If you own a vehicle with an electronic parking brake, make sure you actuate it from time to time. Otherwise, you may be in for an expensive surprise when it comes time to replace the rear brake pads. A $200 job could easily turn into greater than $1000 due to the parking brake mechanism becoming seized. Actually, the parking brake should be used every time the car is parked. Frozen parking brakes are due to disuse and just about nothing else. The transmission park position should never be trusted to hold the vehicle. Personally, I know of two instances of failure of the park position in the transmission to hold the vehicle. One resulted in a fatality and another in an injury. The parking brake is there for a reason. Use it and be safe.
Archive for the ‘Safety’ Category
Electronic Parking Brakes
Thursday, January 12th, 2012Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Sunday, August 14th, 2011This is not going to be a treatise on the book written by Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds about the tulip bulb mania in Holland in the 1600’s, but it does have a parallel in auto repair in that crowd behavior is similar no matter what the topic. What I am referring to is maintenance.
In order for any machine to work well and be reliable, it needs regular maintenance. This is why companies are such sticklers about maintaining their equipment and machinery. A machine that breaks down and stops production costs them big money. However, the average motorist pays little attention to this cost saving strategy employed by businesses. Many defer maintenance because they “don’t have the money right now”. This is delusional thinking. Money is saved over the long term by putting the car on a regular maintenance plan and taking care of needed repairs before they lead to bigger problems. Believe it or not this concept is kind of abstract.
A car is an integral part of almost everyone’s life because we don’t have very good public transportation in the U.S. Without a car we don’t get to work, or the grocery store, or engage in our favorite forms of entertainment. Yet, for some perverse reason, we believe this complex machine will run forever with no maintenance. Then the day of reckoning arrives and now the car is a “piece of junk and I am getting rid of it” because it needs a couple of thousand dollars in repairs and deferred maintenance. Deferring maintenance and repairs almost always leads to higher cost of operation over the long term. The long term doesn’t just involve the car, but also a number of other factors. What is the cost of being late for work, or worse yet not getting to work, angering your boss and co-workers? What is the cost of being late for your kid’s soccer event or school play or missing them altogether? What is the cost of having the car break down before or on that vacation you have been looking forward to for months?
Our attitude toward maintenance is driven by perceived risk. Some people will not fly in an airplane, which is statistically much safer than driving, but they perceive that the risk is greater in an airplane when reality states otherwise. Humans are not driven by logic. Logic says to maintain the machine, but our hearts want that new iPad. So we rationalize that the machine will just keep running. We perceive its possibility of failure as low. Just as illogically, we decide we aren’t going to put any more money in this “piece of junk”, but will go out and buy another used car, on which the previous owner deferred maintenance. After all, who would meticulously maintain a car and then sell it? That’s lunacy. So we buy somebody else’s problem child, have no idea how the car was used, and spend thousands of dollars fixing it. Is this rational behavior? After we get caught in this trap, we rationalize that we were tired of the old bucket of bolts anyway. As crazy as it sounds, I’ve observed this behavior over and over in my 40 years in the auto repair business. I’ve recommended to folks that they get rid of a car because I know the thing is just going to be a money pit. Some cars are like that. Yet, they will hang on even when I show them the numbers going forward. On the flip side, I have seen really good cars with deferred maintenance issues, but the owner would rather sell it and get something else in the belief that it will be cheaper, only to find himself caught in the same maintenance and repair issues as the old car. Sometimes worse.
Bottom line. Get an honest opinion about the vehicle you now have and make an objective evaluation about the maintenance plan or lack thereof that you have been doing. If your car is going to require a fair amount of money to make it reliable and increase its longevity, compare that to the purchase price of another car plus the unknowns of deferred maintenance or structural issues. If your car is paid off, the cost of maintenance and repairs is like buying a used car, but at a steep discount. You don’t have the problem of unknowns with your own car. Happy Motoring!
Drivers and Aging
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011Consumer Reports cites research published by the American Psychological Association, on the online journal Neuropsychology that finds as we get older our reaction times slow down. No surprise there. Making people aware of that fact is a good thing, but younger drivers need to be aware of this situation too. It is important for everyone to take the responsibility to develop good driving habits and to practice defensive driving. This means being aware of what is going on around us at all times, a strategy called situational awareness. Seems kind of obvious, but there are all kinds of distractions out there competing for our attention. Cell phones, GPS, radios, loud passengers, an unhappy infant to name a few can create dangerous situations. Situational awareness extends to anticipating what other drivers may do. No one can predict the future, but the behavior of other drivers can give us a clue to what they may do next. My father in law used to ask me what it meant when somebody extended their left arm out the window. I made the mistake of saying they were going to make a left turn. He would say “no, it just means they have their left arm out the window”. Of course, he was right. I got to thinking about that and realized that we tend to make assumptions that get us into trouble. Even a turn signal flashing only means that a turn signal is flashing. It doesn’t mean the driver is going to turn. If someone applies the right turn signal coming to an intersection, we can’t be sure he will turn right or even turn at all . What happens if we try to pass him on the left and he decides that he is going to make a left? Bam! A stop light doesn’t mean another driver will stop. The problem is that we get used to and expect drivers to behave a certain way. We become complacent and complacency breeds contempt, meaning we keep assigning a lower level of risk to a situation until it one day bites us. Next time you are rounding a blind corner on a road you drive everyday, ask yourself whether you could really execute an avoidance maneuver if you had to. Remember, it takes time to recognize a dangerous situation, assign a level of risk to it, and to react. Meanwhile the car is being propelled at the same speed at which you entered the turn. At just 30 mph you are moving along at 44 feet per second. if it takes 1 second to assess the situation and move your foot to the brake, you have traveled 44 feet. That is before the car even begins to slow. Stopping distances are longer in turns because the tires need to handle the change in direction as well as to scrub off speed. There is only so much traction available and they can’t do both to maximum effect. The other variables are tread depth and the age of the tires. Tire Rack ran some tests on stopping distances versus tire tread depth and the results are rather startling. Getting back to older drivers, we must make the assumption that their ability to recognize a situation is going to take more time. Even if they can get their foot to the brake as quickly as they did 20 years before, the stopping distance is still going to increase dramatically. How can we handle this? Be aware of who is in the driver seat and how they are behaving behind the wheel. Don’t make assumptions about anything. I don’t know who coined this poem, but it is appropriate for almost any situation whether pedestrian, bicyclist, motorcyclist, or car driver:Here lies the body of William JayWho died maintaining his right of wayHe was right, dead right, as he sped alongBut he’s just as dead as if he were wrong,Wishing you safe and enjoyable motoring
Here Come the Motorcycles
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011One way to tell that spring is in the air is by the number of motorcyclists you are seeing. For the great majority of them, the warm weather and price of gas creates an urgency to dust off the old steed that has been sitting in the garage for the past five months. The first couple of months of riding are the most dangerous as riders acclimate to the bikes and try to regain old skills that have deteriorated over the long winter break. Unfortunately, casual riders too often apply car driving techniques to motorcycling. This is akin to believing that just because you know English you can also communicate in Japanese. The steering action of a motorcycle has absolutely no relationship to the steering action of a car. This is one of the things that get people into trouble. Taking evasive action on a motorcycle actually requires, uh, practice. Taking a skills course, or reading a book and practicing in an empty parking lot will contribute to survivability and riding enjoyment. Things we take for granted as car drivers like tar strips, railroad tracks, loose gravel, and painted lines are hazardous to a motorcyclist. Knowing that the road is extremely slippery after it first starts to rain is something a motorcyclist needs to keep in his toolbox, but is of not much consequence to car drivers. The road has the same traction coefficient for both, but car drivers are less likely to test the limits just by virtue of the fact that they don’t need to balance the car, or balance the braking.The casual motorcyclist takes for granted that car drivers will see him or her and doesn’t account for a phenomenon called inattention blindness, whereby they become invisible to the operator of the car. Many crashes, often fatal, occur when a car turns into the path of a motorcyclist. Whether the motorcyclist is distracted and suffering from inattention blindness himself, or whether he applies the habits he learned as a car driver to the motorcycle, the results are the same, injury or death to the motorcyclist and seldom any injury to the car driver.Motorcycling requires a different mindset than that of driving a car. Distractions, while unacceptable to either endeavor, are especially hazardous to the motorcyclist. A bad day at work or an argument with a co worker or spouse sets the stage for a dangerous drive home because the operator of the car or bike is not living in the present moment. Ever drive home and wonder how you got there? It happens to all of us, but the motorcyclist must change gears before jumping on the bike or the end game could be fatal. Motorcycling is as much or more mental than physical. When jumping on a bike, forget the fact that there are laws governing the right of way on the street. If a car driver runs a traffic light, I am still dead if I don’t have the predictive skills to handle that situation. If a car driver loses me in his side view mirror, I am still coming out on the short end of the stick if he moves into my lane. Doing many of the quality checks in my business, which involves road testing the car after repair, I am shocked at the number of drivers who operate their vehicles with incorrectly adjusted side view mirrors. This habit increases the dead zone, the area not covered by the mirrors, to the point where the driver has no hope of “seeing” the motorcyclist or many smaller cars for that matter. A mirror could be adjusted any old way and still be able to view a tractor trailer. I have never figured out why mirror adjustment is not taught in driver ed classes. Being able to predict before passing that a car driver is going to move into his space or make a left turn in front of him can save the motorcyclist a lot of pain and suffering. Predictive skills are critical to survival and can be taught, but often times come from the experience of surviving a hazardous situation. It is better and safer to learn how a skilled motorcyclist has handled situations, which is why constant training is so important.Remember that each of us is responsible for the safety of ourselves and others when operating motor vehicles, be they motorcycles, trucks, or cars. Whether you are operating on 2 or 4 wheels eliminate distractions and consider taking a skills course to improve safety for you and your family. For motorcyclists check out the Motorcycle Safety Foundation courses, free to Pennsylvanians, while car drivers can find training at companies such as Bertil Roos, which has on road training courses available. It is the best money you will ever spend. Improving control skills is one of the most important steps one can take for safe and enjoyable driving.
Winter driving tip
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011The roads are slick out there today in the east and there is more snow on the way. A trick I learned from racing cars is to control the steering wheel with one hand when things get slippery. Keep your arms relaxed. I alternate hands, but that is something you need to decide. Doing this increases your traction sense and keeps both arms from fighting each other if the front wheels start to slide. Look where you want to go and don’t fixate on the thing you may hit. If you perceive you are in over your head, there is nothing you can do about it anyway, so you might as well look where you want the car to go. Survival reactions in a car are actually detrimental to our health and well being. Target fixation (looking at the thing you may hit) is one of the hardest survival reactions to overcome.