So he takes the $7500 and buys a used car. Sheesh. It’s not rocket surgery.
Edited to add: Your excuses for this guy is why he is the way he is. It’s not his fault. It’s the insurance company’s fault, along with the auto company, as well as all the generations before him that he can’t buy a reliable fricken car and properly insure it based on its value
Not what I am seeing, here.
What I see here is that a mechanically capable vehicle is being totaled out because a safety device we did pretty well without when I started driving has deployed, and the State of New York has decided that the car isn't safe to drive without the safety device.
That law doesn't make the vehicle any less suitable for operation, except that arbitrary requirement for the device many of us grew up behind the wheel without.
I drove cars (and still own a couple) without seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, telescoping steering columns, 5 MPH bumpers, padded dashboards (just steel), Anti-lock Braking Systems, traction control, all wheel drive, radial tires, electric door locks, neutral safety switches, or any of a host of even more advanced doohickeys that are supposed to make it easier to avoid or survive a wreck. One even has the (optional) electric starter, crank behind the seat in case the 6 volt battery poops out.
What is taken for granted in a modern automobile is amazing to me, and what is considered essential for a vehicle to be driven has increased in amount, scope, and expense, when in actuality, very little of that stuff is essential to getting the vehicle to go down the road and stop when you want it to.
The best safety device remains between the driver's ears, and in some cases that is sadly deficient.
What's more, is that the more the vehicle is relied upon to do, the less the driver has to, and the less raw skill behind the wheel the driver develops. Simply put, the safer the vehicle is, the less so the drivers are.