EPT
Reasons for an mp3 player
It was a warm and sunny morning when I almost got killed by a DJ.
That's only a small exaggeration. Really, I almost killed myself. I hate the radio stations in my area. Yes, they play music and I listen to them, but I hate the parts that aren't music. I don't hate the commercials, I can stand those, and the stations need money. I don't even hate the K&L Jewelry commercials, or the fact that the three mattress stores in my area recently started an advertising war conducted seemingly entirely via annoying radio spot. No, what I hate, more than anything, more than even the stupid radio call-in sweepstakes, are the DJs. I hate it when they talk. I hate it when they open their pie-holes and spew garbage onto the air-waves. No, I don't want to hear about your damned cat or your stupid child or your god-forsaken obsession with Kanye West getting Kendrick Lamar pregnant.
My father lives in a different city, far enough that I don't visit him often, but close enough that when I do, I go by car. Due to problems of governance, there was never a direct rail line built between our cities. Public transit from one home to another was possible, but would usually involve multiple transfers or long-distance buses. Usually it was cheaper just to drive.
I'm a slow shopper when it comes to expensive things. My laptop was purchased over the course of two months browsing newegg and amazon, going to Fry's, and reading online reviews. My stereo didn't take as long to purchase but I still took a look at all the alternatives. So when I was looking for a car, I took my time.
The first car I looked at was a Honda (Acura?) Legend. I generally liked the handling and reliability of the Hondas I had driven before. My grandfather had an Acura that never broke down, and Dad's Accord was pushing 200,000 miles at the time and still going strong. With proper care, lots of cars can run for 200,000 miles, but Dad didn't take great care of his car, and it did anyways.
I also looked at Toyotas. Dad had an unusual hatred for the brand after a Tercel he purchased way back in the day turned out to be a lemon. Our family van, a Toyota, was comfortable and reliable, and I hoped they would be equally good with sedans and coupes.
Unfortunately, both Hondas and Toyotas keep their value pretty well over the years. They are relatively easy cars to sell on the used-car market, since many buyers have preferences similar to mine. They want a reliable car with working power windows and a radio that can still tune properly and those two Japanese brands provide that. If I were shopping for an American car, or even a Mitsubishi or a Nissan, I'd be able to buy a newer car with fewer miles on it. Even so, I looked almost exclusively at Toyotas and Hondas in my price range, which probably explains why they were so expensive.
I was able to get a pretty good deal by buying a manual transmission Solara. In the US, most people don't know how to (or don't want to bother with) driving stick. Although automatic transmissions are a little more expensive on new cars, there's a very large price difference on used cars. A dealer selling a new manual transmission car doesn't have to discount it much since your typical new car buyer has a good idea of what to get. If the dealer finds the manual cars are too hard to sell, it's easy to just order fewer next year.
A private person selling a used car, however, has no such option. They have a stock of one car, and they want to sell it. It's probably not getting much use, or they need the cash, and there aren't very many people who want to drive a stick shift car. Barring certain outliers (sports cars) you're generally going to have to sell a manual transmission car for much less. The car's clutch was on its last legs, so I got it for even less, though I had to spend those extra savings giving it a new clutch a few months later.
The seller was a nice guy, a doctor at Stanford. I asked him about the car and he said it was his first, and that he bought it in college. The car itself was well cared for. there were no stains or tears in the leather, the records he provided showed pretty regular maintenance. For a Toyota, it was a pretty sleek car, too. It was in the style of other cars from the late nineties and early aughts, sleek and low and not too concerned with being bubble-shaped in the way of modern fashion. A 2013 Solara is a monstrosity of a car, bulbous and bulging and terrible. This one, a 2000, reminds you of what a coupe ought to be.
He was honest when I asked him why he got a manual transmission car, too-- "because it's more fun."
It was in this car, at this moment, that I almost got into an accident on the freeway. I look at my radio a moment to silence the latest blathering of a DJ -- a silly mistake, something so silly you could scarcely imagine it outside a hackneyed safety commercial -- and when I look back up I see that traffic ahead of me has come to a halt. At 65 mph (about 100 kph), you don't have a lot of time to react when there's stopped traffic ahead of you. I hit the brakes. Hard.
It's a classic mistake in situations like these to try to swerve into another lane. The lane to my left, indeed, had no blockage up ahead. If I knew whether or not there was a car in my blind spot, I might have considered it. That being said, I didn't know if there was a car there-- I had been looking down just before I noticed the stopped cars-- and I didn't know if one of the cars ahead of me was planning on pulling into that lane either. The number of things that can go wrong with a last minute swerve is much greater than the number of things that can go wrong with just hitting the brakes.
In the moments after my foot touched the brake pedal, I (or my foot, at least) remember an article I read long ago, when I was younger and more interested in the mechanics of cars. The article was discussing the reason that Electronic Stability Control (ESC) was so much less successful at reducing the rate of accidents than Anti-lock Brake System (ABS) had been. What the article concluded was that ESC was too hard to use. ESC only really made a difference when you were trying to steer the car in the right direction and were trying to change the speed of the car. All that ABS needed was for you to hit the brakes, and whether you were steering or not it would give better outcomes. That being said, most drivers did not hit their brakes hard enough when an accident was imminent. If you're not engaging your ABS, you're not pushing hard enough.
Push harder.
I push harder and the brakes shudder as the anti-lock mechanism kicked in. I keep on pushing hard enough to feel the convulsions, and hold the car straight. The stopped vehicles ahead of me loom closer and closer. As the Solara sheds kinetic energy I become less and less worried. I'm not going to hit him. I finally come a stop about 4 feet away from the car in front of me, feeling pretty stupid. Driving is the most dangerous thing most people do, and one of the few ways that people my age die that can actually be avoided. I look in my rear-view mirror and see that the taxi driving behind me is still barreling towards me.
His vehicle, probably loaded up with luggage and passengers, doesn't have the braking power mine does. It's not a Solara, a Toyota pretending to be a cool car. It's a Prius, noteworthy for its fuel efficiency, unique engine design, and little else. He's slowing down as fast as he can, but he and I both know: he's going to hit me. It will technically be his fault even though if I had noticed the slowdown earlier it wouldn't have happened. His insurance will pay for the damage to both cars and his passengers will be late to the airport.
He doesn't let that happen, though. With an expertise that perhaps only comes to taxi drivers who spend so much time on the road dodging situations like this one, he swerves into the carpool lane and honks at me as he zips by. I'm relieved-- I don't want to be late today either. Well played, taxi driver guy.
Later that day, I find the arch of my right foot is sore from the amount of pessure I put on the brake pedal. It hurts, but I'm glad it does. I'm glad not to be in that percentage of people who could have avoided accidents by braking harder, but simply didn't push hard enough.
I pay more attention to the road now, but it's unlikely that habit will keep forever. The kind of mistake I made before the almost-accident is the kind of mistake that is pretty easy to make, even if you have precommitted not to make it. After all, who wants to listen to the commercials on the radio? I refuse to accept the inevitability of my failure to stay safe, though. Even if we return to the base state of habits and psychology, there are other measures we can take.
Later, when I buy the ipod, I don't do it because I really want an mp3 player, or because I plan on taking up a new jogging habit. I do it because there's only really one way in the long run to stop myself from changing the radio to avoid horrible DJs, and that's to stop listening to the radio. I put together playlists of only music I like, so that I don't need to touch my radio when the car is in motion. I plug the mp3 player into the console and feel good about myself.
I'm lucky I had a chance to learn this lesson the easy way.
