When shopping for used cars, people often look to a certain brand and take comfort in knowing the brand’s reputation for quality and reliability will mean a trouble-free ownership experience.
Honda certainly qualifies as one of those brands.
Smart car buyers know that any used car, regardless of brand, should never be brought home without a thorough history check. That research should include a close look at recalls issued for the model getting considered.
In the last week or so, Honda has reminded us that no brand is immune from a potentially dangerous fault that could result in an accident, with two separate recalls on three of its most popular vehicles.
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Car Minded, Car Safety, Car Shopping, Foreign Cars, General Chat
car buying advice, CR-V, honda, national highway traffic safety administration, nhtsa, odyssey, pilot, recall, used car shopping, used cars
Ever since the advent of tire pressure monitoring systems, I’ve thought tires should have the capability of self-inflating. If the car can know when the pressure is low and then alert the driver, it should be able to activate a system to re-inflate while driving, too.
That bothers me every time the TPMS light illuminates on my dash, because it means I have to find my pressure checker, check all four tires, and scour my car’s crevices for lost quarters while hoping I can find a gas station with an air compressor or an open tire repair shop. That dang light has ruined more than one day.
I am grateful for the system, though, because it alerts me to possible screws stuck between the treads long before I’d think to check my air pressure. I’d rather spend an afternoon at a tire shop than stranded on a lonesome highway with a flat, that’s for sure. I just wish the tires would take care of the problem on their own.
Thanks to Goodyear, they just might.
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Car Industry News, Car Minded, Car Safety, General Chat
amt, commercial vehicles, goodyear, goodyear air maintenance technology, goodyear amt, tire, tires
A number of years ago some discussion took place about going back to a nationwide 55-mph speed limit on American highways. The idea, of course, was to increase the number of miles travelled per gallon of gasoline while decreasing the amount of emissions from the country’s fleet of motorcars.
Obviously nothing ever came of that.
In contrast, speed limits keep increasing. I remember the days in Montana when no speed limit existed at all, other than a “safe and prudent” law that was open to interpretation. While we’re far from anything like that coming back, there’s news from Texas that new 85-mph speed limit signs are going up.
An interesting prelude, perhaps, to an eventual return to the era of no speed limits at all?
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Car Industry News, Car Minded, Car Politics, Car Safety, General Chat
55 mph speed limit, 85 mph speed limit, american autobahn, texas speed limit
A car prank can be either one of the funniest things to do to a friend or one of the meanest and most expensive.
When pranks are done right, they might cause a small inconvenience, but in the end, everyone laughs, and the only people out any money are the ones who committed the prank. Hopefully the cost isn’t any more than the price of a few rolls of plastic wrap.
But a prank can get out of hand and even evolve into a dangerous situation pretty fast.
Keep reading for an NFL-size version of a good prank as well as a few examples you’d do well to avoid.
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Car Minded, Car Safety, General Chat
brenton bersin, car pranks, dangerous car pranks, nfl rookie pranks, safe car pranks
I’ve driven the Pikes Peak hill climb.
Okay, maybe not the Hill Climb, in capital letters, like the one that took place on the Colorado mountain this weekend, but I’ve driven up Pikes Peak for an entirely separate occasion. It took me a good 30 minutes to negotiate the switchbacks, curves, dirt sections of road and harrowing vistas of road ending in sky.
That drive gives me a new appreciation for the brave souls who actually compete in the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, a flat-out timed race to the summit. Compared to my time of a rather leisurely 30-40 minutes, the competitors make the 12.42-mile 156-turn drive in about 10 minutes.
But at least I didn’t fly off a cliff and roll 10 times down the side of the mountain when I made the drive. That, plus falling snow and falling records dominated this year’s Hill Climb.
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Auto Racing, Car Minded, Car Safety, Electric Vehicles, General Chat
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Thirty years ago, eight in 10 Americans ages 17-19 had a driver’s license. Today, it’s six in 10.
That’s the lead to a story at ScienceDaily, which goes on to give lots more stats about the decrease in licensed drivers in this country.
Many teens today don’t care whether they drive or not, and that percentage will probably just continue to drop. In today’s world, when kids can drive on Xbox and instantly connect to friends through technology, the need and desire to move about in the real world is diminishing.
While that’s great for the safety of America’s teenagers, it’s terrible for our car culture. In 20 years ask a guy about his first car, and he’s likely to respond, “A 2012 Ferrari 458 Italia, from GranTurismo on my old Xbox 360.”
Add Google’s self-driving cars to the mix, and car passion is at serious risk.
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Car Industry News, Car Minded, Car Politics, Car Safety, General Chat
car culture, driverless car, google, self-driving car, teen driving
I like in-car technology. To a point.
I can’t live without heated seats, air conditioning and a pumping audio system, but back-up cameras, internet connectivity and touchscreens are all beyond the realm of necessity in my book.
With each new model year, there are new techno bits placed in our cars that are meant to entertain and inform us, but usually just end up distracting us. Even the stuff meant to keep us safe seems redundant and unnecessary to anyone who actually pays attention while driving. Blind-spot monitoring? Turn your head. Lane-departure warning system? Drive straighter.
But how about technology that can see through rain and snow, eliminating that scary white-out situation we’ve all experienced on the nation’s highways?
That’s a box I’d check on the options list of a new car.
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Car Industry News, Car Magazines, Car Minded, Car Safety, General Chat
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The only animal I’ve ever killed was a cat. With my car. While running studded snow tires.
I felt terrible, but it was dark out, and I just didn’t see the feline in time to even attempt saving its life. Since then I’ve come dangerously close to much larger animals: an elk on the side of a North Idaho highway and a number of bucks encroaching on I-90 in Montana and Wyoming. But I’ve never come close to hitting a kangaroo, and I’ve never swerved to hit an animal on purpose.
Unlike some people.
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Car Minded, Car Safety, General Chat
kangaroos, Mark Rober NASA, NASA roadkill study, roadkill experiment
The Siri button: Coming soon to a vehicle near you
While the iCar once envisioned by Steve Jobs will probably never materialize, that doesn’t mean the Apple experience will never infiltrate our cars.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced that the Siri personal assistant will not only reside in our iPhones, she will soon take up residence in our cars.
According to Cook, within the next 12 months, drivers will be able to hit a button on the steering wheel and instantly connect with that now-familiar disembodied voice so many of us have become reliant on.
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Car Accessories, Car Industry News, Car Minded, Car Safety, General Chat
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Could you spot the $15,000 in damages?
If you knew the car you were about to buy was once melted by fire, would you still buy it?
I’m guessing the answer to that question is a resounding “No.”
However, someone out there owns a 2004 Honda Pilot that had the driver’s side melted away by a raging fire that burned a mere feet from the then-brand-new SUV. The windows shattered, the leather melted, the paint peeled, and every rubber piece of trim and sealant turned to a black mass of burned-out carbon.
That’s exactly what you want to see in a used-car ad, right? Oh, except this car was repaired and re-sold before the damage ever showed up on any reports. After some $15,000 and 12 weeks in a body shop, the car came out looking (if not smelling) completely new.
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Car Industry News, Car Minded, Car Safety, Car Shopping, General Chat
car history checks, car shopping advice, identify damaged used cars, used car listings, used car shopping, used cars
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