Towards the end of 2023 I swapped my gas car for a hybrid right before winter started. I did feel a nervous wondering how the car would react to the cold weather. The 2023-2024 winter was extremely mild and the car was absolutely fine. This winter, however, is a different story and I’ve had a number of weird things happen.
My car couldn’t handle the frigid, polar-vortex temperatures one morning, around -18 degrees Celsius. I blogged about this before in “Such a Thing as Too Much Technology.” Naturally, it was a morning I had to commute to the office. Despite warming the car for several minutes many warnings flashed on the dashboard. The car is still pretty new, so I thought this was odd. It was rotating through 4-5 different warning messages about things that may have been wrong. I had a hunch it was related to the cold weather. As the car warmed up, the warnings gradually disappeared except for one that the brakes may not be working properly. They seemed to be working fine so I drove to the office. I left early that day in case my car wouldn’t start, however, by that time the message had mysteriously disappeared.
Last Friday I drove home from the office in a snow storm. It was windy and snow was blowing directly at my car. Somehow this impacted some of the sensors. I had a visibility warning on my dashboard and some of the side signals that let me know if another car is in my blind spot also weren’t working. Rather, they worked intermittently, which almost felt scarier because I couldn’t trust it. Luckily, I learned how to drive without any of these things. I also retain some “old-school” driving habits like turning my head to physically look if anybody is in my blind spot, despite the side mirror sensors.
I feel good that I learned how to drive when a car was still just a car. They didn’t have computers or fancy features displayed on large screens. While I do enjoy many of the conveniences, esp. the GPS, ability to play podcasts, and dictate messages, none of things matter as much as my safety and my passengers. It’s scary to experience the many strange ways that car technology fails as soon as the weather gets bad.