Do not allow yourself to be distracted!
09/30/2013
When I was driving on the highway the other day, one of those modern screens that are now appearing more and more frequently on the roads displayed a message that read something like this: "Don't be distracted, your attention is important for road safety. Your police". It probably took me about two to three seconds to read this important message and of course my attention was not really on the road during this time, but on the message.
There is also a tendency towards information overload in modern cars. From the navigation system, to the various warnings shown on displays, to the jumble of buttons or even complex operating sequences via the on-board computer menus, the driver's attention is all too often diverted from what is happening on the road.
The cars of our fathers were quite different. Especially in the post-war years, they stood out for their simplicity and straightforwardness, as the dashboard of the 1948 Fiat Topolino shows. It even had the luxury of displaying the oil pressure and remaining fuel level, while some cars were content with a speedometer as their only instrument. And four or five buttons were enough,
to master all the essential functions of the car. And if you wanted or needed to do more, you opened the hood - when the car was stationary, of course.
Not everything was better in the past, but some things were easier. And this was definitely in the interests of road safety ...
