IF CARS WERE LIKE COMPUTERS

“...many shall run to and fro,  and knowledge shall be increased.” (from Daniel 12:4)

Jack got up one beautiful spring morning and slipped into the driver’s seat of his four-year-old blue sedan.  He placed the key in the ignition and tried starting the car only to experience NOTHING.  There was no sound.  There was no vibration.  There was no sense that anything was happening.  NOTHING.  Confused and frustrated, Jack got out of the car and opened the hood.  The engine was gone.  NO ENGINE!  There was no evidence that someone had stolen it, and amazingly, there was no oil, nor antifreeze, nor fluid of any kind leaked below the car!  In fact, the hoses were all suspended in place with fluid inside of them, but amazingly and miraculously, none was leaking out!  Jack phoned Mr. Perkins, service manager at the dealership where he’d purchased the car (brand new) in 2004.  

Jack was was talking excitedly “a mile a minute” but Mr. Perkins seemed bored and almost disinterested.

“Yes,” Perkins said, “I know what you’re talking about.  The engine just disappeared.  It happens.  The older a car gets, the more likely it is to happen.  It’s just a glitch with cars.  It’s technology.  Sometimes engines just disappear.”

To his amazement, Mr. Perkins added, “We COULD replace the engine, although you’re no longer under warranty so that would cost ‘a pretty penny’.  But I wouldn’t recommend it.  We’re talking about a FOUR-YEAR-OLD vehicle here.  We seldom work on cars that are more than two or three years old, anyway.  At FOUR-YEARS-OLD, it’s definitely time to upgrade.  Why don’t you come in and check out the latest and best cars we have?!”

Marian was driving along the Massachusetts Turnpike (better known as the MASS PIKE) in the Sturbridge area around 11 p.m. on a Thursday night when her three-year-old car just FROZE.  I didn’t say “stalled” because it really didn’t stall.  I didn’t say “lost power...wouldn’t respond to the gas pedal being stepped on” because that is NOT what happened.  I didn’t say overheated, because that’s not what happened.  It FROZE IN PLACE instantly, appearing as if someone had hit “pause” while viewing a movie on VHS tape.  It’s a good thing she was wearing a seat belt, although she did not feel violently thrown around or anything like that.  One second her car was traveling at 65 miles per hour.  The next second it was stopped.  It was terrifying for Marian!  No matter what she did, she could not get the doors to open.  She could not get the car to respond in any way.  A CONVERTIBLE, she WAS able with great difficulty to tear through the roof fabric and get away from the car.  Terrified, Marian called 9-1-1 and in a short time two State Police Ford Crown Victoria sedans and a flatbed truck arrived.

Like Mr. Perkins with Jack in the previous story, the cops and truck driver seemed quite bored.

“Cars freeze,” one officer said.  Sometimes you can “reboot ‘em.”  Marian had wondered  why that officer had kicked one of the rear tires hard a couple of times when he’d arrived.  He explained that sometimes kicking the tires will make the car work normally, but that it doesn’t always work.  The guys were all surprised that Marian was so nervous and upset about what had happened.

Ted’s story is also troubling.  A salesman, he depends on his car and puts a lot of miles on it.  At 100,000 miles, Ted went to a tire shop to have four brand new tires put on his car.  This was the third set of tires which had been on his midsized sedan, but Ted did not mind having them installed because he needed to be safe.
The next morning, Ted was stunned to go to his garage and find all tires were GONE!  The car was sitting on the garage’s concrete floor on four rims with no tires and no wheel covers!

Ted called the tire shop.  

As in the above cases, he spoke to a very bored person.  

“Yeah, sometimes the INSTALL doesn’t work,” said Tony the tire guy.
“We WILL have to order new wheel covers, and I’m afraid we can’t cover that, but in the meantime we’ll get you four new tires free if you can just get the car lugged over here on a flatbed truck!”

Yes, these stories are all fictional and absurd!

My point it, we’d NEVER put up with this kind of stuff  happening to our cars!
Why are we conditioned to believe that this kind of aggravating foolishness should be NORMAL when using computers!  :-)