Grown-ups used to appreciate being treated as grown-ups, especially by other grown-ups. How is it that today’s grown-ups demand that they be treated like not-too-bright children?
This manifests all over but one obvious area is new cars. The latest example being what Nissan just announced it will be installing in at least one of its 2018 models – the Pathfinder SUV – and probably, inevitably, the rest, too:
“Rear Door Alert.”
Its purpose? To remind Moo or Duh (or both of them, together) that Baby Finster is strapped into his seat back there and not to forget and leave him to roast like a pork loin while they go shopping for a new sail fawn.
This is apparently necessary to “tackle the problem of children dying of heat stroke in vehicles.” Expect the Feds to make this the next mandatory saaaaaaaaaafety feature you’ll have to buy along with your next new car, whether you have kids or not.
Backup cameras were made mandatory for exactly the same reason. A handful of adult imbeciles backed-up over babies – who were left on the ground behind a parked car and forgotten about until . . . squish. The parents of the squished could not, apparently, be expected to account for their kids before driving off or even to use their mirrors. Solution? As always. Everyone must be presumed a moron, no matter their age or their personal conduct (including whether they have run over a tot or not) and albatrossed with another piece of electronic centrifugal bumblepuppy that makes noise and annoys and also costs.
Call it the Imbecile Tax – which is to be levied upon all, imbecile or not.
Does it not make your teeth ache?
There is even an outfit devoted to pushing this – NoHeatStroke.org – and it probably provides full-time paid gigs for a small army of professional Moos who, in a better time, would have found an outlet as substitute librarians.
And what is the extent of this crisis? It must be extensive, given the existence of a national organization to combat it and a new annoyance certain to be mandated as an electronic prophylactic.
Thousands, surely.
Hundreds?
How about 29.
That is the number of toasted tots, nationally, so far this year, according to NoHeatStroke.org. Over the past 20 years, the total is 730. Which works out to about 36 per year out of a nation of 310 or so million people, of whom several million are tots.
Cleft palate is a greater menace and yet no one speaks urgently of it. Probably more fingers get jammed in closing car doors in a month than broiled babies in a year.
No doubt, there will soon be NoJammedFingers.org as well, with paid staff, lobbyists – and soon thereafter – a federal mandate that car doors be fitted with a soft-closing mechanism or some kind of object detection gadget that prevents their being slammed shut if a finger or some such is in the way.
Such a thing already exists, in fact. Many SmooVees have rear lift gates that cannot simply be heaved open or slammed shut. You push a button and then – accompanied by a chime – the liftgate oh-so-gradually raises (or closes) itself. It feels like it takes a geological epoch for this process to complete.
