Maintenance Monday: Auto Safety Check-Up

I was all set to con­tinue with my bath­room theme for today’s Main­te­nance Mon­day post, but an inci­dent yes­ter­day inspired me to write about auto main­te­nance instead.

As I was pulling out of The Home Depot park­ing lot yes­ter­day, a guy came run­ning up behind us and told me that my left back-up light wasn’t work­ing.  After thank­ing him and pulling away, I real­ized how timely this piece of news was.  Yes, it gave me a topic to dis­cuss today but blog topic aside, it hap­pened to drill home some­thing that’s been dis­cussed rather fre­quently in our home lately.

At 15, The Daugh­ter has a driver’s per­mit and will be eli­gi­ble to test for her driver’s license in less than 6 months.  She, and by default The Son because he’s usu­ally also fre­quently a pas­sen­ger, has been a cap­tive audi­ence for oft repeated mini-lectures from both The Hus­band and I regard­ing the impor­tance of respect­ing and main­tain­ing a vehicle’s safety equipment.

It’s so easy to take a vehicle’s basic safety equip­ment for granted.  And it’s down­right scary to con­sider the big price that can be exacted when some­thing very small is over­looked or neglected.

Back in the early 80’s when I was learn­ing to drive, our state required each reg­is­tered vehi­cle to have an annual safety inspec­tion and an emis­sions test.  These inspec­tions and tests were con­ducted by any state cer­ti­fied auto repair/servicing sta­tion.  Nowa­days, our state requires a much more com­pre­hen­sive emis­sions test every other year and car own­ers have to have the test done at one of only a hand­ful of test­ing sta­tions around the state.  The safety inspec­tion require­ment is long gone.

Based on the num­ber of cars I’ve seen in the past few years with some or all of their brake lights not work­ing, get­ting rid of the required safety inspec­tion was not nec­es­sar­ily a good idea.  Not that I’m advo­cat­ing rein­state­ment of a state-required annual test.  My point sim­ply is that if you own a car, you should make a point of check­ing your safety equip­ment on a reg­u­lar basis.  I think that it’s impos­si­ble to over-estimate the impor­tance of such sim­ple equip­ment as your brake lights, turn signals, windshield wipers, and the frequently-overlooked wiper fluid.

Today, after pick­ing up a pack­age of two bulbs, The Son and I made a project of replac­ing the burned-out back-up bulb and com­plet­ing a safety-equipment check­list on The Tank.  Here’s a list of the equip­ment we checked:

• park­ing lights (front and back)
• head­lights (reg­u­lar beams and high beams)
• tail lights
• brake lights (all three)
• back-up lights
• license plate lights
• right blinker (front and back)
• left blinker (front and back)
• horn
• wiper blades (don’t for­get your rear blade, if applicable)
• wiper fluid level

A vehi­cle safety equip­ment check requires a part­ner — it’s a great job for ‘tweens and ‘teens.  If you don’t have one at home, enlist your spouse or sig­nif­i­cant other.

After replac­ing the burned-out bulb, The Son and I dis­cov­ered that one of my tail-lights is also out.  It’s a sec­ondary light — part of the wrap-around por­tion of my rear lights.  Still, I’ll have to go back to the auto parts store to pick up the right bulb for that light so The Son and I can replace it as well.  If you’re the type that likes to learn from oth­ers’ mis­takes, take a les­son from my expe­ri­ence and make sure you do a com­plete safety equip­ment test before buy­ing an nec­es­sary parts and tak­ing your car apart for required repairs.

Not every­one is the do-it-yourself type and into replac­ing their own burned-out bulbs — though it’s a much less expen­sive alter­na­tive to tak­ing your car to a pro­fes­sional.  But even the most technically-challenged car owner can com­plete their own safety equip­ment test.

Be sure to put a safety equip­ment test on your to-do list then come back and leave a com­ment when you’re done!

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