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.
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. :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd 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.
ReplyDeleteRoads 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.
ReplyDeleteAbout the only one I appreciate is the outside temperature gauge, I ignore everything else.
ReplyDeleteHow 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.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, those red lights can be a decided (and often expensive) pain in the fundament.
Yes, my car is smarter than I am!
ReplyDeleteI'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.
ReplyDeleteI am glad about seat belts and airbags though.
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.
ReplyDeleteWe 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.
SIgh... my tire pressure light is always on in winter because apparently Mazda didn't think of winter tires when they designed their systems!
ReplyDeleteMy 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!
ReplyDeleteLike 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?"
ReplyDelete