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People SHOULD be able to do roadside repairs themselves. A roadside breakdown that once could be fixed with a match and feeler gauge now necessitates a tow to the dealership and a multi-hundred dollar diagnosis by a technician with an array of computerized equipment. This is NOT reliability.
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The complexity required to ensure a vehicle meets emissions and fuel economy standards is so high that it takes quite a bit of specialized equipment and training to fix many of today's problems. You can sometimes fix them beside the road if you know what you're doing and have the tools to do it. But this is the way it is with many of the objects we own today. Computers, appliances, audio and visual equipment, and phones are frequently made using a long and complex series of steps with tools and parts engineered by computers designed just to do that job. I'm even seeing home construction performed using subassemblies built elsewhere then brought in, and sometimes these homes have bonded insulation or panels that are likely to be tough to duplicate during a repair.
I believe that the time when people could easily fix vehicles, even with the correct tools and training, has passed by. There are sooo many nightmare stories from dealerships now it isn't funny. Few techs believe in "fix it right the first time" for intermittent electrical problems because there's often no way to determine exactly what causes a particular set of symptoms if the symptoms aren't present. And in many vehicles the human isn't in control anyway. When you press a pedal or button it's simply a request that the computer(s) may or may not accomodate. We're just voting members of the "drive the car" committee.
I enjoy driving my '36 Plymouth. It's crazy simple and most items can be fixed easily. I just spent the day working on a '95 Wrangler. EFI inside but nothing special other than that. It starts, runs, and drives every day. Then again, we just drove an '08 Caravan to the auction with 340k miles on the original engine. The Plymouth and Wrangler will never equal that.