Car alarm
January 18, 2025, 9:07 am , by Richard Lutz
Richard Lutz gets behind the wheel…after a fashion
I’ve gone and done it. Plunked down a fistful of cash for the new car. The old banger, which went round the clock and whose bodywork looked as if it came second best in a tussle with a triceratops, was bedevilled with dicey electrics all over the place. Time to stop digging. Time to tell a dealer the old girl was in great shape.
So the car purchase. And with this purchase comes the need to attend night classes in computer science. VW has seemed to replace all the familiar knobs, switches and levers I’ve used for years with tricky touch screens. Which initially I’m finding not so much a pain as potentially dangerous as I search for the windscreen defroster or a change from, let’s say, the radio to my music.
And this, fellow drivers, leads me to a great theory that first erupted about sixty years ago from a bunch of blue sky thinkers. It’s the Four Stages of Competence. Sounds a bit of a Buddhist advice here. But it’s not. And in my case, it’s the four stages of incompetence. And boy does it ring true as I grapple with the online manual (which is hardly manual) because my new car doesn’t have a hard copy info book that you can shove somewhere handy and in which, over the miles, I can add vital footnotes which, I have to add, I can’t decipher months later.
Anyway, here’s a simple lay out to the quartet of stages:
- Unconscious incompetence:
I don’t know how to do something and do not even know that I don’t know. Car-wise, this means not only do I not know how to control ‘lane assistance’ to keep my car on the right track. I don’t even know that this system exists. - Conscious incompetence:
I don’t understand how to do something. But I know it exists. Car-wise, this means I grasp that lane assistance is there. But I’ll be damned if I know how to operate it, turn it off or on, know where the icon is on the screen. - Conscious competence:
Great, I know about lane assistance and I know how to control it. But..and it’s a huge but…it requires step by step concentration (ie, scroll here, hit the screen there, touch that symbol there). This can be dangerous as you operate things and move things around and search for things as you drive. - Unconscious competence:
Bingo! I can do it without thinking it through. Switching to a system is second nature. It can be performed easily with unconscious ease. Such as riding a bike, going up a ladder, walking or breathing.
And this gets me back to Robert.
In my late car, back in 2013 when it was spic and span and devoid of gashes and dinosaur lacerations, Robert guided me through the intricacies of what was then Complicated Electronic Stuff.
Granted he had in front of him that actual hard copy manual (see above) which meant balancing a booklet on his lap as he went through the routine of tracking down vital software…such as turning on the heat with your knee or (how modern is this) how to load CDs.
Seems a bit quaint now. And comfy too. But now that’s all gone.
I’m now on a digi-voyage of discovery, deep in the wonderland of advanced electronics erected on a platform that travels 100mph. I’m searching for a spare tyre that doesn’t exist (I guess you have to float to a garage when you get a puncture); I’m still trying find out how to spray the back window; I’m truly attempting to get to Stage Three of Incompetence so I can know how to do things but have to go step by step as I negotiate a sudden emergency one way system on a ten-way intersection as fog descends, light fades and an unknown red icon suddenly appears, flashing mysteriously, ominously, in my new car.
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Tony Fitzpatrick
When I first encountered lane assistance in a hired car at 80mph … not having been told about it…I thought I was going to die!!
Ayrshire lass
Made me laugh
TimCo
As a devotee of 2nd hand everythings I always hang on to cars long after is wise because the hassle of buying a replacement set of old wheels is daunting enough without the extra misery of grappling with an up to date car.
So, my 2008 Octavia is in for a new cam belt etc and I look forward to its return and the simple pleasure of playing a cd from it’s bank of five, not that I can remember what’s in it from one drive to the next but that’s all part of the fun.
It took me a good while to embrace electric windows never mind ‘climate control’ which I still hate with a vengeance.
The over gadgeted and digititised modern car is, as you say, a safety minefield and as for touch screen controls; great until greasy fingerprints compromise their useability.
All predesigned to fail just post guarantee and only fixable by technicians with a masters in AI.
Happy motoring!
N. Ludd
Martin McCrindle
If only you’d waited another few years for Elon to drive it virtually for you, and take control of your subconscious…
David
So now you’ve got a hi tech car you don’t understand to go with your high tech flat which you don’t understand either!! Look forward to helping you get to grips with all this new fangled stuff when we see you next weekend!
Phil Crabtree
Have I got this right?
You’ve bought a car from the company you sued?
Steve Eubank
I would prefer the old Plymouth, you know where you are with a V8
IMc
I remember driving all the way across Europe to the Russian border and back in my Rolls Royce with solely a ’10 miles to the inch’ map on my knee, I give thanks for the man who later developed early satnav in the UK!
Lutz the younger
When I bought my used 2000 Toyota pick-up truck in 2007 everything was manual including the hefty manual. My daughter, looking for the non-existent electric window button,asks “Papi, how do I open the window?” Ah welcome to my world my dear. Just crank that thing on the door.
Still driving that truck 17 years later with its old seat covers, dents and dings, bouncy ride, and little four-banger engine. I’ve asked to be buried in it when my time comes.
Ellen Vannin
I share your mystified pain…!!…..
jill schulman
I long for my 2000 jeep wrangler, all manual
easy peasy! My new 4 door jeep I’ve had for
3 years, Oy I still have trouble figuring out what strange buttons do!!!!!
❤️
Sue Turley
does feel strange that everything is on the screen – most confusing and if you don’t use things regularly does feel rather dangerous.
Andy
I know exactly how you feel, Richard.
There are days when I long to have my Anglia 105E back.
I may have been able to see the road through the floor, but I could have the engine out and recond in a jiffy.
Remember how you used to have to pull out the choke to start the motors and deal with the points and plug gaps? Thems were truly the days of motoring.
Now you need a masters in electrical engineering and huge wallet to replace failed circuit boards. And then wait 6 months for parts. Progress?? Bah!
Ed J Burke
several car nuts I know with new fangled fancy cars, have disabled the lane control and the automatic braking. A friend nearly ran over a bicyclist in town when he tried to move to the center of the road to give the guy some room and the car (a fancy BMW) seeing the center line, forcibly turned the car almost into the bike. Took a lot of strength to keep it from hitting the poor guy.
Bella Houston
My car is far too clever for its own good. As for lane assist technology… l switch it off at the start of every journey!
Si Cameron
Hope that new car treats you well
Lisella Hutton
I do so relate to your story here. My new car is nearly five years old. I don’t drive in the dark so had left my lights on automatic all that time. No problem it did what it needed to do. Then for reasons it would take several pages to explain just before Hogmanay l found myself having to drive in the dark on a twisty road and l discovered that as my lights were on automatic they didn’t change from dip to full beam but decided on their own to revert to full beam when a car had passed (but not the other way round).
Arghh! Other drivers were furious and l was a jibbering wreck. When my friend and l got to our destination (Strathyre) we found the manual (the cars old enough to have one) and it basically said automatic lights don’t work in the dark, put on manual. The idea had originally been that my friend would drive the car after dark. But she had even less idea than l had so we agreed that l just had to drive as at least l knew the road. Since then we have taken the car out for her to have driving lessons and are working up
to night driving.
Haresh Ali
I wish I could say that I have no idea why you are having difficulty with current tech;but, I know only too well. So, onward and upward!
Dan Janowski
Echoes of Donald Rumsfeld etc!!
Ian Patel
I bought a £75k car without a handover and no manual
I am still finding out things about it today!
Mary Hill
The motor industry needs to wake up to reality and give us back some straightforward switches and buttons.
At the moment. it only takes two of us ‘incompetents’ to be simultaneously techno-distracted for something nasty to happen.
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