greg1647545532

Thanks for the support guys! I made TTAC: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/03/reader-mail-cars-for-the-car-fans-edition/

Vote for me 19 times and I'll let you drive it. That goes for everyone.

Fuck money, stick it to Acura for being dicks. A vote for me is a vote for civil disobedience.

W00t! On the leaderboard already Thanks!

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Thanks to everyone who voted for me. Seriously, thank you. But it's apparent that I'm not going to start pulling the kind of votes I need to win, so I'm going to stop bugging people. Thanks again.

Just to put things back in perspective, my parents are in their 60s and own two Camrys. They don't want AWD or 300hp, and resale value means little when they keep cars for 18 years. My mom wants a Prius, I'm trying to talk them into something with a bit more... fuck, anything but a Prius. Because whatever they get will be cherry when they're 80 and have like no miles on it. It's going to be hard to sell the CT over the Prius though. They don't like leather, and my mom still can't figure out the auto climate controls in their '03 Camry. My dad said it was a good looking car, which is promising, but might not be enough.

My parents have been talking about replacing their 93 Camry with a Prius. It old them to get this instead. http://www.lexus.com/lexus-share/images/gallery/models/CTh/photos/exterior/g_ext4_CT-178.jpg http://www.lexus.com/lexus-share/images/gallery/models/CTh/photos/exterior/g_ext3_CT-213.jpg http://www.lexus.com/lexus-share/images/gallery/models/CTh/photos/exterior/g_ext13_CT-224.jpg I figure if you're gonna get a Prius, might as well be good looking.

Ford Focus. Best bang for your buck in the $3k range, bar none. http://columbus.craigslist.org/cto/2216278634.html

Yeah, I would leave them silver. I don't understand the hate, but then I really like the look of a modern (boring) OEM wheel on an older car. Like Si wheels on an EF hatch. It's just a nice, clean, and simple look. Not every car needs 3 piece multi-colored 4" lip wheels.

I like the wheels. The photography... not so much.

http://economicefficiency.blogspot.com/2009/06/is-wind-worth-it.html I've never seen the math on a home wind generator come out with any kind of a reasonable ROE without massive gov't subsidies. It depends on what subsidies are in available in your area. My aunt in MD had her solar panels completely paid for within 2 years thanks to all the BS gov't money she got. If it hadn't been for that, they'd have taken 15 years to pay off.

All I saw.

My Integra shares no interior or exterior pieces, sound deadening, engine, suspension, radio, or steeling wheel as an EF civic. A DA Integra is just as different, parts wise, from an EF Civic as a TL is from an Accord. And yet, DA = tarted up EF. I've driven the shit out of both of them and I can assure you this is true.

ORLY? It's not built in the same plant off the same platform with the same series of engine? I'm willing to accept that it's different enough that "tarted up" doesn't quite cover it, but I think you're nitpicking. It's not like the TSX, which is built off a different platform and has a much different driving experience.

Auto? The Civic with an automatic is going to suck ass. Unless you get a hybrid or an Si, it's just a car. The TL is just a tarted up Accord, if you're into that sort of thing. You'll pay a premium for the "luxury car" bs. Why not split the difference and get a nice boring Accord?

Good correction, you're right. A kid is probably safer going up against a modern airbag than one from 1995.

Luck? There's two ways to look at this. One way is to realize that auto accidents are the #1 cause of death for kids. The other way to look at it is that 2000 kids die per year in the US from auto accidents, based on one source I found that didn't define "kid" very well. Given that there are about 70 million people under 18 in this country, 2000 dying isn't all that many. It's actually pretty close to insignificant. So on the one hand, the odds of any one kid dying in a car accident in a given year are astronomically low. On the other hand, if your kid dies this year, odds are that it's going to be from a car accident. You can also look at accident fatalities in the US over time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States You'll notice that we went from approximately 5 fatalities per 100 million miles when I was born down to 1.27 as of 2008. That means that if 2000 kids die this year in car accidents, 8000 would have died in 1979. 6000 kids not dying this year because of safety advances isn't nothing. Long story short, I'm torn. If there are simple steps I can take to help reduce the risk of the #1 killer of kids, I'm going to take those steps, even though my brain is telling me that I'm changing the odds from insignificant to insignificant.

Lol, both my girls drank Snowville whole milk almost exclusively and they're still in the bottom 10% for weight. My damn scrawny genes must be poweful. It's delicious, though.

I double checked, and I can't find any law against putting kids in the front seat even with airbags. http://www.odh.ohio.gov/odhprograms/hprr/cpsafe/childbooster.aspx You are required by law to keep her in a child seat (not a booster) until she's 40 lbs, though. That said, if you do put here in the front seat, yank the airbag fuse. The problem is that airbags have gotten extremely powerful, and they're carefully positioned so that the center of the airbag hits below head level. You want to take the brunt of the force in your chest, not your head. Children will hit the bottom of the airbag with their heads and have their necks snapped. They're also underweight for the strength of the airbag. They're just not designed with kids in mind. If I find the stats later today I'll post them.

My 4.5 year old is only 30 lbs. What are you feeding that kid? Even at 3, she seems awfully young to be transitioning to a booster seat. You can get regular 5-point toddler seats that go beyond the normal 40 lb weight limit if you want to keep her in one longer. In any case, there's no laws against putting kids in the front seat with the airbags turned off, although many people around where I live will look at you like you're a goddamn child molester if you do. I actually ran into this issue a few months back when I wanted to put my 4 year old in the front seat because I was too lazy to move the car seats around, so I looked up the law and some studies on how safe it was. Prior to the advent of airbags, the rear seat was undeniably safer than the front seat: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14642880 That study showed that moving to the back seat reduced the risk of death in an accident by 40%. A later study, adjusted for airbag use, modified the numbers slightly: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16595421 That study found that with a front airbag in place, the front seat was actually safer for adults, overturning a long standing assumption that by putting kids in the "safer" back seat you were just putting adults into the death seat. However, you'll note that for kids under 12, the front seat is just as deadly with an airbag as without. Those are the numbers. 40% increase in the risk of death for putting your daughter in the front seat, regardless of what you do with the airbag. It's a judgement call. We all have to accept some risk, even for our kids. Given that the odds of getting into a fatal accident on 1 trip to Cars and Coffee are already very, very small, a 40% increase doesn't amount to much. I wouldn't do it with a 3 year old personally, but I wouldn't think ill of you as a parent either.

No, he still owes the whole thing, but he figures the guy's only made 3 payments of $17 each, so he really only owes him $51 at this point. Even though the deal was that he pay it in full with his tax refund.

His financial situation shouldn't affect your obligations. You can't stop paying your mortgage because the bank has plenty of money. Pay up. If it's only $50 it should be easy.