Wednesday rant: Automatic windscreen wipers
So, what’s annoyed me this week? Automatic windscreen wipers of course. It’s at this point you may be asking “In what conceivable way can automatic windscreen wipers be annoying?”. Well, hear me out and I’ll try and explain exactly why I’ve included them in my Wednesday rant.
The job of automatic windscreen wipers is to provide a convenient, automatic way to keep your windshield clear in foul weather. Technically, the system sends out a beam of infrared light that detects when water droplets are on the windshield. This information is then reflected back and tells your car to activate the wipers. The system will even adjust your wiper speed and frequency dependant on the intensity of the water droplets. That’s the science lesson over.
My rant isn’t about the system as a whole as even I have to admit it does benefit me while I’m driving. I just have to turn them the system on and it’s all taken care of. However, there’s two problems with this. The first problem is that when my windscreen is completely iced over, and you’ve forgotten to turn the system off from the day before, the system ends up almost ripping the arms off of the windscreen wipers. The rubber makes this horrendous noise while it tries to swipe and you can almost smell the motor burning in trying to pull the blasted things across! The second issue I have with the system is that they never actually swipe when you want them to! So, I’ll be driving along on a rainy day and my screen is getting more and more covered in water. I can see less and less so I look to manually activate the wipers. However, just as I’m about to pull up on the stalk lever they decide to bloody swipe! It’s as if there’s some sort of mischievous goblin in the system that just sits there and waits for you to reach out for the lever and then beat you to it! It wins every time of course!
The problem with any automatic system in a car is that you’ll inevitably leave it on. You don’t think to yourself, “it’s raining so I’ll initiate the automatic wipers”. No, you leave it on the whole time. So that’s why you’ll be driving along on a perfectly dry day and suddenly they’ll be a little glitch in the system (ie a fly has grazed the sensor) and all of a sudden the wipers will suddenly activate and emit the sound of dry wiper blades rubbing against a dry windscreen - irksome!
Ok, I know we’d rather all have automatic windscreen wipers than not have them at all but sometimes they system just irritate the hell out of me. Rant over.
