Options not included...yet

We finally decided to get a second car after living as a one-car household for more than five years, diving deeply into the brave new world of computers perched on radial tires. Ten months later, I am almost done with the owner’s manual and, maybe, I will be ready to drive this thing before the lease runs out.
 
As you might expect, the car has sensors that beep when someone is walking behind the car or when we’re getting too close to the car in front of us, when there’s something in our blind spot and when we’re about to hit a shopping cart in the parking lot. All the new technology is very cool, and very, very noisy.

Still, most of these features fall into the category of nice-to-have, not essential. What I really need isn’t in the car, yet, but the automaker who delivers on my must-haves will earn a customer for life. For instance, I absolutely need…
 

• A transmitter that is activated when my sensors detect a person walking across the street, against the light, staring into a cellphone. My transmitter would light up the pedestrian’s cell phone with an image of my car rolling up on them, so the last thing they ever see is the thing they should have seen in order to make it not be the last thing they ever saw.
• Remote-control parking assist for the Uber driver who’s weaving across two lanes at three miles per hour, trying to figure out whether the people with suitcases who are waving to him frantically are, in fact, his airport fare. I would do him and everyone else the service of getting his car parked safely and re-opening the street for the rest of us.
• A texting app that sends extremely crude photos into the text stream of the guy who’s still stopped at the green light, sending what must be an urgent message to Domino’s. And, at the end of slipping that text onto the offender’s screen, my app forwards it to his contact list.
• Accelerator engagement for the guy going half the limit in the express lane. If my car can slow down automatically when I get too close to the car ahead of me, why can’t I force those dawdlers to move faster? I spend way too much time behind drivers who really, really don’t want to get to their destinations.
• Ejector seats. Yes, you can only use it once and it costs a ton to replace it, but aren’t there times when you’re stuck in traffic for 11 hours and you’re hearing the same story for the 19th time and it would be so, so worth it?
• Montana license plates that drop down over my Illinois plates whenever my airbags are deployed. Really, I have to explain this one?

Beyond these innovative accessories, consumers will clamor for my soon-to-be-patented water cannons and poop blasters. This is a gold mine for the first car company to compensate me for my brilliance.

​The biggest problem with technology is that it’s developed by people who don’t get out much. Spend enough years on the road with crazy people, though, and the horizons expand astronomically.