That's how it used to be.
And it's how it still is, except the memory manager handles it all transparently for you in the background, so you can simply mmap() in a file, which can even exceed your total physical RAM many times over, and the system takes care of reading / writing & mapping the pages to / from disk as necessary. All that's changed is transparent support for it in hardware and the amount of memory involved.
I have Morton's toe, which occurs in about 10% of the population
Now I know what to call that thing that I've got that you also have.
As for traction control, if you can't drive a vehicle safely WITHOUT it, you shouldn't be driving.
As soon as the engine is off and not producing torque, you won't be needing it anyway. Turning the engine off is kinda the ultimate traction control.
Power brakes would still work with the engine off and car in gear,
With a manual transmission, yes.
Dell just has to suggest a workaround "Recommend you plug in an external $5 speaker"
That's hardly a reasonable workaround for a laptop computer.
the rural homeowners.
Huh? I've lived rurally most of my life. None of the people I live near, or myself, are under any illusion of police being here within the half hour, and I can't imagine how we ever would be. Fortunately our rural fire brigade (bless those good men and women) have first aid & CPR training which makes a difference, but actual policing is done by things that go 'woof' and things that go 'bang'.
Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.