Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Ignorance and Bliss



     Today my ride and I traveled to the tire guy in town. The fancy warning system on my car has been over-achieving lately.
It already flashes a distracting red light in my face when the temperature dips below 32 degrees. And ever since my last oil change 5,000 miles ago, it’s also been telling me every single day to get my oil serviced. As usual, the repair shop had forgotten to re-set the oil alert.  


          Two days ago the frosty weather set off a tire warning, telling me that the pressure in one of the tires wasn’t keeping up with its brothers, a problem exacerbated by the super cold we’ve had. My tires are on magnesium wheels, which apparently react unhappily to the road crud sifting in under their delicate edges. Kind of like the princess in Once Upon a Mattress, except instead of tossing all night, they react by tooting out air. 


          Who knows? When the weather warms up, the pressure could very well have increased into a range that was driveable, solving the whole problem. In fact, years ago, I would have continued to motor merrily along, with no idea anything was happening until the morning I found my car tilted in a pool of limp rubber in the driveway. All this information has its pluses and minuses.


          Given half a chance, my car would tell me all kinds of things, but I try not to encourage it. I’d probably be mowing down mailboxes and small livestock if I paid any attention to all the factoids emanating from my dash. Fine, I do like to know the temperature, but I don’t care how many miles of travel are left in my gas tank, how long I’ve been driving, or how many miles-per-gallon I’m using. 


          Still, I’ve become so accustomed to today’s driving experience that I’m not sure I could comfortably time-travel back to the reckless days of my youth, pre-seatbelts and airbags. For just a moment today, I forgot to buckle up and until I clicked myself in, images of car crashes and bodies ricocheting around the interior flashed through my mind. And yet somehow my own children survived sitting loose and fancy-free in the back of our van on a mattress.

11 comments:

  1. I think about that sometimes, too. I never used a seatbelt when I was growing up, they didn't exist yet. And yeah, our cars are sometimes TOO smart. Hope you got those tires checked, though. :-)

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  2. And remember those child seats that hung over the front bench seat sedan. They featured colored wooden beads on a wire and a tray for Cheerios.

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  3. Roads are faster so seat-belts are really needed. I do think that everything being done by computer makes us far less likely to solve a problem permanently or temporarily on our own, unfortunately. Like you, I don't care all that much about having a conversation on the details with my car.

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  4. About the only one I appreciate is the outside temperature gauge, I ignore everything else.

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  5. How true. We travelled without seat belts for years. One of my brothers habitually travelled on the floor in the back where the other brothers rested their feet on him. Sometimes I wonder we survived.
    And yes, those red lights can be a decided (and often expensive) pain in the fundament.

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  6. Yes, my car is smarter than I am!

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  7. I'm a little baffled by why car manufacturers seem to think all this information is so necessary. Years ago, people did their own maintenance checking, I remember my dad and several neighbours, doing under-the-hood things and checking tyres every Sunday. People kept an eye on the gas guage and knew how much they needed to get around each week.
    I am glad about seat belts and airbags though.

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  8. That tire light is on in my car as well but I'm feeling too lazy to do anything about it... I've mentioned it to my husband but he seems to be feeling the same way. I hope I don't find it tilted any time soon.
    We used to sleep on top of the luggage in the back of the car, all night on the way to our holidays in France when we were little. Four children next to each other. It was fantastic.

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  9. SIgh... my tire pressure light is always on in winter because apparently Mazda didn't think of winter tires when they designed their systems!

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  10. My little 1998 Toyoto has seat belts but that's about it. It does seem like too much info flashing on the dash would be more of a distraction than a help. We have a picture of my daughter Andee, a baby then, taken in 1965, propped on the steering wheel facing her dad. He was talking to her, making her smile. We were driving through Tennessee in our big long yellow Cadillac, with the big steering wheel. How scary is that. Of course, it was for just a few minutes, but still!

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  11. Like most things these days, modern driving involves a certain degree of information overload! But a good tire sensor isn't a bad thing. I had to change a tire when I lived in New Jersey and the whole time I kept thinking, "HOW could this HAPPEN in THIS DAY AND AGE?"

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