On the way back home from Rozi and John's last night my car made a funny noise and the power died. Strangely enough it was still running - although it didn't seem keen on going more than 15 miles an hour. Slowly and steadily I limped home through the side roads of Shenley and Loughton and was pleased to make it home before it conked out altogether!
And so, today I called up the AA to see if they could do a bit of home start. I knew this would be a busy day for them with all those flat batteries, but they came surprisingly quickly - and so I found out what had really taken place...
Apparently there's a little motor attached to my accelerator pedal which controls the throttle. This needs to turn a certain number of times per second but on this occasion - probably because of the cold - it missed a beat. The car's computer spotted this and put the car on safe mode to ensure that I couldn't do any further damage to the car and also limited the power - allowing me to get home. The AA man merely had to connect his computer to the car, read off the data and reset the computer - and bingo all was well again!
I was a bit gob smacked that cars actually work like this! I had no idea! - spot the man who's never had a post 1996 car before.
On one level I actually feel a bit disempowered. Isla had suggested that I look at the car before calling and I did so. I'm no mechanic but I know what a fanbelt is. All this computer based stuff is totally beyond me - there's no way I could possibly fix a problem that's lost in the car's silicon circuitry. The days of tinkering with cars are gone it would seem...
On the other hand, there's something fascinating about the idea of a breakdown caused by dodgy data. In an information based age we're all prone to problems caused by bad information - either about ourselves or about the world around us. We need a system that we can plug into that will diagnose our problems and reveal the truth about our circumstances - followed by a reset and a new beginning. (Another free sermon for those who want to nick it...)
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I was commenting to someone from the company "Bosch" that apparently the only piece of a car that did not have software in it was the spark-plug. He told me that was not true: they do have software in the spark-plug as well...
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