Ignoring Auto Check

[Brett Dikeman]

At 1:40 AM -0400 4/13/03, cobram at juno.com wrote:
>Brett Dikeman <brett at cloud9.net> writes:
>
>>  By the way, "red triangle", if you read the owner's manual, means
>>  "stop driving the car NOW"- it implies immediate danger to vehicle
>>  components or to your safety; that's why it is accompanied by
>>  several screeches.  Yellow = "something's wrong but no damage likely".
>
>Not necessarily, on some type 44's the red triangle will flash and the
>autocheck will squeel for a low hydraulic fluid level.  Not a reason to
>hit the eject button in my book.

I beg to differ.  If it runs out of enough hydraulic fluid(say,
because a hose burst and the car's doing its impression of a Pentosin
Volcano, pumping the fluid out quicker'n you can say "Green Gold"),
you will end up with drastically reduced stopping power unless you've
got great leg muscles(and even then, when you go for the brakes, you
expect a certain reaction; you never expect the pedal to be rock hard
and not do much in the way of stopping the car, so your reaction time
increases drastically even if you do have the strength), steering
won't be very easy, and you stand a good chance of doing damage to
the pump.

   Translation: you become a 3,000lb+ brick on a rollerskate.  Maybe
you're driving on an empty country road doing 30mph, and things are
gonna be OK.  Or, maybe you're cruising through rush-hour traffic at
75 in close quarters, and you become that evening's news story.  Audi
splattered on back of SUV, SUV owner does not notice until he gets
home...more at 11.

"It squeals on low fluid level" can be said about the coolant tank
sensor, and plenty of people ignore it on that basis.  It's rather
foolish to do so.  I had the auto-check light come on one afternoon
last fall, for coolant level.  I though "eh, maybe it's just low."
Then I stopped myself, and thought "this is a very expensive engine.
I'm going to stop and check things out."  I immediately pulled over
and popped the hood.

Lo and behold, the coolant tank's empty and the car's pissing coolant
on the ground from a break in the aux radiator.  Had I continued
home, or even another 2-3 minutes, I would have fried the engine.

NEVER ignore auto-check, and NEVER second-guess the red triangle, it
-really- -does- mean "You need to STOP and check me out.  NOW."  The
owner's manual flat-out tells you it means there's a dangerous
situation, and the reasoning is quite clear.

Ask pilots- ignoring warning systems can, and in fact does, on a
-very- regular basis, kill lots of people.  Things aren't as dramatic
with cars as they are with planes, but the fact remains- ignoring
warning systems is an EXCELLENT way to get burned(and look pretty
stupid in the process.)

All of this does, however, remind me of a Far Side cartoon.  From the
cockpit of a jet, one of the pilots:

"AAAA!  The fuel light's on, we're all gonna DIE!  Oh wait, that's
the intercom light, nevermind."

B
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"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier,
    just so long as I'm the dictator." - George W. Bush
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~brett/