Rant #3,178: Baby, You Can Drive My Car

Television is a wonderful medium.

Decades before the Internet, this was our go-to electronics device to learn about our world, to be entertained, and to engage us as a nation, and sometimes engage us as a world.

But television can also be a dangerous tool when not used in the correct way.

It can hypnotize us, babysit us, and make us into walking, talking robots if we believe everything we see and hear on television.

Remember, television is also called “the boob tube,” and there is often good reason for that appellation to stick.

And that is what I am going to talk about today, when television — this wonderful device — becomes not only stupid but downright dangerous.

Has anyone seen the latest commercial from Lincoln, the one that shows the young mother with the young kid in the back of the car?

The theme of the commercial is that you can relive the joy you had as a kid when you rode your bicycle by driving a Lincoln car, which has been taken to ludicrous—and dangerous—levels within this commercial.

The young mother is driving her Lincoln, and then she daydreams about her younger days piloting her bicycle.

(Daydreaming is bad enough when you are driving a car, but it gets worse.)

Flash back to her time as a kid riding her bicycle … and she is joyously having fun, and then—

She rides her bike without having her hands on the handlebars, doing so without a care in the world.

OK, a lot of kids do this, but then the commercial gets into the ridiculous mode as it flashes forward to the woman not as a child, but as a parent driving her car with her daughter in the back seat.

She then puts two and two together—her riding her bike as a kid and her piloting her car as an adult—and she lets go of the steering wheel, and the car goes just wherever she wants it to go without her holding onto the wheel.

So the kid in her and the adult in her have coalesced, because not only don’t you have to have your hands on the handle bars to guide your bike, but you don’t have to have your hands on the steering wheel to guide your car!

This is an insipid assumption because it gives the appearance that the car goes by itself without the driver’s absolutely necessary participation.

Of course, anyone with a brain knows that so much more can go wrong with a car when the driver is not fully engaged as compared to riding a bike without your hands on the handlebars—

Including the fact that you have a young child as a passenger in the car—it is only you with the bicycle.

This commercial is totally irresponsible, trying to interest younger, female drivers in a car make that has been geared to older male drivers for generations.

And it can be a deadly commercial if anyone tries it and gets in an accident because they were not fully engaged in driving their Lincoln car.

The feature is in the car not as a “fun” device, but to keep drivers in the correct lane of traffic; it has nothing to do with driving your car without holding onto the steering wheel, as it is portrayed as in the commercial.

Look, I have the same navigation tool in my “new” 2020 car—no, this tool is nothing new, so why trumpet it now?--and it has the potential to be a dangerous feature in your car if not used correctly.

I have tried it on an open road, and yes, it does keep you in your lane, but the question is greater than what it can do—

Why use it in the first place as a “fun” feature?

In what circumstances would you use such a feature for “fun?”

I mean, you supposedly have to keep your eyes on the road—and your foot on the gas—when you are using this feature, so what are the plusses of having such a feature in our car to use for “fun?”

Why is this feature being marketed for “fun” purposes, rather than as the safety feature that it really is?

Not used correctly—for example, as the woman in the commercial is using it—it can be a “deadly” feature, and somehow, I doubt its developers had that in mind when they came up with the technology to support its inclusion in cars.

I don’t get it.

Are we now marketing cars like toys for children?

A car is a great convenience to have, but used incorrectly, it can be a deadly one.

Why play up such an inane use of this feature over other features that are in there for the safety of the driver and his or her passengers?

This is the world we live in today, where irresponsibility is accepted and rewarded.

Something to chew on as we go into another steamy weekend.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday—

And please keep your hands on the steering wheel of your car!