An advert for a low priced car caught my eye the other day as I browsed through a newspaper. I have not taken a daily paper for many years and my ‘news intake’ is low yet focussed – more on that another time – on this occasion, while I was enjoying a swift coffee stop, as a newspaper was to hand, it was interesting to have a browse for a few minutes. There is always something that catches my eye.
It was an advert for a low priced car that caught my eye. It exclaimed just three features – cruise control was one of them. Many years ago cruise control was the reserve of luxury cars. It is still a paid for extra in many medium priced premium branded cars. I guess, therefore, this was an attractive feature for this car. One thing I have learnt over the years is marketers usually do their homework – hence it means that this was a desirable feature, likely to catch people’s attention, and possibly their buying decision.
Now I HATE cruise control – unless it is one of the much more expensive systems, which alerts you to what is in front of the car, and brakes if you are too close, I have grave reservations on it’s use (I chose ‘grave’ deliberately.). I speak personally of course. Sadly, I have seen a number of near-miss accidents when someone has been travelling along at a set speed, only to suddenly realise that the back of the truck in front has suddenly come a lot closer. The truck travelling at substantially less speed than they have set on their cruise control. Yes, they should have paid more attention; yes, they should have been more aware of what was going on in the road; yes, they should have…..but we are human and not yet in driverless automated cars.
I have never selected this as an option on any car I have purchased, much to the surprise of car salespeople. My current car has cruise control as a standard fitting – I have never used it, nor will I.
Now this advert led me to have a think about my life – work and non-work.
Wow! Now that was a wake up question or two that popped into my mind – these were the first four:
- Where in my life am I running on ‘cruise’ that is getting me to the right destination safely?
- Where in my life am I running on ‘cruise’ and lost concentration, soon to be heading into the back of that ‘truck’?
- Where in my life am I happily ‘crusing’ at a speed that is now too slow, yet I haven’t even thought of increasing my speed – I am too busy day-dreaming?
- Where in my life am I happily cruising at a speed that is too fast and ignoring people I care about, missing what matters, missing opportunities, missing my life….only to realise, too late, that life has no reverse gear to go back and relive what was missed?
I did have some more questions so I have left an extra couple of blank bullet points for your own questions.
Now I shuddered with the thought of my car barreling down the road with me barely aware of what was going on as my mind wandered. I now shudder with some of the answers to the above six questions. How about you?
My best wishes,
Peter
