The electric e-brake feature with its faults and favors is a good example of how the world has passed me by with all the "labor-saving" features that everyone else seems to love and demand.
I'm an old-school guy that actually likes a little "labor" mixed into my daily routine, so the "convenience" of all the new things such as the electric e-brake drives me nuts.
Another common example is the power windows. When the day comes that I can't use my arm to roll the window up-and-down, that's the day they need to lay my arm and the rest of me away for good.
Although power windows may seem to be a great thing to almost everyone, I look at them another way:
1. When they break, they are expensive to fix.
2. When you want to roll the window down in the dark, you've got to look and identify which of the array of switches it takes to do it.
3. If, heaven forbid, you find yourself run off into flood waters and the car is sinking and you can't open the door because of water pressure and you want to roll down the window to get out and you can't because the electrics have shorted and now you've got to smash the window or kick out the windshield which can be very difficult and tricky to do, it would be hard to remember why you wanted power windows in the first place.
Two of three vehicles I drive have manual windows: a '96 diesel F250 used for towing, and a '03 Jeep Wrangler used for off-road travel to go hunting. I love them. My family smirks at that idea.
My third vehicle, a '15 Mazda3, forced me to accept power windows in the deal...along with a key-less ignition fob that last week I had to install a fresh battery in and last year I pressed the wrong button on at 4 a.m. at the apartment building I was at which started the emergency horn to honking that took a little while to stop but probably not before the neighbors woke up a bit early in order to enjoy the show.
Bah Humbug.
Rant over for this old man, for now. :=)
