"The Doritos Locos Taco is Ruining My Life," or, "Why Driver's Aid Technology is A Menace."

While driving down the highway today, I saw a large billboard that proclaimed, "Your Doritos is Tacos." This declaration caused me to almost ram my truck into the artfully bearded hipster driving the Chevy HHR in front of me. My indescribable shock was not a result of the grammatical sacrilege that had been committed by the sign, but by Taco Bell's temerity in insinuating that a Doritos taco was something desirable. Something that I wanted. Frankly, I have no desire to eat a Dorito taco. If I want a Taco, I will damn well have a taco, not a poorly seasoned corn chip with elephantiasis. 

Stay out of my lunch! And my car!

The foisting of a revolting chip taco on the public made me consider a similar situation in the automotive world. Every model year, car manufacturers unveil the newest generation of technology designed to "aid" your driving experience. Mercedes, for example, is quite fond of a little gadget that will stop your car for you if it senses danger ahead. I'm sorry, but would it not be more prudent to maintain your road speed and simply swerve around the log in the side of the lane? How are you supposed to drive safely when a machine is intervening every time something is in the road ahead of you? 

It's the same story with modern supercars. In the olden days, supercars were impossible to drive. If you turned too aggresively, they would oversteer massively, and you would hit a tree and die. If you used too much throttle, they could understeer OR overstter wildy, and you would hit a lampost and die. If you missed a shift, the transmission would explode and send half of what used to be third gear through your face, and you would die. Sometimes, you would start them and they would explode. You would then die. On occasion, the brakes would inexplicably fail, causing you to launch off of a cliff and die. In sum, old supercars were devilishly tricky. Just ask James Dean.

Although this ended very badly for Mr. Dean, it created what was undeniably a pure driving experience. When everything came together properly on the road, you were in driving nirvana: a perfect synthesis of man and machine. If you knew what you were doing, you were a hero. If you didn't, you died horribly in a flaming wreck. 

The experience itself was completely different as well. The interiors of these old cars were sparse. Stripped down. Facing you was an array of gauges, a steering wheel, some pedals, and a shift lever. Now compare that to the driver's view in a new Ferrari 458.

It's a mess of mind-numbingly complicated gadgets. Happily, this picture doesn't show the back of the wheel, which has even more buttons. Consequently, every time you try to park, you activate twelve different functions, all of which are so distracting that you can't park your car, you look like an ass, and Keira Knightley gets out of the passenger seat to go cozy up with the man who almost died in his old Porsche on the drive in.

At the end of the day, all of these add-ons, although initially palatable, are simply diluting the driving experience for those of us that actually care. Like the Doritos Locos Taco, they are well-intentioned attempts to please consumers that simply fail.