German Car Logic

German Car Logic
May, 2004

The owner’s manual for my People’sCar SUV is about 300 pages long. You would think that with as much detail as it includes on being careful not to drive off cliffs when going off road, that it would be a wealth of information on useful topics as well. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

I turned into my driveway and a yellow warning flashed on the screen in front of the steering wheel accompanied by a screaming warning sound: “Tyre Monitoring Function Has Faulted.” Worried, I got out of the car, inspected all four tires, got back in the car and toggled through the myriad sensors using the handy-dandy buttons and scrolling wheel imbedded in the steering wheel and could find nothing wrong. All “tyres” showed “OK.” I called the local dealer who told me to not believe my eyes that the tires were fine since “an eight pound difference” can set off the sensors. You know, if a tire is eight pounds too low, I think I should be able to see that. But, I took the pressure of each tire and each was 40 psi. Okay, I thought, let’s see what the owner’s manual says about this.

Under “tire monitoring” are a couple of pages telling me what different signals from the system meant. There is flat tire, really flat tire, smashed wheel and other useful warnings all accompanied by their special red or yellow icons. However, there is no mention of the message I received. I looked carefully through the length and breadth of the manual to no avail. Nothing even close. In another call to the dealer, the service manager told me that even the dealers did not have a manual showing all the messages. They are instructed if anything looks wrong, hook the car to a computer and the computer will tell them what to check and what to do.

Later that day, with my ignition running and my headlights on, I opened the driver’s door. A warning (and the same screaming tone) said (with a picture of a light): Side Lights On. Naturally, the manual has no mention of what side lights are nor is there any mention of this warning and when it should be displayed.

Oh, one final wonder. Most of the exhibits in the manual show German examples of what things are supposed to look like. These illustrations are especially prevalent in the section on using the GPS navigation system. I may have not learned much from the manual, but I do know not to go too close to the edge of a precipice.

Barking Dog

Barking Dog
May, 2004

My dog never barks. While the neighbor’s dog barks all day long, my dog ignores it. He has the run of a pasture during the day and is in a chain-link kennel by the barn at night. With his history, I was aggravated when he started barking in the middle of the night. It is loud enough to wake me up. When it does, I get up, trudge to the front door, open it, and tell him to quit. I can see him run back into his dog house and, usually, that is that for the night.

But it kept getting worse and more frequent. I borrowed a friend’s barking collar (small static charge when a dog barks) and planned to put it on him if he kept it up. That evening, he barked again. I went to the door and quietly opened it trying to surprise him. As I crept onto my front porch, a full-grown coyote ambled across the lawn right outside the door and headed past the dog kennel.

To emphasize the point, on the following evening the coyote stood very near the house and howled at the moon.