[Deputy Dog]

Originally Posted by motorhead

I have to respectively disagree big time. We carried on like nuts in cars back in those days and never gave two thoughts to avoid doing anything out of the fear. We thought the exact opposite even when something bad happened. We just thought it won't happen to us. I lost friends. Others were screwed up for life. Growing older was the only thing that stopped it.
I really don't see what the OP is trying to say anyhow. I hate voice mails as do many of people my age and I'm much older than Millennials. We use texting every day in my business to communicate with techs, suppliers and customers more and more every day. It's just easier.

I get exactly what the op is saying...basically in the 50s 60s and 70's guys were car crazy, we couldn't wait until we were 16 to get a drivers lis. We hopped up whatever we could and every kid from 16 to 45 was hotrodding. My friends father was in his early 40s and bought a 70 Ply RoadRunner 383 with a pistol grip 4 speed, yellow with a black vinyl top and a black stripe down the middle of the hood. I liked it so much I got me a 69 383 RR when I came of age to drive in the mid 70s. Today kids don't even get there lis until maybe 20 if at all. Is it good? Is it bad? Who knows...its just that this generation is different.

[Deputy Dog]

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

I think what he's trying to say is that phones, perhaps especially for their texting capability, have removed much of the need that we had for cars. Without the need, there's less desire.

If we wanted to have conversations with our friends, it pretty much had to be face to face. I doubt many of us ever had our own dedicated land-lines back in the day, and the house phone did need to be shared. Hell, I remember when party lines were common. For you younger guys, that meant your family shared the same line with at least one other family living in another house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(telephony) . Think about dealing with that for a minute.

Cars and driving was our answer, and our freedom. Keep in mind that half of any conversations we did have over the house phone was audible to anybody standing nearby . . . perhaps there's a similar privacy-related reason for texting vs using the "talk to other people app" these days.


Texting has its places, but it's a piss-poor replacement for back and forth conversations in real time. For one thing, you're not always going to be sure the other person read your text the way you intended it.


Norm

Yeh...I remember party lines. My Grandmother lived on a farm in the alleghany mountains when I was a kid, when we stayed with her in the summer and wanted to use the phone you picked up the receiver and if you heard talking it was a neighbor using the line and you could either listen in on the conversation or be respectful and hang up and try your call again later. Those were the good old days when most people were respectful so no we didn't listen in.

[L78toLT1]

Originally Posted by mariojmoe

Such a damn good article and I get it! I'm a millennial and am a rare breed. I hate technology, and can read an atlas and get where I need to without gps or navi lol. I'm into cars, and can build modify, and do most things to my cars on my own (ok with some help from yt and google). I also relate wayyy more with the 40+ crowd than my own sorry generation. Btw my phone is the same one I bought new in 2013 yup ne upgrades and no plans of doing so til she dies.

I'm 59 years old and if I still lived in Kingwood, I would make a special trip to Spring just to shake your hand!

[Ryanbabz71]

See a bunch of kids out at cruise ins. It’s funny listening to them they seem to like all the cars but the exotics are really appealing. My son keeps talking about Audi R8s finally seen on at cars and coffee this weekend. Much better than on YouTube




Ryan B.

[Chris C 1SS 1LE]

Originally Posted by Deputy Dog

Depending on the size of the people an airbag can break noses, smash your face and crack some ribs.

Exactly. My Z28 was hit head on not long after Ed Wright dyno. Holy hell. Didn't quite get knocked out but it turned my septum into the shape of a C. Rhino septa plasty (SP) second one...and they removed my septum, fixed it up and sewed it back in. Just as soon it didn't have airbag in this scenario. Hear bags are better now. I'd like to not experience to compare.

[Chris C 1SS 1LE]

Originally Posted by Ryanbabz71

See a bunch of kids out at cruise ins. It’s funny listening to them they seem to like all the cars but the exotics are really appealing. My son keeps talking about Audi R8s finally seen on at cars and coffee this weekend. Much better than on YouTube




Ryan B.

Hey Ryan. That's the 1LE I want. What one you have in front?

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by protovack

Ahhh...if kids back in the 60's and 70's had cellphones you know they would've been texting while driving too.

I have a lot of doubt here. Back in the 1960's, attitudes weren't anything like today's sense of entitlement to all manner of luxury features and conveniences.

You have to remember that those of us who came of driving age during that decade were only one generation removed from the deprivations of the 1930's Great Depression and the rationing and sacrifices that came with WWII. So a sense of frugality ruled the day. If I had to guess, I'd say it wasn't until we managed to reach some level of financial security ourselves that the line between luxury and necessity started getting blurry.

But I agree, back then, because the cars had literally no safety features, on some psychological level the driver of the car knows that he is toast if he crashes, which perhaps introduced some amount of caution to the experience and prevented them from doing stupid things like operating electronics while driving.

It's even simpler than that - we didn't know what most of the stuff we didn't know about safety even was, let alone have any concerns over its absence, and we didn't have such devices. You tend not to worry about what you can't even guess at, and you can't be distracted by what doesn't exist.

Today, we are all so hyper-aware about safety, to the point where we take things like airbags, collision detection, for granted.

All pitched to an extent that can reasonably be considered 'fearmongering' - we live in an age where it's acceptable to sell just about anything directly to those fears. That includes all the above, plus insurance for this/that/the other, extended warranties, and on and on; risk is no longer something to be accepted let alone tolerated, no matter how insignificant the consequences might be. In the process, the sense of individual responsibility seems to have shifted from being an internal attitude where you do the right things because they're the right things to do, to blame from others for not doing them.

I'm not saying it's wrong to appreciate your list of automotive safety items, just the constant background of fear with which they're being promoted. Like we're all "les incompetents" (Home Alone reference).


Norm

[Ryanbabz71]

Originally Posted by Chris C 1SS 1LE

Hey Ryan. That's the 1LE I want. What one you have in front?

Emblem pros

Shortly after arrival. I am confident the next generation can keep the hobby going.





Ryan B.

[MackSteelPrivateEye]

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

I have a lot of doubt here. Back in the 1960's, attitudes weren't anything like today's sense of entitlement to all manner of luxury features and conveniences.

You have to remember that those of us who came of driving age during that decade were only one generation removed from the deprivations of the 1930's Great Depression and the rationing and sacrifices that came with WWII. So a sense of frugality ruled the day. If I had to guess, I'd say it wasn't until we managed to reach some level of financial security ourselves that the line between luxury and necessity started getting blurry.


It's even simpler than that - we didn't know what most of the stuff we didn't know about safety even was, let alone have any concerns over its absence, and we didn't have such devices. You tend not to worry about what you can't even guess at, and you can't be distracted by what doesn't exist.


All pitched to an extent that can reasonably be considered 'fearmongering' - we live in an age where it's acceptable to sell just about anything directly to those fears. That includes all the above, plus insurance for this/that/the other, extended warranties, and on and on; risk is no longer something to be accepted let alone tolerated, no matter how insignificant the consequences might be. In the process, the sense of individual responsibility seems to have shifted from being an internal attitude where you do the right things because they're the right things to do, to blame from others for not doing them.

I'm not saying it's wrong to appreciate your list of automotive safety items, just the constant background of fear with which they're being promoted. Like we're all "les incompetents" (Home Alone reference).


Norm

True..I graduated HS in the mid 70s...most of the people my age were driving cars 5, 10 or 15 years old unless you had rich parents. The oldest car in our school parking lot was a 46' Plymouth, 55 Chevy, 57 Chevy and a mostly 1960s cars. And yeh as far as safety goes it was the furthest thing from our minds, we didn't even use our seatbelts if we had them. One kid in my class had a 69 Chevelle non SS with a 307 and he said he rolled his car twice on two occaissions. His car was pretty nice with cragars, blue with a black vinyl top, but they did a great repair on it.