Critical point, here I come!
I had to bring my car into the shop for a recall on the software. Cars have become such complex pieces of technology, and mine in particular (BMW330i) has tons. Unfortunately that did not go smoothly and I have a rental for a few days.
My rental is a little Toyota of some kind. One thing I discovered driving the rental is just how much driving stability my car’s been providing for me. It has all this sophisticated stability control that I’ve grown to take for granted. Every once in awhile a little yellow light on the dash would come on to tell me, “Hi, just giving you a hand here!”. I discovered just how much its been doing as I took the off ramp from the Queensway, in the same way I always would, and the rental started sliding. Luckily I was able to correct and regain control, but it was scary for a few seconds there. In two winters with my BMW, I’ve never had a single moment like that.
I’ve always though it was good that the little yellow light came on because otherwise you can’t tell, it does such a good job. Sooner than you think you’ll hit the critical point where the physics suddenly changes and the car can no longer help. With such great technology we lose the cues to predict proximity to that critical point. I guess its our nature to always run the system as close to the edge as we can, yet we don’t have good intuition to where that is.
Like my suggestion for mandatory accidents for tailgaters: that’d teach you at a brain stem level to be more careful! A friend had an even better suggestion: a big spike in the middle of the steering wheel to make you appropriately afraid.