In-car audio alerts are warning me of something... but I don't know what

EPISODE 15

“Weep-weep-weep-weep…”

What’s going on? My car’s beeping at me! That is, it’s, er, “weeping” at me. And I have no idea what that means. Have I run out of fuel? Are my tyres flat? Has the microwave completed its defrost programme?

It’s enough to make you, er, weep.

Audible in-car alerts and emoji-inspired dashboard icons are all very cute but the things they’re trying to alert you to isn’t always obvious… expecially when you’re thundering through rush-hour traffic between a bendy bus and a lorry whose wheels are, as the fairytale would have it, the size of houses.

Call me suspicious or paranoid but I wonder if some of these alerts are – dare I say it? – unessential? Or worse, a dangerous distraction? If there’s one thing that is likely to jolt you into straying into an adjacent lane and face certain death, it’s a deafening and entirely erroneous weep-weep-weep alert to tell you it thinks you are about to stray into the adjacent lane when in fact you were not. A self-fulfilling prophesy, if you like.

Sorry, you’ll have to be a paid-up subscriber to [Autosave is for Wimps] to listen.

Con in 60 Seconds…

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[Photo © 2025 Nick Fewings on Unsplash]
[Sound effects by freesound_community, BEATS_BOY_BENNY, Olivia_Parker, Universfield, Liecio, VoiceBosch, floraphonic, vynadot, JuliusH]
[Voices by NaturalReader]