Curbside Classic is a car history site with articles on American and other vehicles, their engineering and the auto industry.
HN links it for automotive history, such as the Oldsmobile diesel, old automatic climate controls, Audi unintended acceleration and Mansfield bars.
> which definitely included motorized vehicles to carry troops
Yes, I'm not saying cars or motor vehicles didn't exist. I'm saying they were not available to anyone except the most elite and so they don't appear on the streets in the book. Orwell was painting a picture of a world so impoverished by useless and anti-human totalitarian bureaucracy that common things of his time were practically non-existent.
> I am aware of the Model T
I think you're confusing decades here.
Model T was 1908 to 1927. By 1948 you already had pretty much all of the big names in car manufacturing established. Just take a look at the 1948 London Motor Show[0] if you want proof that car production and culture were in full swing.
> That's 1908, but I would argue that the place cars occupied in the public imagination forty years later in 1948 would still look a lot more like that
You're flat out wrong with the above. That's like saying "that was 1983 but I would argue that the place computers occupied in the public imagination forty years later in 2023 would still look a lot more like that". It's just absurd and easily proven wrong by just looking at any media from that decade. It's 40 years for crying out loud!
> I think his non-mentioning of cars in 1984 merely illuminates the mindset and world from which Orwell was writing, rather than representing a conscious choice to say to the reader, "these poor wretches don't even have their own motorcars!"
This just makes it plainly obvious that you…
> I don't recall saying any artificial limit is less safe
Your devil's advocate position was "if you limit the speed for your teen and then need to accelerate to get out of a dangerous situation, what will happen" further clarified as "You should probably start funeral planning anyway if you can’t trust your kid in a vehicle without artificially limiting their speed.".
Had the original limit been 70 mph, I assume you would have said the same thing, as your comment didn't suggest any artificial limit was reasonable.
Hence my devil's advocacy.
> we can drive tractors
While the name comes from farm tractor use some 50 years ago, a Swedish A-tractors is not farm tractor like what you are thinking of. See for examples https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/regional-car-culture-explained-the-history-of-the-swedish-a-traktor/ and https://www.archivish.com/epas-and-a-tractors-the-slow-swedish-hotrods/ for examples. They can be can be a regular car modified to limit the speed, take out the suspension, shorten the length, and have max two seats. See those links for some images.
> with a different class of licence ...
If you got the same training, does that mean there would be fewer situations where you need to exceed 65 mph on the motorway? Since you asked what could make things safer, it sounds you think additional mandatory training would help.
> should we start including GPS limiters as well just incase your kid thought they knew better?
No clue. That's a…
LIDAR probably would have seen the obstacle and avoided it, but so would a human driver who was operating the vehicle responsibly and correctly. It sucks that people treat level 2 systems and level 3 or 4, but the same thing applies to many convenience features in a car (cruise control, power brakes, etc...). There's always going to be some bozo doing what they shouldn't be doing with something.
I'd love to see LIDAR on consumer vehicles, but AFAIK it's prohibitively expensive. And to be fair, even Level 4 autonomous vehicles still crash into things and kill people.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/uber-self-driving-system-saw-pedestrian-killed-but-didn-t-stop
Last but not least, every semi-autonomous system all the way back to Chrysler's "AUTO-PILOT" has had similar criticisms. People in the past even said similar things about high speed highways compared to other roads WRT attention.
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/history/automotive-history-capsule-chryslers-1958-auto-pilot-56-years-before-teslas-autopilot/
https://books.google.com/books?id=YpGkDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=chrysler+imperial+%22auto-pilot%22+dangerous&source=bl&ots=EYrN1Ett0c&sig=cnmHySS-pnBXDBJR-159I7MiV8Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFx6Slg8XbAhUJl5AKHRGXCKwQ6AEIcjAP#v=onepage&q=chrysler%20imperial%20%22auto-pilot%22%20dangerous&f=false
Rockwell Automation did some work to modernize this with the ironically named retro-encabulator [0]. It follows the same principles, but uses the off-the-shelf parts we've come to appreciate from RA affiliates. GE was the main supplier of this updated version [1], and reviews show that its performance was excellent in the field.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w
[1] http://www.rfcafe.com/miscellany/humor/ge-turbo-encabulator.pdf
EDIT: There's quite a lot of controversy convering this area of reseach in the following decades. A more technical overview [2] on the turbo-encabulator's operations is discussed in an article covering Chrysler's tulmultuous efforts to apply it to their automotive line. The short of it is that despite being an impressive leap forward in technology, if mass produced it would generate dangerous quantities of DHMO [3]. It just goes to show how a small unexpected side effect can derail even well researched technical solutions.
[2] http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-chryslers-failed-turboencabulator-hybrid-program-patriot-games/
[3] http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
What date are you using as the start of the emissions safety era?
A base price 1995 Ford Contour was $13805–$16190 [1]. ABS was an upgrade option on that car.
A 2023 Nissan Versa is $15730 [2]
Even the cheapest cars from 1975 cost the equivalent of $17000 in today's dollars [3]
1. https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15143064/1995-10best-cars/
2. https://magazine.northeast.aaa.com/daily/life/cars-trucks/cheapest-new-cars/#:~:text=With%20a%20starting%20price%20below,creating%20a%20much%2Dimproved%20vehicle.
3. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/vintage-reviews/vintage-rt-comparison-the-nine-smallest-1975-economy-cars/
Hmm, I always thought that Atkinson cycle engines like they use in most hybrid cars[1] were, like "normal" Otto cycle engines, more efficient at low-ish RPMs, hence why cars tend to have low RPMs at freeway cruising speed. The figure in [2] is 2500-4000 RPM, which is definitely "normal" freeway RPM for most cars. [2] also talks about why engines like those used in most modern hybrids are not actually true Atkinson engines.
1. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_cycle
2. http://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/the-atkinson-and-miller-cycle-engines-not-exactly-how-they-started-out-to-be/