Thursday, December 3, 2009

Reasons for Having a Reverse Camera


When I got my new Prius a couple years ago, I thought the back-up camera was a pretty cool feature.  There's a full-color screen on the console, and when you put the car in reverse, you get a really nice video picture of what's behind the car.

It seemed like the kind of feature that impressed people who would ride in the car, and I really enjoyed it.  There were times that I'd drive into town entirely in reverse, just so I could use the camera for navigation.  "Coooooool," I thought.

Well, it turns out that you can also use the camera as a way of avoiding obstacles.  I don't know if this was even mentioned in the manual.  I really thought it was just there for the sake of being cool.  I'm sure that other Prius owners find this feature to be a total babe magnet.

I was on a Geocaching adventure a couple weeks ago, and I needed to turn around on a rural road.  So I put the car in reverse, and moved backwards at around 1 mph, and heard this lovely "C-R-R-R-R-U-U-N-N-N-C-H" noise as I backed into a wooden post.

I said a few holiday-oriented words, and checked out the lovely handiwork I had done on my rear bumper.  And I drove straight to an auto body shop so I could determine just how mad at myself I should be (by their estimate, I was mad at myself to the tune of $750).

Thankfully, Mrs. Smoot handled this as gently as one could possibly expect, laughing out loud at me and saying, "I thought you had a back-up camera?!"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find it ironic that the smunched part is right by your GPS sticker. Would you have avoided that post if you'd marked it as a waypoint?

-Anonymous Facebook Holdout

Hank W. Smoot said...

For the record, I carefully removed the GPS sticker and stuck it on the new bumper. It could probably use a good replacing, though.

Hank W. Smoot said...

Oh, and speaking of irony in car crashes... I can recall an instance when I hit a deer in St. Marys, and the ONLY damage I did to the car was to knock those silly "deer horns" off the front bumper.