Happy Easter! I hope you've had a great weekend with friends or family and have taken the opportunity to ponder the mystery of resurrection and the passionate love that would cause the God of the universe to sacrificially die in your place.
Unfortunately, along with these profound spiritual mysteries, I also pondered something else this weekend. I came to absolutely no solid conclusion on the matter, and so I turn to you, O readers, for some answers.
The Enigma
Like almost every weekend, at some point in the past couple days I was driving. Like almost every weekend in Pittsburgh, there was a great deal of rain falling from the sky. And so, like most weekends, at some point this weekend I was using my windshield wipers.
Thus, like over half my weekends, at some point in the last 36 hours, I frowned and thought, "Why are the speed settings for my windshield wipers so pathetically inadequate?!" Seriously, almost every instance of rain I've come across (with a few torrential exceptions) has been too much for my slow setting but not enough for my fast one.
But, unlike any weekend I've ever had before, this time I decided to measure the time intervals of my windshield wiper settings to prove how terrible they are. So now I present to you the three windshield wiper settings for "my" Honda CR-V:
Setting Similar animal Period of wiping Useful for...
1 Snail 6.89 seconds Someone spitting on car
2 Cheetah 1.89 seconds Extremely hard rain
3 None; lightning bolt 1.29 seconds Driving on ocean floor
Help me understand
I need serious help understanding this. Why in the world is there such a huge gap between settings 1 and 2?? How could someone designing a car think that the appropriate wiper intervals are 7s, 2s, and 1.3s? Am I the only one who sees how close 1.3 and 1.9 are? And how far apart 2 and 7 are!?
Where are the settings that would have my wipers swooshing every 3, 4, or 5 seconds?! These are clearly the settings I would always use, since setting 1 is too slow and setting 2 is too fast. Setting 3 is like a joke that you only feel comfortable telling when you're driving through a hurricane.
If you have the answers to any of these questions, please enlighten me.
Also, let me know of any other automobile frustrations you have.
Jon
This may be my favorite tangent yet because it speaks such truths.
ReplyDeleteI have so much rage over my windshield wipers. There is NEVER a fitting setting for the amount of rainfall at the time. I did use the super speed today driving home in a freaking hurricane and I actually wished I had a faster setting!
Usually on a light rain, I don't turn them on due to my rage over the incompetency of my wipers and opt for the manual single sweep every minute or so because my 1st setting is too fast for a mist. I get annoyed with doing this and then I turn the wipers back on. It is a never ending cycle for me. There really needs to be more intermittent settings.
Nothing bothers me more when people have their wipers TOO fast on an inadequate amount of rainfall. I literally cringe and discreetly hint that they need to fix the situation. Such a stressful subject hahaha…
Everything LB said was exactly what I was going to say, so I'll just add that I don't think it rains on the ocean floor :P
ReplyDeleteMy parents use to have this minivan, a Toyota something-or-other, it had several settings. The #1 setting had possibly 7 sub settings controlled with a dial that allowed you to decide how fast the wipers would go, each felt about 0.5 seconds apart, but I can't be sure as this minivan met it's end in a cement wall.
ReplyDeleteThis knowledge though that back in 1998 Toyota willing could have fixed this problem, and now laughs at our feeble attempts to attain visibility, only makes me all the more frustrated.
Yes! Thank you for venting this publicly! I too have a CRV and am frustrated by this. Well done.
ReplyDelete1998 Ford Escort ZX2...for the win. I don't know the exact number, but I believe I have 11.
ReplyDeleteThe first clump, probably 9 of them, range from 10 seconds to 2 seconds pause between swipes. But then 10 is a constant back and forth at a slow pace - probably takes about 2 seconds from the start to finish, but is always moving. Number 11 (it goes to 11!) is the same as 10, but moves faster - probably 1 second from start to finish.
Thus, while I do occasionally have the "it isn't raining enough to need wipers" problem, I rarely have the "there is no setting with the appropriate speed for this amount of rain" problem until I'm driving in the ocean.
Of course by then my car usually stalls out and I have to call for a tow. It's amazing how good my reception is down there.
There is an actually pretty interesting movie about the man who invented windshield wiper settings...called "Flash of Genius". It is worth watching...and I believe somewhere in the movie he points out they could be set at any speed (but it's been some time since I have seen it).
ReplyDelete