Anyone who has ever owned a no-frills car or truck, one that didn't have all the high technology in it, probably has some particular gripe about how the old ones were better than the new ones.
Well, here's mine -- the dimmer on the rear view mirror. The old cars had a manual switch on the rear view mirror which, when flipped, would shift it to a dark mode to keep the bright lights from cars coming up on the rear from blinding the driver. Worked perfectly.
So along comes some techie with a bright idea for one more electronic feature the driver doesn't want. It's a sensor which tells the mirror when to go dark. Doing it manually was just soooo much work, wasn't it?
But here's the problem. The sensor detects light and dark, so when it's dark outside the mirror goes dark on the theory that the only bright light coming into that mirror will be car lights coming from behind. But that's no help in the daytime when the sun reflects off the front windshield of the following vehicle straight into the eyes of our driver. Grrrrr. The techno benefits just won't quit giving.
On a different but somewhat related note, by now every Toyota driver has probably practiced putting the gear in neutral while the car is moving to practice for that rare possibility that the gas pedal might get stuck. For anyone who hasn't yet done this, remember that the engine RPMs might not match the car speed when the driver shifts back into drive. So if the driver relaxes pressure on the gas pedal when he/she makes that practice shift into neutral it's best to press back down on the gas before shifting back into "D" to get the RPMs up so that the engine won't have too much trouble adjusting to the vehicle speed.
When we purchased a Toyota Highlander I learned that ALL the Toyotas shipped to a multi-state area in the US southeast, including Texas, MUST go through an importer who long ago signed an iron-clad contract giving them the sole right to import Toyotas in their territory. I do NOT know about made-in-USA Toyotas. However, I noted that almost everything on our new car differed from the Owner's Manual, including the tires, alarm system, entertainment electronics, rear-view mirror, etc. I was told that the importer received the cars stripped and put their own made-in-hoonose parts to make a few extra bucks more than they would selling Toyotas with genuine Toyota parts installed. Perhaps the automatic mirror described was made by children in China, instead of by genuine Toyota suppliers.
Posted by: Joe Hathaway | February 11, 2010 at 10:32 PM
Well that's not very encouraging. Thanks for sharing that, Joe.
Posted by: Geo | February 12, 2010 at 06:04 AM
A friend of mine mentioned 2012 last night to me and it's the first I heard about it so I jumped on here out of curiosity. I think it's kind of sick and sounds like a bunch of skeptical jargon.
I choose to live every day like it is the last because let's be real, WHO THE HELL KNOWS what is going to happen or when it's your time to go on. The past is history, the future is a mystery and now is a gift, thats why it's called the present. It's not healthy to sit around and trip out about when you will die. Stop wasting your time you have now.
stop frighten
- some truth about 2012
Posted by: Astronomical picture | February 26, 2010 at 06:10 AM