If I Ruled the World: Car Designs I'd Outlaw

NANNY AUTO MAKERS OVER-DESIGN UN-SAFE FEATURES FOR REASONS UNKNOWN

1. Dark tinted windows: If someone wants to drive around in a car that looks and feels like the interior of a cocktail lounge, or the hideout of a drug dealer or rap star, then be my guest. But as for me, I loath dark tinted windows, even in hot weather and warm climates. In fact, to me it seems dangerous to drive with this kind of shield on your car. I'm not talking about light tinting which even I have. Recently when I drove a car with dark tinted windows, I had a surreal feeling and felt cut off from the world outside the car. Guess that's why car manufacturers are now designing and offering cameras on cars with computer screens for driving and backing (I suppose it's supposed to help us when we have a cell phone in one hand and bottled spring water in the other). As manufacturers make cars more difficult for human beings to see out of and drive, supposedly we need extra eyes and computer guidance to do it for us.

No thank you.

Who needs to drive in cars that feel like we're driving in a computer simulator? Just give me a car I can drive like a car, with unobstructed views of the outside world. And then leave the driving to me, not some computer thingy.

2. Big fat, obscene obstructing headrests in front and back seats. They're everywhere! They're everywhere!

Sometimes I have to scratch my head and wonder, who comes up with these ideas? I mean really. Who really thinks an obstructed view out the back and side windows is worth the over-protection from whiplash if you're rear-ended? I can see perhaps having a small adjustable head rest on front seats with emphasis on ADJUSTABLE. As it stands now, I believe you can remove the back seat rests, but you can't remove them in the front. You can bet after I backed into a car recently I never saw behind me, I found out I could remove the headrests that helped obstruct my view. They were thrown onto the floor of the back seat immediately and for the first time I could actually see where I was going and where I'd been.

One more thing. For long distance driving, headrests promote the world's worst posture. Your head is forced forward like a whooping crane or worst. The least manufactuers could do is make them smaller and adjustable in ways that allow you to hold you head up straight or even tilted a little back. But no, we have to have headrests that save us from the 1/1000 chance we might one day get a sore neck. And as for me, I'd rather not be so over-protected.

There are more car pet peeves, but for now, I'll leave it at those two: No to dark tinted windows, and No to headrests that are unremovable and cannot be adjusted.

I have a great idea. Let car manufacturers put holes in the tops of every car seat. Then let passengers and drivers select headrests for their cars from an array to suit their own preferences and size. In this world of ever-expanding choices, one size, and one setting should not ever have to fit all.