My complaint on visibility is toward the rear. The stylists have severely reduced visibility out the rear view mirror and then build in expensive, problematic rear view video cameras feeding dash mounted screens. It’s as ridiculous as Cadillac’s 4-6-8 cure to overheating.
Yeah, I hate rear-vis these days too. Unfortunately building good rear visibility would make the car look weird with the stupid overly high noses that are now mandated in the name of pedestrian safety.
lower profile tires mean i can have bigger wheels. bigger wheels allow me to show off my freshly painted red brake calipers! 
Makes my 2002 Ford Taurus feel like a 2018 Ferrari!
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not true, there are lots of cars with good rear visibility with airbags. But my major complaint is the “rising belt line” styling, which makes the rear windows very narrow.
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I particularly like using the extra space to show off your fake cross-drilled rotors…
A/B pillars are the windshield pillars and the pillar just behind the front doors. They don’t impact rear visibility.
I agree with you about the beltline styline, though see my above comment for why it’s happening.
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looks are subjective, look at the tail fins of the 60s, or the horrible front grills of Toyota. You get used to anything, and after a bit, it looks good.
And then look at the Aztek for an example of how “they’ll get used to it” doesn’t always work. 
If expanding brake rotor diameter was critical they would attach it to the rim.
I can see that working on a bicycle, but I wouldn’t want to have to remove the caliper every time I took the wheel off of a car…
Why couldn’t you use two sets of calipers 180º apart? More heat, but is that the limiting factor?
Some cars do have that. It’s not uncommon to see it on the rear of cars that have been upgraded to a big brake kit, and they want to keep the parking brake. Of course, I see little point generally in upgrading to big brake kits for the rears.
As far as full-fledged dual caliper for actual braking performance, it would be superfluous.
Just about any modern car would easily lock the wheels if you slammed on the brakes and ABS was disabled. So, you don’t need any more braking ability than you already have. As you postulated, heat is the real enemy of braking performance, which becomes very unpleasantly obvious the first time you put a street car on a road-course race track. If you’re lucky you’ll make it one whole lap before the brakes go soft.
If you want to improve braking performance on disc brakes, just put better pads such as Porterfield R4 or R4/S on there. You’ll not notice much difference in the first hard stop (though the initial bite might be quicker), but after about the 5th you’ll notice that you haven’t degraded your stopping ability nearly as much as you would have on the stock pads.
A lot easier to put on 1"-2" larger rims than develop a new braking system.
I agree about today’s terrible rear visibility. The Accord used to be about as good as it gets for a sedan, but the latest model caved to the ‘coupe’ styling insanity, with MUCH poorer rear visibility as the result. One of the few decent remaining cars is the Forester.
Google ‘why do cars have such poor visibility’ if you want to read lots of articles on the topic.
which is one reason I drive one. And I think the visibility could be improved, particularly out of the rear side windows.
I doubt if it is the ‘fashion designers’ that are making the decision on Lpts. I’d be more inclined to follow the money - tires replaced more frequently, plus costing more money. Who really benefits??
I doubt the carmakers are doing it to put money in the tire company pockets.
The car came w/ 245/40R19s; it now has 225/60R17s. Much better ride quality.
I’m inclined to think the tire mfrs are behind this. LPT’s are replaced more frequently and cost more. The old ‘follow the money’ seems to work here.
Except that you’re following the money down an imaginary path. The tire manufacturers don’t tell the car makers what they’re allowed to have. The car makers might tell the tire manufacturers what they want, and the tire manufacturers build them, or the car makers simply use off-the-shelf tires.
There are still plenty of non-low-profile tires available for sale. A car maker could spec any one of them if it wanted to.
Chevrolet doesn’t make any money when you get your tires replaced. Goodyear does. And Goodyear doesn’t get to tell Chevrolet what wheels to put on its cars.
It has been tried and was not acceptable. It has to be slotted or you can’t remove the wheel. The slots rattle like a bucket full of marbles.
Audi tried this by using a “bell” that fit closely inside the wheels that carried the rotor mountings and the caliper slipped over the inside of the rotor. Big Audi with a bigger engine still with 15 inch wheels. That didn’t catch on either.
The big culprit and the big winner behind the low profile tires is the dealer. Optional tires and wheels add a big profit margin to vehicles so dealers always order them. Buyers go to the dealers lot and cannot find a vehicle without these options on them. Most buyers just accept them.
BTW, if low profile tires handled so good, why don’t you see them on race cars?