Hi from Europe :)

Congratulations on the new car.

As for locked out features, that happens in the U.S. because we are an overly litigious society. Our liability laws are based on old common law, where the damages for liability are uncertain and capricious.

In Europe, most liability laws are statutory, where damages are clearly spelled out by the law. Europeans are more likely to accept individual responsibility, where in the U.S. we expect someone else to look out for us, and we will sue someone if they don't.

As you can tell from my post, I don't like our liability system.

Tom

 

You must have the latest Europe 2008-2009 Ver.1 satnav dvd discs (I would guess released in September 2008), some of the lockouts were apparently removed with that version.

 

Hi Jirka,

Congratulations and welcome to PriusChat. It's the most comprehensive and best place on the web for things Prius, even if it's understandably U.S.-centric.

I think our litigious society is reflective of the fact that in the U.S. there's a profound absence of social contract(s) -- the unwritten ties that bind individuals within groups (whether the groups be family, work, religion, town, state, country, humanity) and which moderate behavior.

For example, in the U.S., the unwritten ties between individuals are so weak that we needed the highest courts in the land to rule that "good faith is implied in every contract". To me, this is mind-boggling. It's like we needed the courts to say to us as individuals, "No. Having your fingers crossed behind your back while you signed a legal contract does not nullify your obligations under that contract."

A comparative example: When I practiced transactional law I would routinely draft contracts that were 100+ pages long. That 100 page contract, if it were for a similar transaction in Japan where individual behavior is strongly moderated by social contracts or membership within groups or "frames", would only be 1 or 2 pages long -- essentially a term sheet of the main terms (price, who, what, where, etc.). The other 98 or 99 pages of crap that would otherwise be in a U.S. contract, are just not necessary. People already feel obligated and know how to behave and what to do when unwritten circumstances and conditions arise.
:focus:

 

That's all true, but it is also my understanding that (i) the little guy pretty much gets crushed by the big guy there, e.g., the Japanese oligopolies (social contracts work great when you're at the top of the power chain ). Also, the labor benefits there are often overstated, with the trade unions often (usually?) being mere puppets.