Columnists
Recalls
We have pretty much figured out that we make stuff, find out it might be a huge mistake, and try to fix it. Personally, since I’m a do-it-yourself guy, this is part of every project I’ve ever done. Everything looks great, until you find you’ve left a ground wire close to a live wire on your basement breaker panel. This is a lesson you only need to learn once. When the Ta-Da moment comes, and I turn the power on, I get an unexpected giant spark ball. I was blind for a couple of hours, had several beers to calm my nerves, and then figured out what went wrong, and fixed it. (Of course I never did this, because it would require County permits and expensive professional electricians, which I would have on speed dial, if ever I decided to do this. Which I didn’t.)
The point here is that I am an idiot, and occasionally screw up. Not in that case, because that never happened, but in other cases as well. I have paid the price for proper building permits in the past, and the building inspectors were quite helpful. Still, I’m cheap, so I tend to do the kind of projects that don’t require oversight and scrutiny. That’s because I had a lady partner, and she was like supergood at that.
I acted as the contractor when I built a home on Gilead Road. The trouble with doing things the proper way is we spent 50 per cent of our time building, and 50 per cent waiting for inspectors to approve what we did. I’ll never forget when we trenched the line from the road to the foundation to install hydro and phone lines. The backhoe guy sat for hours—at $100 an hour—waiting for the inspector to arrive. When he arrived, he left his truck running, walked over, looked in, and said, “Go ahead.” Those two words cost me $500!
CAN WE GET IT RIGHT?
For all of the oversight, and pages and pages of rules, and multitudes of official people hanging over your shoulder, are we really doing this right?
For one thing (going back to house-building), these guys are contractors. They’re not guys who rambled across the road, producing a resumé that proves they know how to use a hammer. They build houses. They build a lot of houses.
Sure there may be workers who cut corners, but even the inspectors know the good guys from the bad guys. My inspector—who took the time to finish his lunch while I was paying $500 to watch my backhoe guy chew on a toothpick for five hours—knew the crew who did the work, and knew they would do it right. Hence the quick glance. At my expense.
Local contractors are excellent, in my experience, because they focus on getting the job right. They don’t say, “Let’s skip the insulation stage; after the drywall goes on, who’s to know?”
Which brings me to:
WHAT PEOPLE DO
Sometimes people bugger up. In the typical “We don’t want a huge lawsuit filed against us,” most products have great advice like: “Do not use this hairdryer when showering,” “Toast lightly without fork inside,” and “This barbecue is for outdoor use only.” (Surprisingly, some people ignore this one.)
So let’s start here. Some people have no common sense. They need to be told not to stick a fork into a toaster, until you unplug it. I only needed to learn this lesson once. Trouble is, all these people skip the pages in the manual which say “Warning” and jump right to getting the thing up and running. These people also die because their radio fell into the bathtub.
RECALLS
We all make mistakes, but I need to look at the auto industry. We trust them to keep us safe. Sometimes too safe. Safety is Job Two. Making money is Job One. Being first with new technology is sometimes too far up the list.
This is why automakers issue ‘recalls’, which is short for “We were so anxious to get this on the market before our competition, we have done something which might kill you. You might want to check it out.”
This includes air bags that might do more damage to you than the accident itself. Airbags save lives, but sometimes they are too potent for the job at hand. Reports say that the old ‘Hold the steering wheel at 10 and 2’ we were trained to use; it’s now 8 and 4—the lower end of the steering wheel—because of air bag incidents in which hands and arms blow into the face on impact, causing multiple injuries not intended by the original invention.
So we learn. And that’s what recalls are all about. I check these out occasionally and they are usually small things, like your backup camera is too distorted.
Unlike contractors, the auto engineers tend to bugger up occasionally. Remember the Ford Pinto? If rearended, it could—and would—burst into flames. Twentyseven people died and many others suffered serious burns. Eventually the whole line was terminated. Now that’s a recall.
Even in modern car recalls you occasionally see a “This may catch fire” warning. We just check to see if it’s ours.
COUNTING ON PEOPLE
When I built a house, I counted on people. They were right there, and so was I, making the project happen. We trust the knowledgeable people to do their job right.
I don’t fault the automakers, other than they spend more time worrying about marketing than making sure their engineers are given the time and support to fully vet their creations before the ad campaigns start. If I were them, I’d spend less money on Super Bowl ads, and more on their engineers
There are going to be glitches in machines as complicated as our modern cars. I haven’t bought a new vehicle for 30 years. Not a bad thing. I like to buy things a few years old—after the bugs have been worked out.
My first car was a 1960 MGA. It had an engine. It had plywood floorboards, which I replaced when my feet went through them. Now I have a backup camera, which doesn’t work in rain or snow, and GPS, which got me lost in Ottawa for four hours, and it links to my phone, so I can get urgent messages from telemarketers while I’m driving.
Sorry to all the engineers, but I’m Old School. I’m in my car because I’m not in my shop. This is when I think, without distraction. I don’t want the outside world in my car. I want the one thing I cherish: Silence. I don’t need a car that tells me what to do. I used to have a spouse for that.
And, when I’m driving—Hey, I’m in the County—on open road I’ll put my hands anywhere on the steering wheel I feel like. And just cruise.
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