I'm reading a SF book by Jo Walton, set in the late 1970s, and there's a character who can travel all over England and Wales by train and bus. Meanwhile, here in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 2023, when our car (the one we can barely afford) breaks down, we are fucked.
The mechanic can't even look at the car* until March 1, so we have had to rent a car. As I said in the previous post, at least we have the money. And the car we have rented, a Toyota compact, is new and very cool.
The back-up camera, of course, that's apparently standard now, but also a large touch screen which tells me all sorts of things as I drive. (As it loads, it gives me a warning screen, telling me I shouldn't look at it while I'm driving, which is practically impossible, since a screen, especially one filled with data, is an irresistible pull on our attention.) It flashes a little passive-aggressive Alert if I go over the speed limit, telling me what the speed limit is on the road where I am driving; and it tells me the outside temperature, and how many miles I can travel on the current tank of gas, and how efficiently or inefficiently I am using the available fuel. Apparently it will also alert me if I'm about to run into someone, but I haven't set off that alarm yet.
Rental companies will now come to your house to pick you up and drive you to the rental agency, so that's nice.
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| The car we rented |
*This is apparently due to the labor shortage we don't have, since no one is dying of COVID-19 and no one is being disabled by long COVID. It is all a plot and a lie.
9 comments:
Thank you for donating to that class in Arizona!
That sucks that they can't even look at your car until March 1.
I broke off the side mirror of my (brand new) car the first time I tried to use the back-up camera. I'm better now! With our two Honda cars, the passive aggressive alerts are all behind the steering wheel in the middle of the speedometer which isn't a touch screen and the touch screen I'm not supposed to be looking at is at the side where the radio controls are usually.
Thank you for posting the link!
Yes, that's where the "don't look here!" screen is on this one too.
What a nightmare. We live in an area where I could manage without a car for that long most of the time. But this last week, it was so cold here that 30 min outside would have been a hypothermia risk, and my kid's school is an hour away on foot if I'm doing the walking. And a lot more than an hour away if my kid's doing the walking, which would be the real problem even without hypothermia in the mix.
Given rental car rates, I think it could possibly be cheaper for us to do an Airbnb or hotel room closer to my kid's school for as long as we were without a vehicle if something like that happened with us. Which seems insane.
This one is $49/day, with taxes and fees. It's a lot, but though I can walk to work, we're not within walking distance of anything else. Our old place was in walking distance of everything else (grocery, library, doctor and dental), but far out of reach of either of our jobs, or the kid's school. Also this is *not* a walkable city -- no sidewalks, most places, and people drive like lunatics.
One of my colleagues just ubers everywhere, which seems crazy to me given how unwalkable everything is here. (Also it's weird that she didn't decide to live someplace on the university bus line if she isn't going to buy a car, but I guess it takes a lot of ubers to make up the price of a car + insurance.)
Last year, I went from a 2007 car to a 2022 one (Used cars at that time were just as expensive as new ones.); the technology (e.g., backup camera, touchscreen, radar, etc.) baffled me.
Nicole & Maggie: Yes, it really stings when we have to rent a car when ours is in the shop, but I console myself with how much cheaper such a rental is than owning a second car would be.
Foscavista: It's a stunning jump -- our car is a 2008, and it came with nothing but cruise control, though we did install a backup camera.
I went without a car for four years in a place with meh mass transit. I learned there are two kinds of car rental places: the kind at the airport for people who flew in (without their cars) and the kind for people whose cars are being repaired. As a person with no car, I preferred the latter. Even back then (30 years ago), the latter could pick you up and drop you off, except on Sunday when they were closed. Glad to see they're still doing that, in spite of the fake labor shortage.
Yes, the place near the airport (the same company) charges like 20% more for the same rentals. There used to be a *really* cheap place, but apparently it went under sometime since we last rented a car.
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