As a lifelong car freak practically since birth, I find the spate of thefts caused by people leaving their wireless key fobs in their cars amusing. Technology has done many things for us, but sometimes, it does the opposite of what it is supposed to do. I mean, if I have to accept any more cookies, I’m going paleo.
The wireless key creates bad habits. It’s tempting to leave the thing in your console when you park in your garage, so you can hop in and take off. Unfortunately, it incentivizes the owner to do the same thing when parked at a supermarket or a driveway.
What’s worse, it seems some cars can be stolen even without the fob in the car. Thieves are using range extenders to hack the signal from the devices even when it’s inside your home.
County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a renowned expert on criminal behavior, actually blamed this phenomenon on bail reform.
“Criminals are very resourceful, so now they’re starting to use technology to commit crimes,” Blakeman said. “If there were consequences, this wouldn’t happen.”
I’m beginning to think our CE has a very limited repertoire.
Driving is a lot about habits. You may recall in the old days, dashboards had things called “gauges” with white needles on black backgrounds to tell you how fast you were going, or the coolant temperature. To see them at night, you had to turn your headlights on. If you’re wondering why it seems like a lot of people are driving at night without headlights on, it’s because they’ve been trained to a Pavlovian response level since digital gauges are ALWAYS lit up. And so the mind is tricked.
There’s another danger technology has brought to the driving experience. The use of flat screens. Beside the need to take your eyes off the road to use them, burying simple functions like choosing a radio station or heater fan speed beneath a layer of submenus is distracting and forces the driver’s attention away from the task at hand.
It’s also counter-intuitive. The tactile sensation that a physical knob or switch gives the driver through touch is an important benefit. It’s how the blind read using braille. You’re actually using another part of your brain. The systems become ever more complex each year to impress you with their “tech savvy.” Some recent designs are completely buttonless. We tell people not to text and drive, but we’re cool with mounting a 12 inch wide screen to the dash.
Which brings us to the last and most dangerous “innovation.” Some years ago, some concerned parents lobbied Congress to mandate rear view cameras on new cars because it was impossible to see children behind what amounts to a steel barn door. They weren’t just any parents. They had influence, cash, and when the big dog barks….
But not all cars are the size of a two-bedroom condo on stilts. Never mind. Everyone paid for the cost of having every dashboard’s center stack redesigned, and cameras installed.
Unfortunately, the problem wasn’t the rear view. The fashion for outsized vehicles built to sate the egos of the entitled and virility starved created a bigger problem. These SUVs and trucks, known as “jack ups” in the trade, stand so high up, it is now impossible to see a five year old standing five feet in front of them. The result?
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, pedestrian motor vehicle crash deaths have increased 51 percent since reaching a low point in 2009. Injuries are also far more serious because the pedestrian can’t slide over a hood. Bodies are simply smashed foursquare. And back over accidents? They declined by only 8% since the mandate was put in place, and they were never a major component of pedestrian incidents to begin with. After all, how much of a car’s life is spent in reverse?
Talk about looking the wrong way, and needlessly inflicting costs on everyone to please the desires of those who have the means to make a hobby of political tourism. It’s not the first time the rest of us were turned into bagholders for this crew.
And it won’t be the last. Wonder what they’ll ask for next?
Donald Davret
Roslyn
