They can literally murder people in broad daylight and at worst they get a paid vacation and a transfer.

They also don’t wear seatbelts.

They can shoot your dog, rape your wife, and strangle your black neighbor with 0 repercussions.

I'm a school bus driver and a couple of years ago I had a cop pass me in the opposite direction when I was stopped with my red flashers and stop sign out and about to let kids out to cross the street. He was face down in his phone. If I hadn't noticed him coming he easily could have hit a kid ... and then I probably would have been arrested.

I wish more cars had built in keyboards, it would be less distracting thsn typing on a touchscreen

Doesn't that have more to do with how hard it is to hire bus drivers?

Our county can't find anyone. We just have empty bus routes.

(Yes I'm aware it is 100% money)

But full self driving will be available next year!

Yes, that's exactly what it is, savings. Cheaper to just make the screen bigger and get rid of all buttons since there's gonna be a screen anyway.

It's not in any way "premium", regardless of what they advertise it as.

I'm a Mercedes guy at heart (yes I know what community I'm in, but this is one of the points I agree with all of you on). Here's the interior of the 2005 Mercedes S-Class:

There's physical buttons for all the climate features and some other stuff. The infotainment has a keypad and multiple physical buttons in addition to a multi-axial knob used to navigate the actual screen. There's NO touch capability on that screen, even though competing manufacturers were already adding touchscreens (you could get a Ford Fucking Mondeo with a touchscreen that same year).

Now here's the 2020+ model (currently still in production):

Basically everything is touch and the screens themselves look like a complete afterthought, which might be because... they kinda are. They no longer have bespoke designs that fit the screens into the dashboard, they just have screens and they have dashes which are not designed to be integrated with eachother but rather as separate objects.

These aren't exactly cheap cars either. The three pointed star itself costs a ton of money even in entry level cars, but the S-Class is the flagship, it sits ABOVE their large SUV (GLS aka "the S-Class of SUVs" like they call it). The absolute cheapest S-Class sold by the dealer is 141k EUR and I believe the only thing that has a more expensive base model is the AMG GT sports/supercar.

Now a comparison, here's the C-Class, starting at around 55k EUR

Can you even tell the difference? The cost-cutting measures have gotten so bad that a car nearly 3x more expensive has pretty much the same interior as their entry-level sedan. Yes there will be more space, more rear seat amenities, etc in the S-Class and the chassis itself is different, but they look so similar getting into them that people buying the S must be feeling cheated by now. And this is pretty much the same for all the big manufacturers.

I drive a car and I am constantly worried that I will hurt a pedestrian, cyclist, or animal with it. My car is an older EV that doesn't make a noise outside the car when it is running, and it especially seems to startle deer and cyclists. Only thing I can do is give them more room.

Yeah I've been driving for... 12 years, 2 of those independently, and there's always that sense. That being said there's also periods where you get into a flow state and generally it's the idiots that are causing problems. Though there's been moments where it's come close.

I think a lot of drivers actually are always anxious about hitting and hurting someone. To the point that when a story comes out about that happening, their primary concern is the emotional wellbeing of the driver.

The new ones do still have that too, but try doing that with a thick eastern-european accent.