Oppressed In My Own Car

Don't get me wrong; I love my Volkswagen Passat, but sometimes I feel like I am living under a Nazi regime when operating the vehicle. It has very strict rules that I must abide by. I can picture the engineers in Wolfsburg, Germany creating the car in a very rigid manner.

For instance, the driver's seat belt must be fastened for all the functions to work. The car has a really neat feature called "auto hold" where you can take your foot off the break and the car stays put and then you can just hit the accelerator when you're ready to roll. The car will not allow me to do that without my seat belt on. I believe Hitler had similar policies.

And when you are low on fuel, the compass is replace by a big yellow low fuel indicator. "You must put in ze gas or else no compass for you!" (What if I'm looking for a gas station that is northeast of where I am and I don't know how to get there? Wouldn't the compass be helpful?)

If I unlock the car and don't open the door within 30 seconds, I hear the little "beep" indicating that the doors have locked again. If you don't move fast, you've lost your unlocked door privileges bucko. Sorry that you had five bags of groceries in your hands and your cell phone rang. VW-1, Me-0.

My father's fancy-pants Mercedes has similar rules. Before the engine even starts you have to read this long warning on the lawyer...err navigation screen and agree not to operate the navigation system while driving.* His car has even more high-tech wizardry that neither he nor I know how to use and I'm sure it's even more oppressive than my (in comparison) humble Passat. The owner's manual on that car is the size of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

Meanwhile in BMWs equipped with the dreaded i-Drive (which most have), one can't even adjust the climate control without going through the entire menu on the navigation screen and scrolling through thousands of options. What a pain in the ass.

People that drive Buicks don't have these complaints. They turn the key (a real key, made of metal and everything!) and start the car and go. When they want to change the radio station, they press a button on a clearly defined radio. When they want to turn the heat up, they turn the knob to the area clearly marked in red.

What happened to the German automotive industry? When did the lawyers take over? Or is it possibly still the Nazis? Since most Jews I know drive German cars**, maybe this is their way of subtly torturing them by making them insert a plastic key fob device into the dashboard, reading the warning about the navigation system, depressing the brake, fastening the seat belt...

*So sad for all those wealthy folks.
**Because, according to Sarah Silverman, it's the "opposite of Fubu."