I wouldn't even give them the mantle for best cars. Maybe if I'm looking at 1980s models. Now though, I found them horribly overpriced and the interior done only about as well as most American cars (and that is saying something about how much they have fallen relatively).

really? speed limits in the US are on par with most of Europe and the UK. The exception may be Germany with their lack of speed limits, but most interstates I drove on had the limit at 75 (120 kph, above the UK) and highways are regularly 65 (104 kph). Everyone takes as grace an extra 5 mph (8 kph) so I generally drove the same speed between the UK, France, and the US (and my 1 week in croatia). What areas have higher limits?

your comments on the US seem to be a question of being used to it. In the US you do not make changes to allow for merging cars/cars behind you. And frankly, in the UK, I thought it was ridiculous people would try and do that. instead, you leave enough following distance to allow cars that are entering/changing lanes/what ever, to be able to do it smoothly without you making a change.

This way every driver sees a much more static situation. It also allows for everyone to go faster. My experience in the UK was that people left very little distance because most of the roads were too shitty to allow for much speed (well, too shitty well outside of London and half decent roads around London were either poorly designed (multiple close intersections on a major artery, including 2 only for pedestrians rather than using a raised walkway) or too naturally crowded to matter.

Of course, it doesn't work that way when you get to some cities like Atlanta and in some areas where people hold the left late even when going quite slow (Florida, where I grew up). But then, I've been in the UK and France and stuck in exactly the same situation. The best at times has been Japan, though speed limits here are super low, so everyone goes much faster than legal and every once in a while you get a stupid ticket because you were unlucky.

not that hard, have a friend drive in front of you at 15 miles an hour (or even slower if the car has good enough adaptive cruise control) and deal with the discomfort of jumping out of the car (unfortunately, probably the window so the door isn't swinging along open)

there is a weird hybrid in the maxima, but otherwise the nissan infiniti cars all come from the high end JDM Nissans.

When I was looking at cars (living in Japan) the equivalents were:
Fuga --> M series
Skyline --> G series or Q series now
cima --> higher ended infiniti, but they don't sell either anymore.

The problem is hte JDM nissans for "regular" folks weren't ported exactly so it makes comparisons a little off.

if everyone else is doing something and you aren't, hate to break this to you, you are wrong.

not quite, there can be weird situations (like construction areas) where it comes to a stop because it doesn't understand and has you take control until it does again.

But in emergency situations, it is always better to come to a full stop rather than hand of control while moving.

autonomous cars won't all fail the same way unless the situation is exactly the same. They are MORE sensitive to minor differences because they can actually comprehend all the minor differences. That isn't to say they won't do something incredibly stupid at some point, but you may want to learn a bit about how those systems work. And of course, the software won't be the same on every car.

But I like your dig about American drivers. After spending my last year driving in the UK, I found the drivers there spectacularly bad. If they are better than Aussies, I'm glad I've never had to drive in Sydney. But my first few weeks I wasn't exactly a daisy, the roundabouts really screw with you if you have never taken them before (especially on the dual carriageways).

Then again, it could be as simple the driving standards (i.e. etiquette and culture) are different in each country.

I've taken tests before and "known" every answer. The score didn't always turn out as I expected because I made silly mistakes by rushing. I'll bet the graders (there are generally 2 for every free response question though there can be 3 if there is argument as to the merit of a score, and it is scored in a blind fashion to what other graders see) knew the material better than you, and frankly you got the answers not right enough.

that you screwed up that day doesn't make the test invalid. It really just means you screwed up that day and didn't (I don't know you so this may not be true) perform at the top of your ability level.

actually, my first thought when I saw the stats was "isn't that about a 30% pass rate for the "new" students"? It turns out it's about a 35% pass rate. Though I don't know what the variability is in pass rates from year to year so it's a pretty meaningless calculation.

The real win is we are getting more people to TRY. Not everyone has to succeed, but it's sad that everyone gets a chance to play basketball in school and we feel that is somehow a relevant experience but we cringe at throwing a little money at giving more kids a chance to experience computer programming. I mean, how do you even know you have an interest if you are never exposed?

I think the biggest difference is your wife was with you. There is, culturally, a huge difference between separating a 6 year old from the only parent and separating a wife and husband, and reasonably so. I almost never fly southwest, so I didn't realize they don't have a "Young children first" rule like every other airline I've been on.

so what you are saying is millions and millions of years of evolution have conditioned us to be a male dominated society, and in fact evolutionary forces have probably perfected the social structure that best secures our species' future, and women's rights is basically unnatural.

got it. at least now I can reply the reason I'm against equal rights is it is unnatural and has no basis on a fundamental level....

the wage gap is almost completely gone, and most economics research puts it around 95 cents on the dollar for women today. Sure, we need to close those last 5 cents, but there are bigger gaps that are far more important to deal with right now (especially when it comes to minorities). I"m not saying you ignore women's rights, but in the realm of pay, it is far far less meaningful than it was 20 years ago.

Walking safely at night is not a women's rights issue.

unfenced front yards are not public spaces the way all the other ones are. you don't have a right to expect privacy (telescopic lenses, etc) but people can't come on your yard freely in many places. There is no implied invitation to the public to my front yard just because I don't have a fence on it (at least in the states I grew up in).

Really? Florida and Texas have quite low minimum wages across the US and very large illegal populations. Is there any evidence for this?