27 AUGUST 2023 WorldWide Drilling Resource® Vehicles that can Punish You by Britt Storkson Owner, P2FlowLLC The popular YouTube video series “Finding our Someday” (FOS) is about a family who sells their home and lives full-time “on the road” seeing America. They share the highs and lows of RV (recreational vehicle) living, as well as some spectacular photography of the various places they visit. They travel with a late model GMC pickup truck which tows a large trailer. Like most RVers, they occasionally have equipment breakdowns. Most people expect some of that since nothing in this world is perfect and things need to be fixed from time to time. But suffering a computer-defined and -executed breakdown designed to get you to pay money to their car dealers at regular intervals is a different matter. If I understood correctly in episode #170, the FOS family was faced with the dilemma of getting to a GMC dealer mechanic before their truck shut down and left them stranded. But this wasn’t your typical breakdown. The computer in their truck warned them they had a certain number of miles they could drive before the truck quit completely. As a reminder, the computer would incrementally limit their top speed. After so many miles, their top speed was 65 miles per hour (mph); after another chunk of miles, their top speed would drop to 55 mph, and so on until the vehicle quit entirely. Imagine the potential problems this would create if the pickup abruptly decided to quit and you could not get to the side of the road fast enough because of heavy traffic or a variety of other reasons. Also, going too slow on a freeway would greatly increase the chances of getting rear-ended by a driver who isn’t paying full attention to what they were doing. At the very least, this shutdown at the wrong time could result in a huge towing bill. So we have computers forcing one form of behavior modification using the “carrot and stick” approach. The carrot is not having your vehicle abruptly stop because you haven’t paid a visit (and paid some money) to the dealer in a timely manner. The stick is if you do not comply you may have your vehicle end up immobile in the middle of the road, at the very least costing you a large towing bill and greatly increasing the chances of a serious accident or injury in the process. Please note there is nothing wrong with the vehicle or the vehicle computer in this scenario. According to the FOS family, this was the result of a failed EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) valve. But we don’t know this. The computer could easily be programmed to display this error code at a given timer interval even though there was nothing wrong with any part. In fact, computers in cars, or anything else, can be standardized to a great extent so one basic component can be used across many different product lines. For example, car electronic ignitions all have the same basic components. As long as the wire connectors are correct, one electronic ignition can be used for a wide variety of cars . . . even cars from different manufacturers. One would tell the computer (in software) what make, model, and other informa- Storkson Cont’d on page 28.
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