We rented a car on a recent trip to France. We were going to visit our daughter and two grandsons, so even though large cars in Europe are a genuine inconvenience on narrow, ancient streets—and somewhat embarrassing in an ugly American kind of way—we had to have something that would accommodate five.
The car was brand new. A hybrid. All fine. But leaving aside the fact that it handled like a hot air balloon, and that despite its size could barely fit our two suitcases in the back, it had another, more serious flaw. I refer to the alarms.
I continue to be astonished by the direction that safety engineers have taken. I wonder whether any of them actually drive their own inventions and find them helpful, or whether, perhaps, they think everyone else is an idiot. Or possibly, they are the types of people who have low excitability levels and require extreme measures to shake them out of a natural torpor. In any case, it didn’t take long for us to discover that this car had audible safety alarms permanently set to Hysteria.
Years of marriage have taught us to stay with our respective strong suits when dividing labor. I love cars and am a relatively happy and calm driver but cannot read a map. My husband is good at navigation. So, when we are traveling in Europe, I am almost always the one behind the wheel. It took about ten minutes to discover that this particular vehicle did not have a height adjustment for the seat, so no matter how we tried, I was unable to see completely over the hood. I now realize this is because the experts who designed the car had decided that the driver needn’t see because the car would simply terrify her into the safest path. After my husband had gotten the sitting on a phone book jokes out of his system, we set off.
As we pulled up to the rental company gate to insert the exit ticket, the car began a high-pitched beeping that made us both jump. The “there’s something close to the car” beep had two tones—one for the danger in front (the gate) and another for the danger to the side (the ticket machine). The level of pitch and volume seemed more appropriate to the Titanic hitting an iceberg, and the clamor continued for as long as we were stopped. It took several minutes for my heart rate to go down. Perhaps it was so startling because we were not used to the car, we thought.
But, no.
It was dark. And snowing. I was driving an unfamiliar car after twenty-four hours of travel, searching for a route I had only driven a few times many years before. It was rush hour, and the French driving style is … assertive. The GPS was curiously silent, but I was headed toward a roundabout which would require some decision making. Suddenly, in the dark, a woman’s voice seemed to come from the back seat. “DANGER ZONE!” she announced. “DANGER ZONE!” We both jumped, and I nearly swerved. The car beeped hideously. The dashboard flashed red.
“Jesus Christ!” I said, calmly.
“What the Hell was that?!” my husband replied.
Traffic swirled around us, merging and weaving as the cars chose their exits at top speed, changing lanes in front and behind us with hair-raising aggression.
“Go that way!!”
“What way?”
“THAT way! Quick! Get over! Right! Right!! RIGHT!!!”
My husband’s voice of alarm was considerably less unsettling than the car’s.
We exited the roundabout as a small panel truck darted in front of us with inches to spare. There were no alarms for that.
We drove on. I tried not to clench the wheel.
“What should I do after this?” I asked my exhausted husband. He gestured vaguely in a direction.
“I can’t see your hand while I’m driving,” I said, somewhat testily.
“DANGER ZONE!” Announced the car, accompanied by a choir of beeping and flashing red lights.
“You missed the turn.”
“How was I supposed to tell? It was very confusing.”
There then followed a lively marital exchange of views, culminating in the predictable, “Well, why don’t you drive then.”
We approached another roundabout. “DANGER ZONE!” said the woman in the back seat with alarms and flashing lights. “DANGER ZONE!”
Like much of Europe, the French traffic system depends less upon stop lights than upon roundabouts for intersections. There were lots of them, approximately one city block apart, sometimes more frequent, all accompanied by the relentless alarm system. “DANGER ZONE!”
I confess that my initial entries to the roundabouts were somewhat trepidatious, mainly because I wasn’t accustomed to the cumbersome car, but also because the French habit of darting in and around was happening at a more lively pace than that of most American drivers. It’s distracting to be screamed at while trying to calmly merge with high-speed traffic coming from multiple angles, and the DANGER ZONE alarms were beginning to unnerve me.
After twenty minutes of dodging and weaving through traffic, we found the main road. “DANGER ZONE!” announced the alarm system as we merged.
“DANGER ZONE!”
As we entered the highway—a major commercial route running to and from Paris and the south—I soon realized that speed was not a friend to this particular vehicle. It bobbled dangerously as I approached the 130 kph speed limit, but when I slowed down to accommodate it, other drivers sped up to the very limit of the bumper, pressuring me to move faster. There were hundreds of the super-sized camions common in the EU, and despite the snow, none of them showed an inclination to slow down. There were no plows and no salt trucks. Slush was accumulating on the road. I silently pondered the potential irony of whether this trip to see our family would end in our deaths and not from COVID.
We had about 90 kilometers to go, and, with the help of familiar music on the Bluetooth system, gradually we settled into the routine of the traffic and a less frantic—if deeply fatigued and slightly desperate—state of mind. Nevertheless, the speed and number of trucks on the road, and the worsening road conditions did not encourage calm.
We had crossed the Aquitaine and the Dordogne rivers, and after a long incline, we began to go downhill. As I eased off on the accelerator, a bell began to ring, and a new light began to flash on the dashboard. My first thought was some kind of dire engine failure, and my heart sank. But no sooner had I determined we needed to find an exit, than the alarm stopped, and all was calm. Throughout that long drive, this particular set of bells went off half a dozen times, each time rousing an instinctive nervous reaction: what was wrong with the car?
I never did completely figure out what that alarm was for—although it went off occasionally throughout the ten days, always when going downhill. Alarms without explanation are not particularly effective. At one point, when the car fish-tailed in the snow, the dashboard flashed a red coffee cup, helpfully suggesting I pull off the road for a rest. There was also a flashing red speed limit light when I was going too fast (difficult to avoid when a large truck’s grill fills your rear-view mirror) or too slow (because the pavement was slippery, and I have judgement, which, apparently, the safety engineers did not expect). I would suggest to the engineers that a flashing red light in your field of vision is not what you need when navigating a tricky situation. At last, we saw the exit ahead, and I signaled to take the right turn. “DANGER ZONE!” shrieked the car.
We reached our destination, at last, without mishap—unless, of course, you count the alarms—and settled into a lovely, long visit. We spent most of our time at home, making a cozy Christmas, walking the dog, playing games, watching movies, and constructing IKEA systems.
But we did find time for a day trip to the ancient town of Perigueux. It was the busy week before Christmas, and there was no parking available on the streets. Our drive into the parking garage was harrowing, our car barely fitting in the narrow ramps that spiraled into the bowels of the garage. We slowly found our way through two levels as the car merrily called “DANGER ZONE!” and beeped without stopping. The walls were too close, apparently. “DANGER ZONE!”
Fed up after several days, we spent twenty minutes trying to find a way to turn off the alarms, but our only option was to be yelled at by a male, rather than a female voice. I found myself fantasizing about Stanley Kubrick’s death of Hal scene.
The alarm system became a recurring topic of conversation on family outings. I confess it was helpful in parking on the narrow streets, despite its caution levels being set to extremes. Ultimately, we bowed to the inevitable, and reached an uneasy détente with the car’s routines.
By the end of the ten-day visit, however, full-on screaming struck us all as moderately less distracting than the mechanical alarms and rather more fun. We experimented with the simple – calling out “DANGER ZONE!” at intervals, alternating with the full panic, horror film-style screams. Driving through the bucolic French countryside with all of us periodically yelling in unison—usually as we approached a roundabout—I began to feel we were among the Niebelungen in a Wagnerian opera.
I kind of wish we had captured it on camera, actually.
As we returned the car to the rental agency, I commented to my husband that the alarms made this a car we would never buy. It occurred to us both that what the engineers really needed was warning system for potential buyers. Its deployment would be a welcome consumer service.
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I drove in Normandy and Brittany for a number of years when my sister and I vacationed there for a few years. There were many roundabouts we stayed in for a few rounds till we founf the right exit so I can relate!
An alarming piece! Driving in France is terrifying without help from the car. I seem to remember a Priorite a droite rule. Anyone coming from the right could slam into you if you were in the way.Naturally, as a left-handed person, I take exception to that particular rule.
I enjoyed the piece and was glad your family was able to put the alarms to use in choral form. Too many pieces of equipment have alarms these days—refrigerators, ovens and so forth. I always think one will get used to the noises and fail to observe them in necessary moments.