Your Fort Collins Automotive shop will do a good portion of its auto repair replacing brakes and giving vehicles tune-ups, but your auto technician will also have clients coming in because of an embarrassing driver error, such as putting a car into reverse instead of drive, and accidentally backing into a tree, damaging the car. Any of us who have driven for any period of time make our share of mistakes, and sometimes damage our cars in the process.
Lets start with a driver mistake that must happen at least 10 times a day in any major mall parking lot. The driver puts their bags on top of their vehicle, unlocks the car, gets in, fiddles with the air conditioning, and the radio. Our driver then might open her water bottle, or make sure a child is secured in his car seat. She is now good to go, and carefully backs out of her parking space, steers towards the exit, and heads off to her next errand. All it takes is a little bit of distraction, like perhaps sending a text on a cell phone, or playing with the stereo, to distract a driver to the point where she forgets that the package she spent so much time purchasing never makes it into her car. This happens with students too. How many of us lost our homework by putting it on top of our car and driving away, only to have our report on the economies of Scandinavia or our algebra homework fly off the top of the car as we drove away. Dogs probably never ate any homework, but plenty of it has been lost by putting it on top of the car and forgetting it was there. I suspect teachers and professors might be more sympathetic to the “I left it on the hood, and forgot to put it in the car,” homework excuse as opposed to some others.
How about at the gas station? Ever forget to pay (oops!) this mistake may not send your car to your auto technician, but it might send you to jail. Not quite as awful, but still cringe worthy, is leaving the gas pump in your tank while driving off. Your Fort Collins automotive shop has seen a few damaging dings and scratches from gas nozzles whacking against the side of the car as the oblivious driver pulls away, unknowingly trying to take the whole gas tank with them as they proceed to work. How about forgetting where your gas tank is completely, and pulling your car up to the pump on the wrong side. Have you ever scrambled around trying to find the gas tank release inside the car? Next time you get a rental, save yourself some red faced shame, and find out where both the release lever for the gas tank, and the gas tank are for your car before fueling it. Then, there is running out of gas while driving. Next time you see someone walking down the road with a gas can in hand, don’t laugh at them. It happens.
These kind of mishaps are embarrassing, but not necessarily dangerous. We can include other embarrassing driver mistakes, like locking your keys in the car, forgetting where you parked your car, and getting into the wrong car by mistake. Have you ever pulled out your keys, unlocked your car, and been puzzled? then it hits you, this is not your car. How embarrassing!
The kinds of mistakes that could very well end up with you and your car at your Fort Collins Automotive shop having a conference with your auto technician are things like driving without turning the headlights on. You might have started your journey when it was light outside, and simply forgot to turn them on. Or, you might have pulled over during the night for a snack and restroom break, and simply forgot to turn the lights on when you got back in your car to resume your journey. It can be difficult on highways with lots of lighting, either from other cars or street lamps, to realize that your lights or not on. Hopefully, someone alerts you with a loud honk on the horn, or you realize you’re driving without lights before the situation results in an accident.
Then there is driving the wrong way on a one way street. I think we have all seen someone doing this, even if we haven’t done ourselves. Your auto technician has probably done some repairs in her career that were the result of driving East on a Westbound road.
Perhaps the most embarrassing mishap has to do with parking. How many fender benders occur in parking lots, or when pulling out into traffic? Parallel parking can lead to a horrifying crunch if its not done right. And, never ever forget to engage your emergency parking brake on a hill!
If you do find yourself in any of these situations, remember you’re not the first, nor will you be the last to completely humiliate and embarrass yourself with these driver errors. We all do it occasionally, even our auto technician locks her keys in her car on occasion.