Notes From the Hard Shoulder by James May Read Free Book Online Page B

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    You may remember, if you were watching Top Gear, that the C4 features a novel steering wheel on which the rim rotates but the middle remains stationary. As well it should, since I counted 17 buttons on it and even then I'm not sure I remembered to include the horn. If it went round and round as well you'd be in big trouble.
    In fact I was so preoccupied with the steering wheel that I completely forgot about the C4'svibrating seat. Then I joined a motorway and the French got to work on my jacquesie.
    This car is fitted with a device that senses the white lines of your motorway lane, and if you stray beyond them the seat performs a brief drum-roll on your bum. Not only that, but it's buttock-specific. Stray right and your right cheek gets a drubbing, stray left and so on. Unless you indicate, in which case the system reasons that you meant to change lane and leaves your derriere mercifully alone.
    It sounds like a good idea, and in many ways it is. If you'd nodded off it would wake you up, certainly. For the lady motorist it may be a safer and more comfortable alternative to the vibrations that are apparently to be enjoyed on the pillion seat of any V-twin Italian motorcycle. Trouble is, I'm a chap and there are times when I don't actually need to signal to change lanes on a motorway, such as when I enter an empty contraflow in the middle of the night. Then it's a right pain in the butt.
    I can't keep indicating for no obvious reason, or I'll end up looking like my mate Paul, who indicates even when he's turning out of a supermarket car-parking

space. Or someone from theInstitute of Advanced Motorists. Maybe you can turn the thing off using one of the buttons on the steering wheel, but at this point I was still trying to retune the radio.
    I have to say I'm disappointed. I saw the genesis of this technology years ago on something called thePrometheus Project, a sort of non-competitive multi-manufacturer initiative to develop the driving aids of the future. This gave ussat-nav, intelligentcruise control,head-up displays,swivelling headlights and thelane-sensing system at the core of the Citroen's vibra-seat.
    By my reckoning, all these things could be combined to allow me to join the motorway in London and then climb into the back for a kip until I arrive in Scotland. Instead, I've been given something to keep me awake. The motor industry has, as usual, aimed low, and humankind has been reduced to fiddling with each other's bottoms like the apes of the trees from which we have supposedly descended.
    I think these people should stop arsing around and do something useful.
    THE FUTURE OF IN-CARENTERTAINMENT
    Some years ago I attended the launch of a newDaewoo MPVpeople-carrier type recreational vehicle, and realised immediately that I was at the dawn of a new era made dark by the lights of a perverted science.
    Nothing to do with the Daewoo per se, since it was a perfectly conventional one-box family bus aimed at the sort of people who didn't see Marie Stopes for the true saint she was. At least, that's what I gleaned from the mutterings of my coevals. Couldn't say as much with any certainty myself, since I didn't actually drive it.
    No – from the moment we arrived, it was quite clear that the new Daewoo was not aimed at the driving enthusiast, or indeed any sort of driver. It had been designed to keep your kids quiet on a journey, and to that end was equipped with video screens, DVD players, gaming consoles and individual headphone sockets, all of which were installed in the back. So that's where I spent the test drive, having recruited a journalist and photographer partnership from a rival publication to act as surrogate dad and dad up front.
    And I hated it. I'm not a Luddite, but these X-boy things really do drive me up the wall, and if I were a parent I would worry that my children were going to grow up with hideously overdeveloped thumbs and atrophied fingers. I also can't quite see the pleasure in watching a film