Ok, I admit its a bit tenuous saying this is things I’m doing Thursday and posting it on Friday but bear with me.
My car has an annoying safety feature. It beeps. Maybe I need to divulge further. My car has a pressure sensor in the front passenger seat which trips an alarm on the dashboard whenever the seatbelt is unfastened and the sensor detects pressure on the seat. How much weight do you think is required before I am serenaded by annoying electronic pips? The average weight of an 18 year old who is likely to forget to buckle up? How about a 5 year old who shouldn’t be riding in the front in the first place? No? Maybe my small dog won’t set it off? Ok, let’s try… Nup a regular meal from your local favorite fast food joint will still trip this oversensitive safety feature.
Why is this such a big problem? Storage! Where do you throw stuff as you get in the car? Where do the pizzas go? Sure, you can always disable the alarm by buckling the seat belt and thus securing the precious cargo but more likely get in the way completely and complicate the way you have whatever you have sitting next to you. In my case, a backpack which I like having easy access to.
Now, to the reason I can label this as things I’m doing Thursday on Friday. I thought of a brilliant solution, go down to pick a part, find a Lancer seatbelt buckle, saw it off and leave it plugged into my seat’s buckle. I rang my Father to see if he could drop down to the local wreckers to see what he could find. He said “sure, but arn’t most seat belts universal? I’m sure I have a spare belt clip from the old booster seat harness.”
It wasn’t until I got home and looked in the back seat did I realise I had been carrying the answer around with me in the car since day one. Sitting there, as plain as day, was the strap we use to secure the dog on journeys. Clip at one end to attach to Wookiee’s collar and at the other end a simple seat belt tongue.
It went in with a click and.. Well… Nothing… I was home, the engine was off and it wasn’t going to be tested tonight… Err.. Last night, whatever. So it wasn’t until this morning that I could test it all out and see if I’d successfully circumvented the crazy safety parameters of my vehicle. To my delight, it works. No more beeping warning signals. Well at least not until I drive Wookiee down to the lake next..
