Still a Few Bugs in the System

The concept is sheer automotive anti-theft genius. A car senses that someone is trying to steal it and automatically initiates an error message that triggers a lockdown sequence to immobilize itself. Deep in the bowels of the car's onboard computer, where the would-be auto thieves can't see, it takes its own fuel pump offline, mimicking engine failure that would make it an unattractive target for the thieves who would be more interested in moving the car than diagnosing the mechanical problem. Basically, the car sees that it is under attack and plays possum until the bad guys lose interest. Very sci-fi.

Emp. Peng.'s Volvo apparently has had this feature since 2001. We learned this week that, however cool the idea is on paper, there are still a few bugs in the system as it exists in today's reality. Principally, a 2001 Volvo, while an advanced piece of engineering, is not quite smart enough to tell the difference between thugs attempting to commit grand theft auto and Volvo-certified technicians attempting to replace part of the throttle. Humans, on the other hand, are generally smart enough to know whether they are felons or Volvo technicians (not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive), but in our case, the humans failed to compensate for the weakness in the mechanical system by clearing out the onboard computer's memory when they finished replacing said throttle part.

Unbeknown to anyone, the shop sent me home Wednesday with a car that thought it was being carjacked, and the error message triggered the next time Emp. Peng. tried to start it, Friday morning. Now we know what the Blue Screen of Death looks like on a computer system that does not have a display; it is the Blue Volvo of Immobility. Unfortunately, in addition to not having a monitor to turn all blue, the car also lacks a user-operable Control-Alt-Delete.