Hysteria triumphs over technology
A FUNNY thing happened on my way into the garage the other day. I drove up the driveway and was about to pull in, when I noticed my son’s camping mattress had blown into my parking place.
I yanked up the handbrake and, leaving the engine running, hopped out of the gargantuan automatic 4x4 and went to move the obstacle.
As I walked away, I heard the vehicle’s plaintive “ping, ping, ping” warning. Like many modern cars, it’s a prolific pinger. It pings when you drive off without shutting a door, if you’re too close to another object, when a pedestrian passes nearby, if you forget to fasten your seatbelt, and if you place a weighty bag of shopping on the passenger seat — and forget to fasten its seatbelt.
This time, though, as I walked away from the car, I reasoned it was “pingplaining” because I had the key fob in my pocket. The vehicle has a pushbutton start system and, as long as you have the key fob in the car somewhere, you can switch the engine on and off without putting a key in the ignition. But, if the engine is running and you leave the car with the key fob, it pings at you.
This warning is particularly useful when a passenger is in possession of the key fob and leaves the car independently of the driver.
Having decided the car was pinging because I was walking away with the key fob, I ignored it and went to move the mattress. As I turned though, I saw, to my horror, the 2,990kg tank of a car rolling slowly towards me. You guessed it: I’d left it in “drive” (hence the pinging) and the handbrake was not fully engaged.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, distracted by the itinerant mattress, I hadn’t lined the vehicle up to park in the garage properly and it was about to ram into the pillar between the double doors of the garage. Festering fruit flies! In my mind’s eye, I saw the shiny machine wrap itself around the post, forcing its collapse and bringing the entire house down. (We built the place ourselves on a tight budget and, even after living in it for 16 years, I’m surprised by its permanence.) I even heard myself explaining the event to others: “I have no idea how it happened…”.
Cursing loudly, I charged the vehicle and, like Tendai “Beast” Mtawarira going in for a tackle, threw myself at the bonnet and heaved against it with all my might. Still the car rolled forward, engine purring happily.
I roared and shoved at it wildly. It continued to advance. Screaming now, as if giving birth, I pushed back like a woman possessed.
Within millimetres of the pillar, the car came to a miraculous standstill. Sobbing, I leapt behind the wheel and resumed control.
Later, describing the incident to my husband, I praised the vehicle’s park assist and sensor technology for preventing the collision.
“No,” he said. “This had nothing to do with a clever system. Sometimes brute strength trumps technology. It was that, I think, adrenalin and gradient, that helped you avoid further humiliation.”