Automotive innocence

So i have been thinking (uh-oh) and I'm wondering if there is a such thing as automotive innocence or whatever it might be called.

When a person is an "average" person making a car payment and has no idea what is going on under the hood.

I have a friend named Kenny, and Kenny drives a toy-Yoda. He gets in and starts it up and there is no gas pedal pumping, very little starter noise, no smells and puts it in "D" and drives off.

I asked Kenny, don't you ever think of what is going on under the hood, like are you ever at least curious how it works?? He replied, "I know it won't work if there's no gas in there". He never worries about any aspect of the car as long as it propels forward.

Total ignorant bliss.......

I really wonder if that is a good thing. I find myself thinking in my mind everything that is going on in the engine when I'm driving. When I hit a bump on the road, I'm thinking about the suspension reacting and the slip yoke moving and the torsion bars cranking a bit. I'm thinking about everything from the coolant circulating through the radiator to the gears turning in the rear.

Then I find myself thinking of all the things that could go wrong, and I start wondering if my wheel bearings and U joints are adequately greased as I'm running 80mph down the highway. I listen to every noise the car makes and really pay attention to the car. (Radio delete). Every smell, noise, change In RPM says something.

Are we car people the nutty ones or, are the blissfully ignorant, car payment paying, general public the nutty ones........

It is not nuttyness, it can be any combination of the following;
Also keep in mind that the most precious commodity we have is time, and some folk just choose to devote that commodity towards something else.

Your choice to focus on your immediate environment is what you have learned to do. Without an immediate and long-term threat assessment, for you, I can't apply a value judgement. I do consider your approach to this to be wise, and Kenny's to be not so wise, remember that until the Kung-Flu, we lived in a very insulated society, and the apparent) risk to life and limb was much lower. Now, people are a bit more alert.

On this subject, I think that it would be wise to run a points distributor. Just saying...