1st Gen Lunchtable Thread - General Discussion

Our 3 cars are a 1996, 2004 and 2013. Every time we rent a newer car on a trip or whatever, the one thing I constantly notice is how poor visibility is now from the front seat despite how huge SUVs/trucks have become. I think it's all the airbags packed into every pillar but man, no wonder there are cameras for every angle now when you're parking or backing out.

 

A pillars have become huge and that's my single biggest gripe. My dad's 2020 Sierra has like no diagonal visibility between the a-pillars and the sideview mirrors. It's not airbags, it's structure for crush safety

 

Drive by CAM.

 

Yeah when we rented a 2020+ Nissan Armada for a few days a few years back, I remember the A pillars were freaking gigantic. Every time I'd make a right turn I would just sort of give in to the fact that there's a small percentage I'm about to t-bone someone in my blind spot despite having craned my neck in every direction to see around it.

 

Those cameras and angles can be real nice though
Backing out of a tight spot in a car with cross traffic alert vs the truck is night and day

 

I always back in to spaces to avoid having to back out of them for this reason. Especially with the truck having the spare mounted to the tailgate.

 

I don't know if you ever drove/rode in Nelson's 80 series. But those have the best visibility of any vehicle I've ever been in. Its a huge change going even from that to the Tacoma for me.

 

The alternative to "the safest car is made of glass with a dagger in the steering wheel" is "the safest car is a literal tank that can do 0-60 in under 4 seconds".

 

Automotive safety lives in a weird superposition too, because obviously a lot of the best practices compromise on size and convenience. But they also have to factor in safety not just for the driver but also for pedestrians now... like things used to be way smaller when it was just the driver compartment that we were protecting.

 

I loved the visibility of it, but at the same time I felt like I was in a fishbowl

Y'all aren't wrong about newer cars though holy shit

 

I never minded the fishbowl aspect actually. People can see me tweaking out to Knocked Loose in traffic, that's their problem

 

People looking at me in the LC like

https://youtu.be/N4wr3xMU29c?si=acFPfD8aFTAfGlW_

 

checks weather this AM

'cloudy, 0% chance precipitation'

so I send Sofia to school with no rain jacket or umbrella, tell her she can wear her favorite sandals instead of closed shoes.

*gets to her school and it starts pouring rain*


So uhh...did the NOAA take a big hit or what happened

 

It got chopped up as "wAStEfuL SPeNdInG"

 

Coincidentally, I read this yesterday: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/should-we-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-weather-balloons/

Doesn't sound like it would be affecting you, but yeah... kinda.

 

Those "chances of participation" aren't necessarily that it won't rain, but that it won't rain in the particular area you're checking the weather for or so I thought?

Still, they're usually wrong anyway on a daily

 

I've tried to rely more on local independent meteorologists in the last few years (especially for long range forecasts) because the NOAA has always been weak on those especially. But damn if I can't even get an accurate forecast within the next 1 hour I might have to start learning how to become a meteorologist myself.

correct, but yeah I checked for the area there because it's far enough away the weather could be a little different from where we are at home. To be fair it only lasted maybe 10 minutes but still

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHexNTuMz8C/?igsh=MWYzdTljcmlia2tubw==

 

like the time in 1st grade when my mom told me it was book character day when in reality it was a week later, and I showed up to school dressed as Clifford the Big Red Dog