> “Cars must include modern life‑saving tech like automatic braking and lane‑keeping.”

I rarely drive my car. When I do, 99% of the time it's within a few kilometers of my house. I have no need for lane keeping or automatic braking in city traffic, it's barely moving to begin with.

My car is also getting old and will soon need replacing. Ten years ago you could buy a brand new small car for well under €10k. Sure, it didn't have all the bells and whistles but I have no need for those anyway. Nowadays, you're looking at €30k+ for a new, small car precisely because of the safety regulations, emission standards and the fact that it's practically impossible to buy a car with an ICE anymore.

I understand the need for these things for cars that are driven daily, but why do they have to apply to cars that are mainly used for short trips to the grocery store? It's making cars unaffordable for the vast majority of people.

> "Nowadays, you're looking at €30k+ for a new, small car precisely because of the safety regulations"

Not really. There are many reasons why new cars are more expensive than they used to be. But safety features like AEB and lane assist are a relatively small part of it. Adding AEB specifically is estimated to cost $100-$300 per vehicle in the US, and it wouldn't be much different in Europe.

And AEB is proven to work: reducing the rate of accidents by 40% or more. A small price to pay if it prevents the car getting damaged even once in it's life, let alone preventing an injury or death.

Also, it will depend on your location specifically, but there are plenty of new, entry-level vehicle models sold in Europe for well under €20k, including taxes and on-road costs.

Most price increase over last 10-15 years is not safety equipment. Regular inflation was massively compounded by the covid chip shortages / missplanning / greed / whatever ratio of factors one subscribes to.

Note, while I do not expect we will convince each other via interwebs, every safety advance from winter tires to abs to safety belts to airbags to glass that doesn't shatter etc has had a "but I don't need it because I don't drive much | I am awesome driver | it could not happen to me | etc". I don't think it's binary, I think regulation over reach is a definite thing, I just don't think massive increase in car prices over last 5 years is because companies are forcing safety equipment on awesome drivers who don't need it.

Case in point, I got the last kia rio model with all the fancy equipment and detection and even wireless carplay for 18k before they dropped the model. They don't sell a car like that anymore. Next cheapest car kia sells me right now is 26k or more - with absolutely no more safety features to justify / blame the massive price jump :-(

Because you're potentially moving several thousand kilos at huge speed, and the people that can find themselves in front of them should not have to trust your judgement of how safe you'll usually need the machine to be.

Safety regulations are not why cars cost 3x more than 10 years ago. Emission standards have some impact, but the biggest cause is bog standard inflation and corporate greed.

"I don't need a curb cut or a seatbelt, so I won't benefit from society having them" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect )

I agree with everything you wrote. But the real harm with most of these regulations are the unintended consequences, and second order effects.

Say you don't really think <10k cars belong on the road. Sure. But that could just lead to more dangerous forms of transportation like e-bikes or scooters. Or people are restricted to where they can work and live.

An example in the US is Obama era fuel efficiency standards for sedans had lower standards for SUVs. Fast-forward 20 years, nearly every car is an SUV. But it takes a few steps to figure out what the effects actually are.

>> Ten years ago you could buy a brand new small car for well under €10k. Sure, it didn't have all the bells and whistles but I have no need for those anyway. Nowadays, you're looking at €30k+ for a new, small car

If you are looking for car without bells and whistles you can buy a new car for €15k. €30k+ is a price tag for much more than basic car.

You are an exception if you never drive more than a few kilometers. Exceptional people need to learn that the world caters to average situations. It’s not possible to please everyone.

You can say the same things a about seatbelts and airbags. And people did.

> “Cars must include modern life‑saving tech like automatic braking and lane‑keeping.”

My observation and intuition is most accidents are caused by people using their phone, driving under the influence, wrong medicine, being crazy or just too tired or too old.

Unless we are talking about full self driving those assistances only delay an accident at best.

I enjoy those features, they are convenient, but I do not consider them safety features.

I recently rode a scooter for couple of times, and I find it is the best thing to move around in neighbourhood. It is convinent, parking is easy, cheap to run. Everyone should have one electronic scooter.

For your use case, the Citroen Ami is comfortably sub 10k.

But perhaps you are making a larger point about "things I consider unnecessary adding $$ to the base cost of every vehicle." I would say, to that, that

- your governments and voters consider them important for societal reasons, e.g. airbags so you can walk away from a crash, or cameras to help crushing a child when reversing. Presumably you are ok with this..or not?

- the car manufacturers in the EU are politically powerful and absolutely fearful that if the EU allowed the full range of global vehicles into the European market, they would be crushed overnight. Why buy a VW when you can get any number of Chinese minis, or Indian econoboxes, or even a cheap kei car. I guarantee that China keeps Daimler-Benz and VW execs up at night and that they have the full support of their workers when they spend money to lobby against low cost foreign imports...

A lot of these features are merely software. The insane increase in car prices over the last decade is a combination of profiteering + inflation, not safety features.

Lane assist is more often annoying and dangerous than helpfull. It assumes lane markings are good/perfect, which over here is a very false premise.

Cheapest Fiat Panda seems to go for €14,700[1], so colour me sceptical on that "€30k+ for a new small car". In a quick check, it seems it was about €10k in 2011.[2]

The price increase is more than inflation, but you can't just assume that it's primarily due to safety regulations and emission standards.

[1] https://www.fiat.it/omni/configuratore/#/customize?color=CL-...

[2] https://supercarblondie.com/how-much-the-fiat-panda-has-incr...

Most accidents happen close to home.

What kind of strawman are you trying here?