Cats and Audi's and rear fogs....

[Brett Dikeman]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2001, George Selby wrote:

> At 09:13 AM 12/9/01, you wrote:
> >That is a great point, I suppose we can point the blame at the sales goons
> >that are not informing the buyers of all of the features these new cars come
> >with, and their proper use..
>
> I don't think it's the salesman's responsibility to go through the owner's
> manual with a new owner page by page to explain the vehicle to the new
> owner whom just purchased it.  It is the owner's responsibility to READ the
> owner's manual, and understand the product he just bought.

Actually, you're BOTH wrong.  Joe Fritz spent a few years at Ira Audi, and
we occasionally did lunch when I was in town.  One time, I was making
noise about the morons in the area leaving their rear fogs on, and why
didn't the dealers do something?
His response(from memory so it may not be word-for-word):

"We DO.  When they come in to pick up the car, we spend about an hour with
them going over everything in the car, top to bottom.  We emphasize on the
front+rear fog switches etc."

"Ah."

"However, we'll get a call from them a few weeks later.  'Hi, this is
so-and-so, this Audi's already got a broken taillight, I want it fixed.'
No, sir, thats your rear fog light.'  'No its not, its the brake light.'
'Sir, go downstairs, turn on the car, and push the little button with the
light picture on it and the yellow light in the middle, its on the
center console, up top.' <clump clump clump. <long pause> <clump clump
clump> 'Well, Ill be damned.'  'Have a nice day, sir.'"

Personally, I think the solution to the problem is to spread an urban
legend about how inner city gangs go into the 'burbs during the night and
go looking for people with their rear fog lights on(aka, the whole urban
legend about gangs driving around with their headlights off and people who
flashed at them would get shot at etc.)  As demonstrated by the fact that
everyone on the planet has heard this little urban legend by now, I think
it would work great :-)

Another option, of course, is for NHTSA to get off their lazy asses and
revise stuff on the books regarding automotive lighting.  A big step would
be to "sync up" with canada/europe/australia/japan on the
subject(accounting for RHD/LHD of course), the same with crash standards.
Take one guess why this will never happen...US automakers would have even
MORE competition, and we wouldn't want that, now would we?

If I recall, parts of Europe have stiff penalties for improper use of fog
lights, front and rear facing.

B