The Sunday News
Lovert Mafukure
I recently bumped into one feature on one car manufacturer doing away with rear view mirrors and replacing them with cameras.
So, instead of mirrors you will have TV screens! Isn’t that getting a bit too far ahead of ourselves? It’s like cars are now going to private school!
Automotive technology has evolved over the years. From wasteful engines to more environmentally friendly engines, small force-fed powerful engines, direct injection, cleaner diesels and of course electric cars are slowly making more sense for sustainability sake.
We are good with all that but what really is wrong with mirrors that they need to be replaced with cameras?
It’s not so much the cameras that bother me, it’s the fancy technology that has ceased to be functional. Keyless entry, keyless start, park assist, hill start assist, you name it. It’s the technology that’s giving people sleepless nights with cars that cannot be fixed or cost an arm and a leg to fix.
Any car should at least make my driving experience an occasion, call me old school but I actually like the idea of pulling a handbrake and making sure that indeed the handbrake is engaged and the car will by no way slide back or forth.
In the event that I do meet some unforeseen road challenge, I also like the idea of a handbrake turn or pulling emergency brakes to bring the car to a stop or a quick turn. Imagine this, you park nicely then instead of pulling up the hand brake, you press the brake button . . . a button! Then the computer will send a signal to lock the brakes . . . too fancy.
Another piece of technology that bothers me is keyless entry and keyless start. I like the idea of moving with the times but I also like the whole occasion of inserting a key and listening to the clink, the clank — the key mating with its counterpart in the ignition and connecting everything to a start.
It’s cool to just press a button and the car roars to life. It gives one some 21st century James Bond movie type fictional sensation. The only reason they designed keyless start is because they can, not because people need it.
Eventually, these keys become a problem because they have computer chips inside, they use batteries and they are made of plastic!
With older cars, one can easily get a spare key cut for a few dollars and that will solve all their problems.
With these remote keys, it’s not that easy, the key can easily cost hundreds of dollars then getting the key programmed to work on your car will cost even more money.
That is not all, imagine this, you have travelled to your rural area and for some odd reason the remote key stops working . . . what d’you do? Nothing you can do without that key transmitting a signal!
Now you decide. Is this technology worth the African heat?
Back in the day driving was all human input, you had to know how to drive or you would find yourself in tricky situations failing to drive.
Nowadays, there are all kinds of aids to help the driver.
Those that cannot drive will boast of skills they do not really possess because the cars will do everything for them.
It started with the influx of automatic transmissions, to date, if some people are asked to drive cars with manual transmissions and no funny aids, they will fail dismally.
Why, because modern cars are built in such a way that they do everything for the driver.
Some features are just designed to take away every driver’s dignity, I mean, some of us feel it a celebration every-time we parallel park with no glitch but now there’s park assist . . . You just leave the car to park itself, its good tech with no doubt but when them are we gonna learn to park?
It does not end there, there’s also hill start assist. If you are not able to do a “hill start”, you will never get a driver’s licence in Zimbabwe.
That said, it is a crucial skill for one to attain a driver’s licence.
With the way cars are being built these days, in the near future it might be done away with because cars will naturally not roll back because of hill start assist.
New technologies are being invented everyday and Google is busy trying to perfect that driverless car of theirs.
Very soon it’s going to be perfect and cars will indeed drive themselves.
I wish I could go back in time, when cars actually used to be cars and made to be driven and enjoyed by people.
Do not get me wrong, technology is good but how good is it if it makes us too dependent on it? It has lost its functionality and automotive designers are all trying to show off their imagination — a pack of iconic show-offs. Till Next time — Happy Motoring!
@lovert116
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