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1 year agoI’m in the same boat in Texas right now. Want to move to a more liberal state, and have several friends who already have.
The reason I stay is every person like me who leaves makes Texas more red. And often times, a liberal Texan is a conservative Californian/Coloradan/Canadian, so moving to one of those place will also move them to the right, so both places shift red.
Case in point. I have a friend who moved from NYC to Dallas because NY was too liberal and their conservative votes didn’t count there. They lasted 6 months before deciding to vote democrat in Texas, because red here is further right than they are comfortable with, so their move made NYC and Dallas more liberal.
Increased safety features on recent car models are a factor here as well. In the decade before I drove, airbags became standard, and weren’t even required until I’d been driving for a bit.
And over the last 10 years, NHTSA has pushed for stability control, 5 star crash test ratings, etc…
Then the whirlwind of safety over the last 5 years where back up cameras became required, and blind spot monitoring, brake assist, lane keep assist, adaptive cruise control all became available features.
You can still buy a car without those, for sure, and unfortunately that still costs $12k unless you want 200k miles or rebuilt titles.
But as I’m shopping for my kids first car, I find it hard to draw the line on what safety features she can have vs not have, and suddenly a few safety features later, used cars cost $20k. A far cry from my first car that I bought for $1k and drove in to the ground.