boomer blues: New Car Misery

We got a new car with a ton of new technology and electronics.  Whoopee, right?  Not this time.  In every  new car, it took just a few minutes to figure out how to open and close windows, control the air (heat, cool and just air) handling system and the radio.

It has been hard to “enjoy” this new car.  Okay, maybe I should just admit I’m the oldest contributor to Usedmdedia. Being in our late 70’s, my husband and I thought our old reliable 2008 corolla would be our last car.  After all, it ran quite swiftly and barely scratched 100,000 miles.  It was perfect for Baby Boomers like us.  But being 76, I managed to total it (no one else involved, not a scratch on me..that little car saved my life I think.)

I had heard that newer cars came with safety features like a blind-spot warning and rear facing cameras.  Seemed like a good idea (especially after my crash) and after trying out a rental, we were set to buy a new car. [That is another story….we were buying during the worst of the new car drought.  We had to wait three weeks before we could even test drive a new car.   AND if we had bought a new car three years ago, it would have cost $10,000 less.]

It was pitch dark at 7pm when we drove our new car out of the lot. [Again, that’s another story….we had been there since 1pm, talking to manager after manager after financial manager and even the technical expert (twice) who explained all the new features in a thick eastern European accent that only got louder and faster when I apologized for not understanding him.]

We managed to get the headlights turned on.  But the radio?  Oof…the big monitor seemed to be showing what was on my phone.  How do we change this?  Well, they gave us five thick owner manuals to consult.  So no music or radio reports on traffic conditions on the drive home.  Needless to say, we stayed off the freeways.

We were driving twenty miles on surface streets and the glare from the big monitor was distracting,  I threw my scarf over it, so I could see the white lines in the road.

A friend had a similar problem with visibility in her new car.  It was one of those that projected information like speed and time on the lower windshield.  (It’s called a “head up” display.)   Dana is on the shorter side, so you might say it distracted her.  She could not figure out how to turn it off.  She was  forced to use a low-tech solution and luckily she had a magazine on the front seat that she threw on the projector in the dash board.

Another friend also went low tech to solve the same problem.  Being a scientist, Lisa used carefully trimmed duct tape to cover up the projector.

Our car came with five thick books…three big tomes on running the car, one for  warranty information and a “Quick Guide.”   But who wants to spend hours going through these books just to figure out the air handling system?  On one of my very first drives in warm October, I realized I did not know how to get fresh air blowing on me.  Every button I pushed, every knob I turned, somehow got the air conditioner on.  It was October friends!  Warm enough that the car was hot but not summer, when it is actually hot enough for the air conditioner.  Sigh.

So this Boomer pulled over on busy Foothill Boulevard  for 10 minutes to figure that out.  Luckily, I wasn’t headed for a doctor’s appointment.  Or late to lunch.

Don’t get me started on the radio.  It is no longer a two button device within easy reach of the driver.  We have to stretch to a monitor screen mounted on the dashboard.  Boomer eyesight makes it difficult to see the many icons it uses.  And there is a knob as well.  But for music and news, all choices are made on the monitor which is sadly  like a computer screen with numerous pop-ups.  Which we have to deal with in traffic, while theoretically watching the road.

Want to chose a station on the radio?  Want music?  You can choose from your phone, Spotify, Amazon music and from the radio.  It is no longer a matter of pushing a series of buttons in a row that we used to be able to do without looking at any screen.  But in this new car, they are presented on the monitor, requiring eyes off the road.

Sheesh.  No wonder this car has an audio warning system for impending collisions.

It is a sweet thing that softly goes beep, beep, beep in case it thinks we are about to crash into another car.  It also sweetly beeps when we follow too closely, or when it sees a car from a cross street.  Presumably because we are dealing with stuff on the monitor.  The steering and braking system tries to keep us from leaving the lane.  All things we would easily see if we weren’t trying  to find the traffic station on the radio.  Or trying to figure out which combination of buttons and knobs gets the heat on.

Advice?  Take good care of your cars friends.  New cars come with tons of technology that is sometimes useful and often just confusing.  Also, have handy a lot of low tech scarves, magazines and above all, duct tape!