There are three buttons I've never used in the roof of my car. In theory, they can be programmed to open my garage door, but this has never happened. Instead, I spent several hours with a manual and a stepladder, entering codes and tweaking my door's resistance settings, then gave up.
This got me thinking about one of history's great and enduring themes: the inconvenient convenience feature. Let's have a look:
Car Alarms
Just last week, I set off the alarm on my own car again, having failed to execute the proper exit sequence. Everyone in the parking lot turned. They all knew what a car alarm means: An idiot has set off his own car. As inconveniences go, the audible car alarm takes its rightful place alongside the pop-up advertisement, the sub-prime mortgage and the pay toilet. As far as I can tell, no car thief has ever been stopped by an alarm, yet these noise machines have inflicted untold misery on millions of car owners and innocent bystanders. A few years ago, both of our family cars were broken into in the alley behind our house. The alarms went off, but the thief was undeterred. Until the 1970s, the only car alarm on the market was a dog, which worked well – I knew a guy who kept an attack-trained Doberman in his custom van 24-7, and it was never broken into thanks to his security system's advanced features: fangs, claws and overpowering dog odour.
Memory seats
About five years ago, I tried my first car with memory seats. I adjusted the driver's seat to perfection, pulled out the manual to read up on the memory storage procedure, and executed the key sequence – which did not appear to be much less complex than the one used to launch a warhead from an Ohio-class nuclear submarine. I failed to store my seat position. Instead, I recalled a position created by an armless, legless Hobbit, and found myself lodged firmly against the steering wheel. I felt better after realizing how many of my acquaintances had also failed to master the memory seat, one spent two years driving around in a position you normally see only in the party game Twister.
Keyless ignition systems
The first time I tried a car with keyless ignition, I thought it was brilliant. No longer did I have to suffer through the arduous process of inserting a key and turning it. All I had to do was put the car's locking fob in my pocket and press the start button. Then came the day when the fob ended up in my wife's purse. When I arrived home after dropping her at work, I turned the car off, only to realize that I couldn't start it again. I rode 16 kilometres on a bicycle to recover the fob. It could have been worse. A friend of mine borrowed a keyless car, and didn't realize he'd left the fob with the owner until he turned the car off at a gas station 400 kilometres down the road.
Power sliding doors
In theory, power-operated side doors on a minivan are a great idea. Instead of sliding a heavy door, you flick the handle and let electric motors do the work. But, as with so many great ideas, human nature throws a monkey wrench into the works. For several years, my wife and I owned a van equipped with power doors. Since they were equipped with what appeared to be normal handles, people naturally grabbed the door and tried to slide it open, This did nothing but stop the door and activate a klaxon-style warning horn that would not have been out of place at a nuclear facility. Although the doors were hugely convenient when they worked as the designers intended, this was rarely the case. A more typical scenario went as follows: I press the button to open the door. The confused passenger grabs the door. The door stops. The alarm sounds. The passenger tries to close the door, only to encounter the resistance of the electric motors. The alarm sounds again. I turn off the van and walk around to reset the door. So much for convenience.
The Deep Menu
The digital era has brought us features that are the stuff of science fiction. But unless you're a 22-year old MIT graduate who works in Silicon Valley, you may never be able to use them. On a family trip to the Buffalo, N.Y., outlet malls a while back, we realized that the interior dome light was on in the German sedan we were driving. In the old days, every light had a switch on it, but this was a digital setup, with the smooth, inscrutable presence of an alien spaceship: no buttons or switches to be found. After half an hour with the manual, we learned how to turn the light off through the car's main menu. We were less successful with the stereo system – after 40 minutes of attempting to figure out Aha, Pandora and several other audio setups, we gave up and played music through my iPhone.
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