back in to spaces all the time. It takes just as long as going in front-wise.

Most people that fuck up a park here though have the courtesy to wait for traffic to pass before adjusting. So I haven't really had an issue with parking direction before.

I'd like to see a demonstration or at least a diagram on how backing in takes less time than going straight in.  Maybe I can learn something and become one of those back-in douches.

Of course, using the same principles it will take longer to back out than to simply drive straight out.

I'd also like to stir up a conversation on who pulls through parking spots in an open lot, instead of backing out even if there is no one in front of you.

You just turn opposite the space as you're driving past at about a 45 degree angle until the right end of the rear bumper is about where you want the right side of the car to be. Then you just turn the wheel the other way and back up. Parallel parking is about the same. Pulling in forwards can be just as easy assuming the person driving knows to buttonhook before pulling in. Otherwise you get that thing where the person decides they're going to hit one of the cars on either side, then the forward and back dancing begins.

The only reason otherwise competent drivers have any issues with backing in is that they don't regularly back in. I do it out of habit even if I don't need to, just to stay in practice. So when I'm in a busy place I can execute a quick and precise (usually) back-in. Had to do it a ton when my fiancee was in the hospital, and almost always at concerts because I'd never get out otherwise. Actually had the parking lot attendant come over and thank me for knowing how to park properly last weekend when we saw the Stones.

Main issue most people seem to have with parking is not understanding how everything hinges on the fixed wheels. I learned that working road construction in the 80s, but got to be an expert while driving a forklift in the 90s. It's good to do a variety of jobs, it builds a general competence :)

I wouldn't say it's quicker, but it's only the time it takes the car to drive past the space slower.. which is what, two seconds? The time saving part is being able to drive straight out later on, this is always better than either reversing out or driving front in.

Someone attempting to park their car t-boned my Fiat, also parked, a few years ago. She said it was hard to see in the rain.

There's a difference between parking spaces that are slanted towards a traffic flow and straight 90 degree spaces. Someone who works hard to back into a slanted space against the traffic flow can't really do it quickly--the whole point of the space is to turn into it.

I don't really care about backing in vs. not backing in, though. The thing that makes me white-hot angry are douchebags who take up more than one space. That's basically unforgiveable, whether it's the "I am doing it on purpose so you won't scratch my beautiful car, peons" or the "I have no idea what I'm doing so I didn't even notice that I took up two spaces" people.

My best friend in high school would do this with his 70 Chevelle.  He'd back in angled taking up two spaces.  So he was crooked, backed in, and double parked. 

He really didn't need to do this.  The spaces here are huge and the guy was a great driver.  He parked his parents massive Chrysler into a very difficult garage situation on a daily basis.

Some of us are spatially challenged on a good day.  No amount of practice will help when I can't figure out where the back half of my car ever is.  (I have enough trouble with the front.)

Unfortunately not driving isn't an option around here.  I wish it was, but I can't afford a chauffeur and there's no disability category for 'shitty' drivers.

OK, I'll give this some trials and let you know how it goes, using angry.bob's description.  I don't have any slowdowns with my current method, but I do understand the physics of car movement.


I suspect your friend was more concerned about the other drivers than his own skill.

Discussion over here -

http://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-back-up-into-parking-spaces

(http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-21424ed7d8be9facef6137224e742dc6?convert_to_webp=true)

(http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-12bf2f4088187edf5f1ea50f1f3a4ec0?convert_to_webp=true)

You can see the reverse park has the benefit of a cleaner entry, you need to swing out a bit wider to do the forward park cleanly.


When you have a kid in the back, reversing out into traffic doesn't bear thinking about.

Sorry, but that cuts both ways. Either we accept that backing up is *always* harder and carries visibility risks or that it never is (if you're skilled). E.g., if you're backing into a space, you're potentially just as likely to miss a pedestrian crossing through that space just as you start to back in (it happens in busy lots) as you are to not see pedestrians as you back out. It's marginally more likely that someone's going to cross in front of your egress as you back out than as you back in, but if one's a source of risk, the other's a source of risk.

I will say that it's somewhat easier to go out forward in a parking space that is on the street as opposed to one in a parking lot if the street itself is extremely high-volume. But then in that case it's harder to get the assholes in traffic behind you to not tailgate so closely that you can back in. One makes it harder to get into the space you've chosen unless other drivers are paying attention and are not assholes; the other makes it harder to get out of that space unless other drivers are paying attention and are not assholes.

That's another point - reversing in allows you to inspect the space as you drive by, you can make sure it's not filled with motorbikes, smart cars, wheelie bins, mini-skips, broken glass and so forth. The hard part isn't the reversing it's the detection, you want to know what's behind you when you reverse.

I'm exactly the same, I've always backed in to my spot in my parkade just for the sake of practice. (how the hell is parkade not in the spellcheck?)

I also intentionally always parallel parked properly as if it was a tight spot, even on a wide open road, just for the practice. Years later, I can now actually park competently.


I once watched a couple in an SUV trying to park in the underground parking lot at a local Asian mall. She pulled a third in, and then tried to adjust two feet at a time, back and forth for about five minutes. It was so bad I just sat in my car and watched. After the five minutes, with the truck still on a 45 degree angle and only a third of the way in, she puts the truck in park and gets out and switches seats with her husband. It still took him four adjustments to get it straight, but he did get it in there eventually. There was a good two feet of space on either side of the truck.

That is no way intended to disparage the parking abilities of women or Asians in general, but oh man working in Richmond BC can be um...  :uhrr:

I'm not deeply invested in this, but no, you're wrong.  In either case, the fact that the pivot point (the back wheels) is further into the space makes it faster, IF you know what you're doing and don't fuck up (this is a big if -- even if backing in is better under optimal conditions, you're better off using a suboptimal technique you're good at than a theoretically optimal technique you can't execute).

Just imagine the car spinning around the back wheels as it pulls out of the space.  That means the front half of the car is the one that's rotating.  If the front half of the car is closer to the "exit", it's able to clear the cars to either side as it rotates.  If it's further inside, it's more likely to hit something to the sides while you're still in the space (unless you stop, readjust, etc).  The same is true when pulling out OR pulling in because in either case the pivot point is in the same place; it's got nothing to do with the DIRECTION, it's all about the POSITION.

Again, I don't really care, park however the fuck you want as long as you can do it without getting in my way.  But the geometry of this is not hard to understand.

Reverse parking classic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUg04hCqGDg)

Another way to think about it is that when you parallel park, if you're ANY good at parallel parking (i.e. you can do it with precision rather than requiring two car lengths to maneuver in), you almost certainly back into it, starting your turn as soon as the back of your car lines up with the back of the car in front of the space.  It's the same exact logic -- when you back in, you can pivot your car around the other car as you pull into the spot.  If you try to pull in forward (so that you're coming around the car behind the space), you can't start your turn as early, because your nose will run right into the other car -- which means it's impossible to get into the space in a single motion.  Right?  And when you leave the space, you pull out going forward, because your nose will cover the sideways distance faster (again, because the pivot is the back wheels) and so you'll have an easier time clearing the car in front of you before you hit it.  If you tried to back out, you'd have a very hard time clearing the car behind you without doing a lot of readjusting.

Perpendicular parking has the exact same issue -- if you pull in forward and it's a tight space, you need to swing wide to get yourself lined up before you're close to the other cars, otherwise you'll hit them.  And when you pull out going backward, you need to get most of the way backed out before you can start turning, otherwise your nose will hit them before you're out.  If you pull in backward and pull out forward, you can make the pivot a lot tighter and therefore do it without weaving all over two lanes of traffic.

Reversing in to an unoccupied parking spot, which you know is empty as you have just driven past it, is far safer than reversing out of a park in to traffic. Especially in parking lots with a lot of pedestrians.

Its also easier to park accurately, provided you have a real wheel drive car, which most do.

Edit: Shitty drivers with take three hours to reverse out of a park as they would three hours to reverse in to it (unless the lanes are massive), so there's no real time difference either.

I watched a guy in a fucking huge SUV mess this up on the parking garage again today. And readjust twice.

Another dollar in the jar, nutjobs.

Give yourself another $0.25 whenever they change back to "drive" then "reverse".

The best thing about driving a stick shift on hills is that you don't have to change gears when making adjustments like that.   :awesome_for_real:  Freaks out passengers who don't know what a clutch is.

Someone needs to tell Ab this is what to expect in South East Asia.

I have been in this exact situation, put my hazard blinkers on, got out of my car, and proceeded to (politely but firmly) guide the driver through the process of parking their fucking car.  Once I can see that it's going to take them longer to park their car unguided than it will take me to get out of my car and back in, just getting out of the car and helping them becomes the most efficient use of my time.

All of you are missing the the real way to park - find a pull through spot.

If you can't find a spot, make your own!

(http://images.thecarconnection.com/med/odyssey-battery-bigfoot-no-20-monster-truck---worlds-first-all-electric-monster-truck_100413052_m.jpg)

You're the first one to mention this since I mentioned it.  I usually do not pull through since I think it is unexpected.

I prefer to pull out.

(http://media.giphy.com/media/8zsk3YfQPsa5i/giphy.gif)

I drive a van.  My biggest fear is running over a short person or child.  Pulling through is my usual preferance.

Seriously, a 30 second wait thread? 

This is what to expect in Singapore. In South East Asia proper you just stop outside the place you want to be and leave the car. Maybe put your hazards on if you won't be a long time.

Some British observations.

Supermarket car parking spaces here are too small. US-style idiotically over-sized vehicles are proliferating at a rapid pace here. If I back into a space in the supermarket chances are I won't be able to get to my car boot to put my shopping away when I leave.

Same with most corporate car parks. I can't get camera & lighting gear out of the boot of my car when it's surrounded by vehicular behomoths, so backing into spaces is no good for me most of the time.

However, in car parks, people walk behind you when you're reversing. I don't know why. They never, ever walk in front of a slow-moving car when it's going forwards, but something in a lot of people's brains seems to short out when you're backing out of a space. After much thought, my theory is that most people are total fucking idiots. So I have to choose between backing into a space and not risking running morons over when I leave, or going forwards into a space and actually being able to get stuff out of my car.

Oh and you have to learn how to parallel park in the UK, especially if you don't live in a major city. It's not hard and anyone trying to do it forwards shouldn't be doing it at all.

The thing I don't get about the British is that they parallel park in the opposite direction as traffic flows on that side of the street. Totally freaks me out seeing cars parallel parked nose to nose on the same side of the street.

They do this in Pittsburgh as well.

AFAIK that's an illegal manoeuvre. Certainly pulling into a space the wrong way like that is illegal. I refer you to my "most people are total fucking idiots" theory.

Yeah that's illegal in Australia too. Will get you a ticket for parking too far from the curb.

I tried to do that in Australia once and was given a telling off by my passengers, I had no idea it was illegal.

A friend of mine gave me a lift last week in his mercedes which has automatic parallel parking; being in the car while it parked itself, with his hands off the wheel was a pretty spooky experience. The car did a damn good job of it though.

It wasn't made, it was a tangent the mods split off because they didn't like it cluttering whatever the hell we were talking about before that was just as silly.

In any case, petty annoyance threads will only become more popular. We're old now. This is the new Sparta.

Back when I first learned to parallel park I wondered why nobody had made a car yet that would just execute the correct sequence of steps at the push of a button.  Glad somebody finally got off their butt.

Finally? This tech is so old it was on the 2012 Ford Focus, not just luxury cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-rxJkVzUxI

Luxury cars are now self-driving, not just self-parking. Here's a vid of the 2014 Mercedes doing just that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShYLRus6RTg

The future is now, fuckers.

Bah, Henry Ford coulda done it with 1920s technology and a modicum of mechanical cleverness (minus the car being able to notice the spot on its own).  It's just a matter of steering and moving backward at certain angles and ratios, and you can do that just by putting gears together in the right order.  But I guess parallel parking wasn't a big thing back then.  Still no excuse for it to have taken as long as it did given how many people are terrible at doing it themselves.

I for one look forward to the entire activity of driving being automated away, though.

My baby nephew and yet-unborn niece are going to go through all of high school without being subject to hours of gore porn videos in the name of driver's education. That's a nice thought.

Is it though?

I'm not looking forward to the day when we're all in automated cars, unless I still have the option to drive manually.

I think it has to be everybody in automated cars, or nobody in automated cars.  Or maybe it will be tollways/freeways that are automated, and all other places require manual control.

Honestly, I think it will NEVER happen.  I suspect most people want to drive their own vehicles for any number of reasons, but mainly because they like to be in control. 

What? Self-driving cars are already on the road, and of course you can take over manually. There's no way manual control is going away altogether before the current generation of adults is too dead to vote.

I'm looking forward to the days I rarely have to drive and can just let the car deal with awful traffic around town.

My guess would be that there will be manual control of vehicles on rural roads for a long time to come, because I am wagering that there are going to be redundancy systems on crowded urban/suburban roadways intended to coordinate automatic-driving vehicle traffic flow and make it overall safer. Plus inasmuch as a "it is pleasurable to drive your own car under your own control" survives as an idea, it's likely to survive in relationship to road trips/visiting interesting or beautiful sites away from it all.

On the whole, I think automated driving is going to be a good thing, but it's a pretty classic example of how we're not thinking at all yet about what happens to the very large number of people who will no longer have jobs as a result (I strongly suspect that one corollary of self-driving cars is that we're not going to be owning cars individually any longer). Or what it will mean to have that much more control over the mobility of people--if we haven't solved the problem of government surveillance and intrusion on privacy by then, this will make it much much worse. But on the plus side: vastly fewer deaths and injuries from cars; no drunken driving; probably much less traffic congestion (self-driving cars could be on crowded roads in much much more volume but at high speeds than now--we can't pack in as much and go as fast because we don't have good enough reaction time and we're prone to letting our psychology mess up efficient traffic flows).

The whole idea that we'll move on from mostly owning cars is something that perhaps only really applies to US style cities with large suburban areas where the requirement for cars is more related to needing them for daily commutes/weekly shops. In many European cities with a denser urban footprint a lot of that need is handled by public transportation already. Outside suburban areas where there is a semi-dense population (and therefore likely enough cars to be on call fairly reliably) you run into the problem of needing long wait times or quite a largue ratio of cars to be able to service people.

Really it sounds like self-driving cars is getting viewed as a predominantly US centric view where you really need an alternative to public transportation due to all the suburbs. It would probably help reduce congestion in the rest of the world but I know when I had a car it was pretty much only for long distance trips where I'd need it for at least 2 or 3 days once or twice a month. In terms of environmental urban planning I think we're still at a stage where a well designed public transport infrastructure would be better than self-driving cars for all, especially since we'd need like 80% of those cars during rush hour and they'd spend the rest of the day parked and not being used.

Interestingly enough, self driving cars may not actually reduce congestion in some cities but actually increase it.

There was a study a while ago that if you followed the road laws (speed limit, distance between vehicles, etc...) in Atlanta traffic would actually be worse because they couldn't handle the number of the cars on the road during peak times without everyone closer together and going faster. 

Even from the very early prototypes of self driving tech, it's been pretty clear that we'll want to give the robots their own traffic laws.  It turns out they're REALLY good at driving very close together and at very high speeds as long as they can talk to each other (and they're also really good at making quick corrections in the face of unexpected problems).  That'd be the argument for setting aside "automated driving" lanes -- you get higher density/speed in those lanes as long as you don't let any humans in to muck it up.

There are a lot of assumptions when it comes to automated driving. The most glaring one to me is 'everyone needs an automated car', so all vintage cars become illegal (my uncle has a country place, that noone knows about).

The other is, even with all cars now being automated, few people properly maintain their vehicles.

And accidents would become epic.

I'm all for cleaning up the shitty drivers and not having to drive long distances, but I'd rather see some kind of highway setup where you get on some automated freight kinda carrier thing at the onramp and select your offramp and let the automation take you there. For short distances and around town, I enjoy driving (as well as the old trip up into the mountains to just drive).

I would bet we start seeing "automation only" lanes in the next 8-10 years. Many HOV/Express lanes are already set up to easily adapt to something like that.

Maintenance is a good point. People don't update drivers on their computers. Firmware updates that aren't over a free-access public wi-fi/ mobile signal on a car? Ha.

There's all kinds of ethical problems that need to be resolved for driverless vehicles, too. A car just crossed the lane and is coming right at you. The curb has pedestrians you'll hit, the other lanes have cars you'll hit. Do you take the head-on collision or hit the other cars?

Your vehicle has hit a rough spot and is going to crash, where does it aim and what's the logic for preservation of the passenger vs. property damage.

Black people aren't recognized well on cameras due to dark skin and white people writing the software. How do you account for this to avoid accidents when the camera thought nobody was there.

The Atlantic did a nice piece on it 2 years ago that's still fairly relevant, though I think they fixed the "stick in the road" problem. If not, road debris is a pretty common occurrence, from semi truck tires splitting and flailing about to bags drifting on the highway and dumbasses who forget to close car carriers and spew clothes everywhere.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ethics-of-autonomous-cars/280360/

Also last I read automated cars can't handle snow/ ice at all right now. That's why they're testing in so. cal and other warm climates. They'll get there but it's proving quite a bit trickier than they thought.

They just opened a open test facility in Michigan in part to have a location in a cold weather climate.

I'm excited for automatic driving. Fuck my commute I want to sleep some more. Less accidents, better handling of congestion, less time on road, more time at work, productivity goes up, etc etc (that or the f13 board view of this will be 'we are spending more time at work and getting paid less fuck our capitalist overlords').

Fly or drive to Florida in 2025? Why spend the dollars to fly when I can program the car and sleep for large chunks of its?

Hrrm 4 hour drive or 4 hours travelling to airport/layovers etc...I'll program the car for it! Of course then that may raise congestion , however I'll bet we'll have some enterprising people launch ride sharing apps to match groups of people with destinations.

You'll have the option for manual control however the premiums on your insurance will SUCK! I predict a large surge in lawyers who specialize in 'you can't determine whether the car was under computer or human control at the exact moment of the crash can you officer?' cases.

Maybe none of it will really ever come to fruition but it's exciting to think of all the possibilities and outcomes of it.

A black box would tell the precise moment of everything.

Though I'm happy to live in the frigidish north where we still get 4 seasons that will hopefully some day again begin to weed out the weak.

I prefer to drive on vacation and take the backroads and explore. My fiancee hates back roads (she apparently has an inability to see speed limit signs) and loves the highway.

My experience with navigation tools makes me wary of complete automation.  Parking is probably OK, though.

My experience with Vehicle Stability Control in the winter makes me very wary of taking control out of my hands. The intent is to reduce rollover at high speeds by cutting power to the engine when it detects wheel spin.

However, pulling out into an intersection in the winter and losing all power to the engine and being powerless to do anything about it?

Absolutely the scariest thing that has ever happened to me while driving, worse than taking my old '73 muscle car into a field because I took a corner too fast. At least I could've corrected for the turn.

No thanks, robots.

To take the devil's side: if you realize that you're not driving a car, but rather you're piloting a robot, you realize that the old rules do not apply anymore.  In this case, I'm not sure how you specifially need to tell your robot to carefully start rolling onto the ice sheet, since they are all different.

That's not actually how those systems work.

And I've done some stupid-crazy things with cars that had good traction control, that I never would have been able to get away with in a normal car. Stuff like doing 70 MPH on chunky ice on the interstate, blowing past people doing 30 that were just barely maintaining control. Passing the snowplows on a mountain pass, perfectly in control under conditions that would have had me spinning loops all the way off the road and down the cliff. Hitting deep water and hydroplaning, and undramatically being slowed to a manageable speed by water resistance.

If you're losing all acceleration at an intersection, either your traction control system was really cheap shit, or you're on glare ice and the alternative to no power is spinning your wheels with no steering control until you hit something.

--Dave

Sorry I'm not a mechanic. http://www.toyota.com.au/fj-cruiser/features/safety/stability-control

The gist of it is, when I pull out from a stop sign in winter, the wheels often do not turn. That's bad, Mr Smarty pants.

In the 09 and later there is a switch to turn it off because Toyota realized it was only meant for higher speed situations. But my dealer won't install one in my 08. Still have 6 months on the warranty, and a cutoff switch for VSC is the first thing being installed.

My Gen Coupe had a super-aggressive TCS setup too - whenever it kicked in, it felt like something had broken.  Fortunately, the button to disable it was right on the dash.

Since the thread is kinda veering off target....

My platinum badass warranty is up in November. I've barely used it (but if I'd have needed it, I'm glad I had it, no ragrets). Taking the old lady's car to the dealer for service in a couple days and I want to talk to the service department about doing a big service on the FJ, mostly to milk what I can from the warranty but also because she's a 7 year old lady and wants some attention (37500 on her and I mostly baby her).

I'm going to get new tires and the incremental service, so the dealer is already making dough on the visit and the old lady will probably buy a prius soon; so I'm about in as good a situation as I could be for convincing them to give me a deal on some warranty milking.

Anyone have any advice on getting blood from a stone?

Toyota pretty much told me that anything that wasn't mechanically faulty wasn't covered by the warrantee, so good luck there. That said, I've just turned 127k on my '08 and it's still doing great, all I've replaced are tires, wipers and filters. This winter will be when all the major stuff gets done. Tune up, brakes, the sealed atf fluid, etc.

And I like backing into spaces, partly for the ease of leaving, partly because it scares people I park next to.

Warranties pretty much never cover anything not broken (or throwing up a warning in the onboard computer) no matter how much they charge you for them.

I figured as much, but the question unasked...

I'm about to put the first new set of tires on it. Otherwise it's been a champ. Really wanted to trade it in for a '14, though. Got shot down by the fiancee :( Frame is better on the first 2 years of the line, though.

Warranty does cover items that break/wear down before "spec". So it's good to have them do a service job before the warranty expires - you will at least have the opportunity to have any replacement parts paid for by warranty. But, unless you know something is broken or not working, they aren't likely to find anything that needs replacing. It'll just be the normal wear and tear items that aren't covered by the warranty.

Yeah, I ate a set of rear bearings and had to have the complete brake system redone on my 2010 Prius while it was still under warranty.  Dealer wouldn't even acknowledge that there was a warranty, sure cost a lot...