Cars and what they don't
You know, I've always had a sneaking suspicion about the automotive industry.
I've always had this niggling little idea in the back of my mind that the automobile is the last bastion of patriarchy.
There seems to be something supremely arrogant about the way an automobile is constructed. Oh, yeah, it's something that is wondrous in and of itself, a paragon of engineering and design, a marvel of modern society.
But there is something about cars that whispers to me that they are constructed by and for men. Big, strong, young healthy men who don't mind getting dirty, to be more specific.
Big strong healthy young men who are sociopaths.
But yesterday, I had this creeping suspicion proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt, because I discovered, quite inadvertantly, a "safety" feature on my DH's vehicle that was enough to stab my heart with a horror knife the size of a machete...
In the process of putting together ingredients for last night's dinner, I discovered that I had forgotten to pick up some lemons during the shopping excursion of earlier in the day (it's always the lemons, right?). So, because the DH's vehicle was the one parked last in the drive, I decided to take his rather than to switch cars to take mine, I'd just grab the keys to his and take off, just down the street, to the local market.
I got there with no problems, grabbed my lemons (oooh, and parsley, too--and aluminum foil...you know the drill), rendered unto The Grocery God, and hied myself hence back to the parking lot.
Got in the car. Put the keys in the ignition. Fired it up.
But when I went to put the car in gear, the gear shift was stuck firmly in park.
Now, I had kind of had stuff like this happen to me before. Living on the kind of hills that we have here sometimes means that, unless you engage your emergency brake every time you park the car, the car rests on the shifting mechanism and sometimes makes it more difficult to shift when you go from park to drive. Sometimes you have to turn the wheel a little, or do a little butt-shimmy in order to alleviate that situation.
I did all of this.
It didn't budge.
Of course, because this particular excursion was a five-minute run, I hadn't put my cell phone in the car, so the next few minutes I spent frantically searching for two quarters for the pay phone in the market, but, fortunately, I had them, and I called the DH at home, so he could come and help me deal with this.
He arrived, and it turned out that even HE couldn't get it to move.
So he sent me home with the groceries and said that he'd call AAA to see if he could get the situation taken care of.
I went home and waited.
Not too much time passed, and the phone rang. It was Paul, and he told me that the AAA guy had come, and that the car was in neutral, but that he'd need me to come pick him up at Norm's, where he was going to have to leave the car because if he put it in park again, the same thing was going to happen...
Because this is a safety feature on the car.
Apparently, if the wire to the brake lights is broken or compromised, the car doesn't allow you to put the car in gear and drive away. The AAA guy had reached up under the rear end of the car, found the ends of the broken wire, and touched them together just long enough for Paul to put the car in neutral, but the guy said to get it to the mechanic and get it parked before putting it BACK in park, because once it was in park again, it wasn't going anywhere.
Now, I'm as aware as the next individual how dangerous it can be to drive without brake lights. Brake lights, I will admit, are a priority, because most people driving behind you will smash into your rear end rather than trust their depth perception and realize that you are slowing or stopping. I get that, OK?
But picture this...
I am alone. It is dark. I am in a not-so-hot part of town. Or a parking garage. Or some other place where I don't feel entirely secure. And I hear footsteps behind me, and maybe some voices. I hasten my step because my car is just over there, and I can get in, lock up and get myself the heck out of there....
Except, no, I can't....because my brake light wire is broken.
Or I've stopped, on a long drive, to get a cup of coffee because I've been driving for hours and I'm still pretty far from home, and I come out after getting a cup of mud that will see me through...and I can't get the freakin' car out of park because my brake light wire is broken. And now I have to risk 180 mile tow because while there is nothing seriously unsound, mechanically, about the car, the brake light wire is broken, rendering it completely undrivable.
Or I've somehow managed to escape a home where I'm being beaten or otherwise abused, only to finally be able to get to my car and find that there is no escape because my brake light wire is broken (or intentionally CUT, by an abuser who understands this mechanism in the vehicle and finds that it is handier to simply cut one wire than it is to sabotage wifey's vehicle in a more permanently damaging way), and here comes Mr. Wonderful with a tire iron...
What cranio-rectally inverted freak of nature thought up this little feature? What short-sighted, testosterone infected MORON would risk stranding his wife, his mother, his frikkin' grandmother or his daughter in a dangerously compromising situation because her brake light is out?????
What CRETIN believed that it was in any way acceptable to force an individual to pay not only for a repair but a potentially expensive and car-wrecking tow (yes, I AM aware that trying to tow a car in park is a recipe for a new transmission) in order to keep them from driving with no brake lights????
I was, in short, flabbergasted.
I was unable to completely wrap my head around the idea that this was somehow safer, in this idiot's mind, than it would be to place a light on the dash that says, "Hey, dummy--you have no brake lights!!"
Or maybe the message here is that women simply should not be allowed to drive.
So the good news is that it's a relatively simple and inexpensive repair--and that it wasn't anything I did to break Paul's car. And the fact that work at home starts tomorrow means that he can take MY car to work.
The bad news is that I have had my belief that people are, more or less, intelligent completely undermined yet again, and that I cannot put that niggling suspicion in the back of my mind to rest.
This is a safety feature that is cruel, and unnecessary, and potentially extremely dangerous, especially to women who, in this society, often have to rely solely in the ability to escape in order to remain safe, and that ability is cut off entirely by the inability of someone making a six-figure income to think beyond the end of his nose...
Or maybe--this is the outcome that someone wanted.
And that scares me even more.
I've always had this niggling little idea in the back of my mind that the automobile is the last bastion of patriarchy.
There seems to be something supremely arrogant about the way an automobile is constructed. Oh, yeah, it's something that is wondrous in and of itself, a paragon of engineering and design, a marvel of modern society.
But there is something about cars that whispers to me that they are constructed by and for men. Big, strong, young healthy men who don't mind getting dirty, to be more specific.
Big strong healthy young men who are sociopaths.
But yesterday, I had this creeping suspicion proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt, because I discovered, quite inadvertantly, a "safety" feature on my DH's vehicle that was enough to stab my heart with a horror knife the size of a machete...
In the process of putting together ingredients for last night's dinner, I discovered that I had forgotten to pick up some lemons during the shopping excursion of earlier in the day (it's always the lemons, right?). So, because the DH's vehicle was the one parked last in the drive, I decided to take his rather than to switch cars to take mine, I'd just grab the keys to his and take off, just down the street, to the local market.
I got there with no problems, grabbed my lemons (oooh, and parsley, too--and aluminum foil...you know the drill), rendered unto The Grocery God, and hied myself hence back to the parking lot.
Got in the car. Put the keys in the ignition. Fired it up.
But when I went to put the car in gear, the gear shift was stuck firmly in park.
Now, I had kind of had stuff like this happen to me before. Living on the kind of hills that we have here sometimes means that, unless you engage your emergency brake every time you park the car, the car rests on the shifting mechanism and sometimes makes it more difficult to shift when you go from park to drive. Sometimes you have to turn the wheel a little, or do a little butt-shimmy in order to alleviate that situation.
I did all of this.
It didn't budge.
Of course, because this particular excursion was a five-minute run, I hadn't put my cell phone in the car, so the next few minutes I spent frantically searching for two quarters for the pay phone in the market, but, fortunately, I had them, and I called the DH at home, so he could come and help me deal with this.
He arrived, and it turned out that even HE couldn't get it to move.
So he sent me home with the groceries and said that he'd call AAA to see if he could get the situation taken care of.
I went home and waited.
Not too much time passed, and the phone rang. It was Paul, and he told me that the AAA guy had come, and that the car was in neutral, but that he'd need me to come pick him up at Norm's, where he was going to have to leave the car because if he put it in park again, the same thing was going to happen...
Because this is a safety feature on the car.
Apparently, if the wire to the brake lights is broken or compromised, the car doesn't allow you to put the car in gear and drive away. The AAA guy had reached up under the rear end of the car, found the ends of the broken wire, and touched them together just long enough for Paul to put the car in neutral, but the guy said to get it to the mechanic and get it parked before putting it BACK in park, because once it was in park again, it wasn't going anywhere.
Now, I'm as aware as the next individual how dangerous it can be to drive without brake lights. Brake lights, I will admit, are a priority, because most people driving behind you will smash into your rear end rather than trust their depth perception and realize that you are slowing or stopping. I get that, OK?
But picture this...
I am alone. It is dark. I am in a not-so-hot part of town. Or a parking garage. Or some other place where I don't feel entirely secure. And I hear footsteps behind me, and maybe some voices. I hasten my step because my car is just over there, and I can get in, lock up and get myself the heck out of there....
Except, no, I can't....because my brake light wire is broken.
Or I've stopped, on a long drive, to get a cup of coffee because I've been driving for hours and I'm still pretty far from home, and I come out after getting a cup of mud that will see me through...and I can't get the freakin' car out of park because my brake light wire is broken. And now I have to risk 180 mile tow because while there is nothing seriously unsound, mechanically, about the car, the brake light wire is broken, rendering it completely undrivable.
Or I've somehow managed to escape a home where I'm being beaten or otherwise abused, only to finally be able to get to my car and find that there is no escape because my brake light wire is broken (or intentionally CUT, by an abuser who understands this mechanism in the vehicle and finds that it is handier to simply cut one wire than it is to sabotage wifey's vehicle in a more permanently damaging way), and here comes Mr. Wonderful with a tire iron...
What cranio-rectally inverted freak of nature thought up this little feature? What short-sighted, testosterone infected MORON would risk stranding his wife, his mother, his frikkin' grandmother or his daughter in a dangerously compromising situation because her brake light is out?????
What CRETIN believed that it was in any way acceptable to force an individual to pay not only for a repair but a potentially expensive and car-wrecking tow (yes, I AM aware that trying to tow a car in park is a recipe for a new transmission) in order to keep them from driving with no brake lights????
I was, in short, flabbergasted.
I was unable to completely wrap my head around the idea that this was somehow safer, in this idiot's mind, than it would be to place a light on the dash that says, "Hey, dummy--you have no brake lights!!"
Or maybe the message here is that women simply should not be allowed to drive.
So the good news is that it's a relatively simple and inexpensive repair--and that it wasn't anything I did to break Paul's car. And the fact that work at home starts tomorrow means that he can take MY car to work.
The bad news is that I have had my belief that people are, more or less, intelligent completely undermined yet again, and that I cannot put that niggling suspicion in the back of my mind to rest.
This is a safety feature that is cruel, and unnecessary, and potentially extremely dangerous, especially to women who, in this society, often have to rely solely in the ability to escape in order to remain safe, and that ability is cut off entirely by the inability of someone making a six-figure income to think beyond the end of his nose...
Or maybe--this is the outcome that someone wanted.
And that scares me even more.