That's about what we do. My 2003 GMC pickup truck runs fine and at 97k miles is hopefully just getting broken in.
Believe me, I am generally all in favor of the "buy and hold" strategy when it comes to cars. But buying a new one recently really made me rethink the idea, especially when it comes to advances in safety. The technology on newer vehicles that helps avoid forward collisions and also scans for potential obstacles while backing up (especially in places like cramped, busy parking lots), not to mention the advances in air bags and crash resilience, makes hanging onto a 15+ year old car kind of unnecessarily dangerous, relatively speaking. Would you agree?
You make a good argument, but here in WV the traffic just isn't that heavy so the new tech stuff in cars is of diminished value to me. The Honda we have does have a backup camera but none of the other stuff.
If we were still living in the D.C. area I might come to a different conclusion though.