Temporarily Paused

When you reach adulthood, the parenting is supposed to end. Put another way, you’re no longer a child when you’re no longer parented. The car companies seem to disagree.

During a recent test drive of a new VW, I attempted to change the radio station while I was driving – a task that adults used to be assumed to be capable of doing. That assumption no longer holds. I tapped the touchscreen a number of times, which is necessary when you want to change stations using a smartphone-emulating tap/swipe interface (unless the vehicle in question came also with a tuner knob, which some do). After a few taps, the tuner stopped tuning and a pop-up appeared advising me that the ability to change stations via the touchscreen interface had been “temporarily paused” for “safety” and that I ought to “please focus on driving.”

As if I hadn’t been doing that. As if I were not capable of doing that and changing radio stations at the same time. I am also able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Most adults can do that.

It made me want to put my fist through the touchscreen – or tear it out by the roots and throw it out the window. An adult’s response to being treated like a child by a car. More finely, by the people who built the car. Not just this car, either. This parenting of adults by their cars is becoming general; it has also metastasized from the early-stage annoying to unendurable – assuming you’re an adult who does not like being treated like a child by your car.

This latter is very important. It is your car, isn’t? At least, it says so on the paperwork – including the financing paperwork. You handed over your money to buy what they say is “your” car. The state issues a piece of paper – the title – that says it’s “your” car, too. But is it, actually? How can it be when you are controlled by their car? It is like discovering the thermostat in your house won’t let you up the heat because it has decided it’s warm enough for you.

Parents control their children. It is the thing that defines the relationship. It is generally a benevolent relationship in that the parents are adults and the children need – they benefit from – the parenting they get from adults. Kids, after all, lack the experience and the judgment to competently function as adults. That is what defines the state of childhood.

But childhood is supposed to end. When you are old enough to buy – and drive – a car, you are presumably an adult. At least, that was once the presumption. That presumption began to be eroded half a century ago, when the government decided it was not sufficient that adults were free to buy seatbelts if they felt the need of them. The government forced adults to buy them (by requiring every new vehicle to come with seatbelts, regardless of the grown-up adult’s evaluation of the need for them. Next came a requirement to wear them. This is the government acting as parent – as opposed to respecter (and guarantor) of the right of putatively free adults to decide for themselves what’s best for themselves.

Unfortunately, there was no surge of outrage over this. Adults accepted being parented and so accepted (implicitly) that they are children forever and that the government (and corporations) need to parent them forever. It was easy to get them to go along by framing this parenting as being a matter of safety. There aren’t many who want to be seen as opposed to “safety” as it implies irresponsibility. The backers of government-corporate parenting would (and still do) point out that wearing seatbelts (and having air bags and so on) make it “safer” to drive and this is generally true – in the sense that it is generally true that if you wreck your car and are wearing a seatbelt (and there’s an airbag) the odds are it is less likely you’ll be hurt as badly or killed than if you weren’t wearing a seatbelt (and the car lacked air bags).

Well, so?

It is also generally true that people who eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly and don’t smoke live longer (and healthier) lives. Following the logic of those who like to parent us, we ought to be made to eat our veggies and also pestered (maybe fined) if we do not exercise. Smoking? It has already become difficult – and expensive – to obtain cigarettes, which used to be sold in vending machines, back when adults weren’t treated like children.

Now it’s down to being parented when you try to change the radio station. This would be a deal-breaker for me, if I were considering a new car and discovered that it would block me from changing the radio station while driving. Just the same as it is a deal breaker for me with regard to the “drowsy/distracted driver” eye-movement monitors that will be installed in all 2027 model year vehicles, per federal “safety” requirements.

It is enough, already.

It was enough a long time ago, when you stop to think about it. This mewly and sinister parenting of adults ought to have been met with a punch in the face half a century ago. It is one of the great mysteries of the last days of the West that a once vital and – dare it be said? – manly people allowed themselves to be effeminized so completely. It’s no wonder so many “men” have grown teats. It’s what happens when testosterone is replaced by estrogen.

I need to go shift some gears to take my mind off all this for awhile.

. . .

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